VT Census Case Studies : Maponics - School Boundaries

Created by ziemer, last modified by molfe on 10 Jun 2015

Brief Overall Description of the Dataset:

The data include school attendance zones (SAZs), school districts, and school locations for public and private schools, school enrollment, school test performance, and school ratings.

Link: http://www.maponics.com/school-attendance-zones

Date Inventory Completed: 6/2/15

Screening

  • Is the data collected opinion-based?
  • Is the data collection recurring (must be collected at least annually)?
  • Is there data available for 2013?
  • Is the data collected at least the school level? 
  • Can we access the data by August 15th?
  • Can the data be linked to other education/workforce datasets (e.g., K-12, higher education, workforce)? Yes, linked to school performance data (e.g., avg. math and reading scores), public school enrollments from NCES, and GreatSchools data (provides school ratings) at the school district and individual school levels.

Purpose

  • What is the purpose of the organization collecting the data?

Maponics is a for-profit data selling company.

  • Why is it collected and how does the organization use it?

Maponics Context is intended for businesses that want to be able to target specific areas, demographics, “Local Character,” etc.

  • Who else uses the data?

Parents, businesses, researchers, real estate developers

  • Who do they sell the data to?

Businesses, researchers


Method

  • What is the data collection method? 

Unclear and depends on the data source.

  • What is the type of data collected? 

Administrative and GIS

  • If designed, who created the questions?

N/A

  • What is the raw source of the collected data (prior to any aggregation)? 

School attendance zones are individually compiled utilizing GIS data, textual descriptions, address lists, and printed maps obtained directly from individual school districts; the National Center for Education Statistics,  the US Census Bureau, and state departments of education.


Description

  • What is the general topic of the data (1-2 words)?

K-12 Education

  • What are the earliest and latest dates for which data is available?

Earliest: unknown; Latest: 2013

  • Is data collected and available periodically?

Yes

  • How soon after a reference period ends can a data source be prepared and provided? 

Less than one year.


Selectivity (conversely, the representativeness)

  • What is the universe (e.g., population) that the data represents (consider inclusion/exclusion criteria)?

School attendance zones include 88% of US student enrollment covering over 12,000 School Districts, includes both private and public schools.


Accessibility

  • How is the data accessed? 

Available through Spatial API and in numerous GIS and spatial formats: PostGIS, WKT, MySQL, SHAPE, TAB, KML.

  • Is it open data?

No

  • Any legal, regulatory, or administrative restrictions on accessing the data source?

Unknown

  • Cost? - One time or annual or project based payment?

Subscription-based service.

Does this dataset appear to meet our needs for the Census study? UNKNOWN

Explanation: The data is at the school-level and it is not clear if GIS will be useful for the Census.