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
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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]
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