Just released: Community profiles to help you learn more about your district and town

As part of our Whole Picture of Public Education series, Reaching Higher NH developed individual community and school district profiles, which help individuals examine the overall picture of public education in their district. The profiles include community indicators that can affect a child’s learning. 

This weekend, communities around the state will begin their deliberative sessions – and we hope these profiles may be used to support community-level conversations and decision-making.

Each profile includes four sections:

  • Student Outcome Indicators, which explore district performance on the 2017 statewide annual assessment for Grades 4, 8, and 11, as well as high school graduation rates, high school dropout rates, and attendance rates;
  • Student and Teacher Indicators, which explore student enrollment by economic status, race and ethnicity, emerging bi-and multilinguals, and special education;
  • Community Indicators, which explore the context and environment in which students learn, including various economic, social, and health indicators; and
  • School Finance Indicators, which explore each town’s state and local funding, and comparison to other communities throughout New Hampshire. 

Each profile includes data on the individual community, as well as county- and state-level data for most indicators. 

What is the Whole Picture of Public Education project?

What are the major factors that influence student learning in New Hampshire? For our youngest learners, it is their family income. But as students get older, the predictors of their academic outcomes expand to include both family income and the educational attainment of the broader community.

Those were among the most consequential findings of Reaching Higher NH’s comprehensive analysis on student learning in New Hampshire. The two-year project, titled “The Whole Picture of Public Education,” looks beyond individual classrooms and schools to explore the family, community, and statewide factors that impact learning, and begins to unpack how we can best support our students. 

Explore our key findings with this four-part series, and use the interactive data visualizations to learn more about your own community: 

Check out our other resources and tools:

  • A comprehensive report, which uses five stories of New Hampshire families to guide readers through the project’s core findings and encourages them to consider their real-life implications;
  • A webinar that introduces our key findings; 
  • Interactive data visualizations, which allow users to explore the data and information on their own communities;
  • Community and school district profiles, which help individuals build a better understanding of their own communities (to be released soon); and,
  • The methodology of the study, including appendices for our statistical models.