Bart, A. C. (2016, October 24). School scores CSV file. CORGIS Datasets Project. https://corgis-edu.github.io/corgis/csv/school_scores/

 

This dataset organizes SAT and education-related information from each of the fifty U.S. states, the District of Columbia, and the territories of Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands from 2005 to 2015 into a CSV file. It provides aggregated information about students’ educational backgrounds (e.g., their SAT scores and high school grade point averages) and their personal backgrounds (e.g., their family income and gender identity). The way by which the dataset does this is through averages (e.g., the average math score of female-identifying SAT test takers in a state in a given year) or total counts of students within bins (e.g., the number of female-identifying SAT test takers with math scores in the range of 700 to 800 in a state in a given year); this allows us to easily create visualizations and conduct statistical analyses looking at how overall trends change over time and within specific categories.

 

Bohn, S., & Schiff, E. (2019, May 9). The Great Recession and distribution of income in California. Public Policy Institute of California. https://www.ppic.org/publication/the-great-recession-and-distribution-of-income-in-california/

 

This report summarizes the far-reaching and long-lasting effects of the Great Recession on California families, specifically focusing on income. It finds that in addition to creating record unemployment, downturns in major industries, and budget shortfalls, the Great Recession led to an increased gap in income between upper- and lower-class families in California. The report concludes by specifically identifying education as one of the driving forces behind the gap between high- and low-income worker employment and calls for new initiatives to promote opportunities in education for Californians.

 

Delgado, R., Stefancic, J., & Harris, A. (2001). Introduction. In Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (pp. 1–14). New York University Press.

 

This book chapter introduces the concept of critical race theory, which views everyday interactions, from a teacher not recognizing a Black student to a store owner refusing to put change directly into a Black customer’s hand, as shaped by society’s conceptions of race and ethnicity. In their seminal book, Richard Delgado, Jean Stefancic, and Angela Harris provide an overview of what CRT is, its origins, how it relates to other movements (e.g., critical legal studies and radical feminism), and the issue of racism in the world. The framework that this chapter takes to analyzing the various societal influences on a person’s well-being and outcomes guides us toward a more nuanced direction of understanding how demographics may affect one’s educational outcomes.

 

Feltscher, I. (2018, January 24). Report card on American education: 22nd edition. American Legislative Exchange Council. https://www.alecreportcard.org/publication/report-card-on-american-education-22nd-edition/

 

This report ranks states’ educational quality based on several factors, including the state’s academic standards, teacher quality, school choice options, digital learning availability, and per-pupil spending. It allows us to objectively compare K-12 education and policy performance in California and West Virginia according to the criteria set by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). It also provides us with the opportunity to situate California and West Virginia’s rankings within the context of the larger United States. One bias to note is that ALEC describes its mission as promoting limited government, free markets, and federalism in the United States, which could negatively influence its depiction of public school education.

 

Lafortune, J., Mehlotra, R., & Paluch, J. (2021, August 10). Funding California schools when budgets fall short. Public Policy Institute of California. https://www.ppic.org/publication/funding-california-schools-when-budgets-fall-short/

 

This report identifies lessons learned from the Great Recession in California and lays out actions that the state should take to mitigate disproportionate learning loss, particularly for already marginalized communities, during the recession caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. It finds that spending cuts due to budget shortfalls during the Great Recession varied considerably across school districts, but districts most affected by these cuts had higher shares of disadvantaged students, such as low-income students, Latino students, and African American students. Moreover, the report describes evidence suggesting that reductions in per-pupil spending during the Great Recession led to decreased overall student test scores and increased score gaps between Black and White students. As a result, the confluence of budget cuts with already existing racial disparities may further lower the educational prospects of students.

 

O’Leary, S. (2012, December 11). The impact of the decline of coal and the rise of natural gas on local severance tax revenue. West Virginia Center on Budget & Policy. https://wvpolicy.org/the-impact-of-the-decline-of-coal-and-the-rise-of-natural-gas-on-local-severance-tax-revenue/

 

This report describes the significant impact that the decline of the coal industry has had on West Virginia’s economy, which affects county and municipal level budgets for various operations. It describes how the coal industry has historically been a major source of employment in the state, and the shift away from coal has led to unemployment and economic instability in many communities. Although this report does not explicitly mention impacts on education, it suggests that the economic instability caused by the decline of the coal industry could have wide-ranging and long-lasting impacts on communities and families, which could involve school quality and educational resources.

 

Risam, R. (2019). Beyond the Margins: Intersectionality and Digital Humanities. In B. Bordalejo & R. Risam (Eds.), Intersectionality in Digital Humanities (pp. 13–33). ARC Humanities Press.

 

This book chapter stresses the importance of including diverse voices in the digital humanities, meaning authors from underrepresented backgrounds who hold various personal identities along with ideas and frameworks that challenge the status quo and traditional norms. In this chapter, Risam argues that instead of isolating variables (e.g., race), quality research looks at them in tandem with other forces that influence them (e.g., considering gender, sexuality, economic class, religion, and disability can broaden one’s understanding of race). The broader messages from this chapter about intersectionality not only apply to digital humanities and scholarship but also to how we can contextualize a student’s SAT score and educational outcomes given their background characteristics.

 

Shores, K., & Steinberg, M. (2017, August 28). The impact of the Great Recession on student achievement: Evidence from population data. Stanford Center for Education Policy Analysis. http://cepa.stanford.edu/wp17-09

 

This paper presents population-level data from the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), showing that the Great Recession had a severe negative impact on the math and English language arts achievement of grade 3-8 students in the United States. It finds that the effects were more pronounced in school districts serving economically disadvantaged and minority students and were more severe for older students who were exposed to the recession for the first time than for younger students. Overall, this paper suggests that students, especially already marginalized students, who were nearing key educational milestones experienced greater academic setbacks as a result of the recession.