麻豆精品

This article is part of Bright Spots, a series聽highlighting schools where every child learns to read, no matter their zip code. Explore the Bright Spots map to find out which schools are beating the odds in terms of literacy versus poverty rates.

Kids learn to read, and then they read to learn. 

That鈥檚 the saying, at least, and even if the reality is more complicated than that, it鈥檚 true that early reading is highly predictive of later-life outcomes. Students who struggle with early reading skills tend to have more and are less likely to high school than those who are skilled at decoding letters into sounds and translating those sounds into meaning.  

So which schools help students get started on the right path? 

Last year, we set out to find the school districts that were doing the best job of teaching kids how to read. Now, we are expanding that search to individual schools 鈥� and have found 2,158 where third-grade reading scores are much higher than might be expected, based on the schools’ poverty rates.

We’re going to be highlighting more of those stories in the months to come. But for now, we鈥檙e making our data available for anyone who wants to dig in. Armed with the full dataset of 41,883 schools across 10,414 districts in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., Eamonn Fitzmaurice, 麻豆精品鈥檚 art and technology director, built the interactive tool below. Start by selecting the state you want, or click on an individual school to see how it compares with those in the rest of its district. 

Interactive

Reading Scores vs. Poverty Level in 41,883 U.S. Schools

As you hover over each dot, you鈥檒l see the school鈥檚 actual versus expected literacy rate, based on the percentage of its students who qualify for free- and reduced-price lunch. This methodology helped us identify schools that are beating the odds and successfully teaching kids to read (represented as gold circles). 

These exceptional schools are in the top 5% of their state in terms of outscoring their expected reading proficiency. For example, Hoover Street Elementary in Los Angeles is a high-poverty school that nonetheless earned high marks. It was one of a number of schools in the L.A. Unified School District that made our list. In Maryland, Pocomoke Elementary came out as the highest-performing school in the entire state; it is located in Worcester County, which last year we highlighted as one of our highest-performing districts. In Pennsylvania, two of 21 schools in Pittsburgh made our exceptional list (Allegheny K-5 and Greenfield K-8). 

Users can also toggle whether they want to include or focus on public charter schools. Charters tended to be overrepresented on our list of exceptional schools, making up 7% of all schools in our sample but 11% of those that are exceptional. This is particularly clear in New York, where many of the highest-poverty, highest-performing schools are charters, led by the Success Academy Bronx 5 Upper Elementary, the Bronx Charter School For Excellence 4 and Icahn Charter School 6, also in the Bronx. 

The red diagonal line in each graph is called the 鈥渂est fit鈥� line. The closer the dots are to the line, the stronger the correlation between a school鈥檚 poverty level and its reading proficiency rate. In Washington state, for example, the dots are mostly clustered in a band just above and below the line throughout the full poverty spectrum. 

Maryland, Georgia, Connecticut, Colorado, Nebraska, Minnesota and the District of Columbia all have similar graphs. We don鈥檛 have enough information to explain why poverty seems to play such a large role in these states compared to others, but it could reflect instructional deficits within schools, have something to do with how students are sorted across schools within a state or be tied to the state鈥檚 third-grade reading test. 

In contrast, other states show a much weaker relationship between poverty and reading outcomes. For example, family income was less of a predictor of third grade reading outcomes in Kentucky, where schools are scattered all over the graph and not as tightly clustered around the red line. Other states showing comparatively weak relationships include Nevada, West Virginia, North Dakota and New York. 

For a project of this size and scope, we had to make some methodological choices. For example, we focused on third-grade proficiency scores because, while not determinative, they 鈥減rovide a strong indication of the path a student is on,” according to  by Dan Goldhaber, Malcolm Wolff and Tim Daly.

But deciding how to measure a school鈥檚 poverty level was difficult. We considered but ultimately chose to rely on the federal government鈥檚 for free- and reduced-price lunch. That’s because they are familiar to readers, allow us to link poverty rates and reading scores for the same 2023-24 school year, and aim to count the actual students in a school building rather than relying on broader neighborhood measures. This last element was particularly important for evaluating charter schools and communities where large percentages of students actively choose their school rather than simply attending the one closest to where they live.

State-level researchers and advocates can certainly test other, more fine-grained measures of student disadvantage if they prefer. Our hope with this project is to get those conversations started, because the latest national data suggest that student reading scores continue to fall in many parts of the country, and too many kids are struggling with the early reading skills they will need to succeed in higher-level work. In the coming months, 麻豆精品 will be setting out to learn more about what makes the highest-performing schools successful. We hope others will pick up the mantle and learn from the schools that are beating the odds in their states. 

About This Project 

Where did the data come from? 

The data for this project come from two sources. Spring 2024 third-grade reading scores were downloaded from the聽, which compiles state test scores and makes them publicly available. The 2023-24 poverty data comes from the Common Core of Data from the National Center for Education Statistics. These numbers are reported by states to the federal government, but they may look different than the measures that states or districts use for their own purposes.

How did you measure poverty? 

States use and report different metrics, so we looked at both free- and reduced-price lunch rates and the actual number of students who qualify, based on their family鈥檚 participation in one or more means-tested federal relief programs. Because we were looking for positive outliers, we gave schools the benefit of the doubt and took the higher of these two figures.

Why isn’t my school or district on the list? 

The most likely reason is sample size. We’ve included only schools with at least 30 students who took their state’s spring 2024 third grade English Language Arts test. The only exception was Maine, which did not break its results down by grade level, so its numbers are an aggregate across grades 3 to 8. All told, we had data for 41,883 schools serving 3,162,225 students across 10,414 districts. 

Can these data be compared across state lines? 

Because different states use different exams, we encourage readers to focus on within-state comparisons.