All the chart types

First, continuing with the midterm. Whereas last time I looked at the number of students of each race who were suspended each year for three years, this time I decided to focus on only one year and examine how the number of suspended students of each race compares to the total population of that race within our public school system. Unsurprisingly, Black students are disproportionately suspended.

In the United States, Black public school students are more likely to have received one or more out-of-school suspensions than their peers of any race. In fact, Black students are suspended at over three times the rate of white students. According to a study from the National Academy of Sciences, “black [sic] students are more likely to be seen as problematic and more likely to be punished than white students are for the same offense.”

Next up, this week’s homework. While I strayed from looking at suspension data, I stuck to my education beat and found the enrollment data from my own high school (James A. Garfield High, a Seattle Public School) for the years 2000–2015. I filtered the data by race and cleaned it up a bit, and came up with 10 visualizations, some of which I think are a lot more informative than others (hmmm….maybe that was the point?). I decided to draw half and build half with software, since my skills on both ends could use sharpening.