DATA SOURCES AND METHODOLOGY

MEASURING A SCHOOL’S TOTAL RISK LOAD: THE 18 FACTORS

The fact that family and neighborhood poverty can have an adverse effect on school performance is well known. But typical measures, like free and reduced lunch or even community poverty data, fail to capture the volume and nature of the challenges that many schools in New York City face.

To dig deeper, the Center looked at a variety of neighborhood and school-level risk factors commonly mentioned in the academic literature. We found that the following 18 variables were strong predictors of both Common Core test scores and chronic absenteeism.