Insight #1

There are disparities of education quality by borough. This is prominent in the Bronx, where they lead in both poverty, unemployment rates, and are the lowest earning borough for households. It corresponds with our educational research where they have the lowest average SAT score of 806 out of 1500. If New York City is to provide equal opportunities among its kids, the Bronx is a sure place to start with.

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Insight #2

On the other side of the spectrum, Staten Island stands out by having the most well-performing students on average. Despite being a small borough, the data demonstrates that their SAT scores are above an 800. We also notice that Staten Island holds the highest median household income of $90k. In comparison to the Bronx, we can conclude that the surrounding environment of a student and their high school impacts their academic performance.

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Insight #3

Alongside the economic divide amongst the boroughs, especially between Staten Island, Brooklyn, and the Bronx, we cannot ignore the race proportions provided by our data. The Bronx and Brooklyn have predominant POC populations, primarily for the Hispanic and Black communities. Meanwhile, Staten Island is primarily white. This insight, when crossreferenced with our data regarding household income, it raises more question regarding the relationship between race and wealth in New York City.

Explained: The Racial Wealth Gap

When taking all of our main insights and crossreferencing our data, we can say that there are traces of educational redlining in New York City. In boroughs like the Bronx or Brooklyn, we unfortunately observe the differences of livelihoods and high schools. Our study shows that the boroughs with high poverty rates are the same ones with low SAT score averages. It leads to the question: why? One small aspect of our data shows that where there are high unemployment rates, there is also a high rate of crime. We can infer then that turbulence in neighborhoods like robberies or violence can effect the psyche of a student, who then brings those stressors to the classroom. Low median incomes can also explain the education quality of a school, as many public schools around the US are funded by American taxpayers. While it the topic of SAT Scores as an indication of intelligence is heavily debated among average citizens and scholars, the SAT continues to be a significant portion of a student's admission to college.

The bottom line is this: it is time to start finding ways to reshape education equity in New York, and investing our time and efforts to preparing students for higher education and beyond.

Further Exploration:

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  Looking Outside of NYC

  As a fully ambitious project, it would be great to see this study applied to other cities across the US like Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Houston, Phoenix, etc. That way, audiences are able to check their hometowns and find ways to incite change in their communities.
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  Understanding the Types of Schools

  To enrich our current data, it would have been interesting to incorporate the type of schools that the US has set up. Seeing how charter schools fare with public ones, looking at private vs. public school gaps, and if there are any special cases such as magnet schools that either underperform or overachieve.
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  Looking to the Future

  A student's future does not stop with the SAT. It's important that we also understand what post-high school opportunities a student is offerred. How many go to university? How many go to commmunity college? We ought to study a student's following steps after their education to help prevent the trends of poverty and crime for underprivileged communities.