SAVI Online Magazine | Page 2

INTRODUCTION + PARTNERS PROGRESS IN EDUCATION Education affects every Indiana resident. It directly impacts health, crime, employment, income, and many other pressing social and economic issues. But education is a contentious and complex subject. How do we know where to direct our energies and resources? How do we know if we are making progress? SAVI plays a critical role in helping schools, coalitions, and nonprofits improve education outcomes. It not only provides critical data, but it has the tools to allow partners for educational improvement evaluate their progress. In a shift from an exclusive focus on K-12, many researchers now take a “cradle to career” view of education. We are much more aware now of how many factors affect a child’s chances of success before he or she reaches kindergarten. We also know how these factors continue to influence educational outcomes beyond high school. With this shift comes a challenge: the data we need to plan and evaluate our 2 efforts is no longer contained in a single database. SAVI helps to solve this problem in three ways. First, it integrates a wide variety of relevant datasets by linking them to multiple geographies from neighborhoods and school corporations to counties and the Indianapolis MSA. Second, it provides the tools to analyze and visualize the data and to present it in meaningful ways. And it works with partners to insure that data are used impartially and responsibly. Providing reliable data in easy-tocomprehend ways is essential because interested audiences range from parents and reform advocates to researchers. SAVI helps educators, policy-makers, and citizens understand the full context of learning both in and out of the classroom through online report cards that track progress. It also works to discover gaps and to identify community assets that can help to make changes that improve lives. In this issue, we bring you stories of how community leaders—within United Way of Central Indiana, The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, and Central Indiana Education Alliance—are using SAVI to analyze and change local education for the better. SAVI enables educators and community leaders to target neighborhoods and offers a comprehensive view of assets and deficiencies in a geographic area. If education outcomes are poor in a certain neighborhood, for example, SAVI enables a user to view detailed demographic information and map out assets such as schools, transportation, and health and human services to have a complete, visual view of what amenities may or may not be available to a family living in that area. Through data analysis, visualization, and capacity building, SAVI helps to help answer some of the most complex educational questions in our community. SAVI Index: Education Chance that a Marion County resident 25+ with no high school diploma is living in poverty: 1 in 3 (36.2%) Chance that a Marion County resident 25+ with bachelor’s degree or higher is living in poverty: 1 in 17 (5.9%) Unemployment rate for Marion County residents 25+ with no diploma: 17.3% Unemployment rate for Marion County residents 25+ with bachelor’s degree or higher: 3.8% Median annual income for Marion County resident 25+ with no diploma: 17,850 Median annual income for Marion County resident 25+ with bachelor’s degree: 42,227 Median annual income for Marion County resident 25+ with graduate or professional degree: 60,146 2000 Marion County residents 25+ with bachelor’s degree or higher: 25.4% 2013 Marion County residents 25+ with bachelor’s degree or higher: 27.5% 1999 Marion County median household income in 2013 dollars: $56,279 2013 Marion County median household income in 2013 dollars: $41,435 Source: American Community Survey, 2013 1-year average For SAVI Education Initiatives, contact Sharon Kandris, [email protected] 3