Economic Data and Demographics

Do the economic levels of our schools' families correlate in some meaningful way to the comparisons of schools to our district's racial/ethnic demographics that are explored in the article Segregation Patterns in District 1 Schools? Initial explorations suggest that they do not.

[UPDATE - July 22, 2007: The graphs have been updated to omit the "D01 CBO" category, for which we had not Title I poverty data. And this makes it clearer that there is a tantalizing possiblity of a correlation in the "Hispanic" category (see below).]

An extended version of the spreadsheet used in the initial article is attached to this article (see below). I added in Title I data from the DoE for Fiscal Year 2007. The data is stamped July 18, 2006. I attempted to find correlations between the poverty percent for each school and the population per-school of each racial/ethnic category, and also between the poverty percent and the "difference from district" measures described in the previous article. The charts below show the results. It seems clear, visually, that there is nothing even close to a direct relationship in any of these comparisons.

I would very much welcome and appreciate any guidance in methods for searching for other kinds of correlation. We are hoping to find some way to find a "marker" for race/ethnicity, as an input to current discussions among parents about possible proposals to the DoE for an admissions policy that preserves our district's historic commitment to diversity.