Is Chicago Closing the Right Schools? (Chicago Public Schools)

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Chicago Public School Performance (% Possible Points) vs. 2012-2013 School Utilization Rate

Y-Axis: - Performance Level 

X-Axis: School Utilization Rate

Color of Circle:  

• Orange = School closing
• Green = School will be co-located with another school
• Red = School will be receiving students from closing schools
• Blue = School unaffected

Size of Circle: 

• Larger = more expensive to maintain/update
• Smaller = less expensive to maintain/update

Are the right schools being closed in Chicago?

When I first learned that the Chicago Public Schools were closing 54 schools 

I was curious to see if it was closing the right schools.

My thoughts:

In my mind schools that are underutilized and under-performing (bottom left on chart above) 

should be the ones that should be closed and schools that are underutilized but performing above average

(top left on chart above) should be the ones receiving new students.

To test this hypothesis I performed my analysis on data from the Chicago Public Schools:

Insights:

1. Goldblatt Elementary School, Calhoun North Elementary School, and Stewart Elementary School are three higher performing schools that will be closed.  There are 10 "level 2" (1 step above probation status) schools that will be closed.

2.Wells Preparatory Elementary Academy, Beethoven Elementary School, Ryder Elementary Math & Science Special School,  are three low performing schools that are currently on probation will be receiving students from closed schools. In total there are 15 schools that are on probation that will be receiving students from closed schools.

3.No high school is affected by the proposed school closures and they are the most expensive to keep open

Note: School closure decision are probably based off more than a school's performance, utilization,
and cost to keep open. Many of the decision may be been based on geography, which I did not have
data for.

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