I like data.
I also realize that data must be contextualized and verified with multiple discourses to ensure that writers and audiences digest data for constructive and critical understanding. Most data I look for are local. I read articles each week that refer to national data and I tend to yawn because the national data can never explain the local. Here, for example, we cannot understand Spring TX with data from California; we cannot understand Aldine TX with data from New York. So, for years, I have relied on U.S. Census data for local community data.
This week, I learned of another data set with very local datamining that is especially relevant for our local communities during a pandemic, the vaccine roll-out, and vulnerabilities that will impact my college's student success and persistence.
CDC's Social Vulnerability Index (SVI)
The SVI data drills down to the Census tract (smaller than a ZIP code) and addresses four major data sets
- socioeconomic score
- household composition/ disability
- minority/ language
- housing transportation
with a composite score. For example, Harris County has a 0.70 SVI index, compared to Montgomery County, which has a 0.39 index score. In short, a higher SVI score reflects more vulnerability and a lower SVI reflects less vulnerability.
Those four variables are defined as
[Aside: I have a problem with using the term "minority," and the term has been less favored recently. But here we see how the federal government sees bodies as "majority" vs. "minority."]
Notice that Housing & Transportation does not reflect any data that would be essential to better understand education this past year: access to Internet and devices -- more than just a phone -- to engage complex reading, video instruction, writing, and complex STEM instruction such as math software. In short, this is what is called the "tech gap" and this needs to better understand in our communities. I'm afraid my own college does not appreciate this tech gap for enrollment, advising, and definitely for instruction.
When we drill down the map, we can see how the communities in the serving area for LSC-North Harris
The map shows what faculty and students already know: the service area has a high "vulnerability." Though the community immediately surrounding the LSC-NH campus (Woodcreek, near Nimitz HS) with a SVI around 0.7, which is already high, the communities south of the campus have significantly higher SVI. The area around Aldine Bender, for example, has a 0.89 SVI; the SVI around Aldine Mail Route are 0.82; the area around Dekaney HS ranges between 0.80 to 0.94.
Think about that: 0.94: 0.92 socioeconomic vulnerability; 0.59 household; 0.94 "minority"/language; 0.90 housing/transportation. We can ask ourselves how students might struggle with household financials; family stability and disabilities (I argue that our college is very poor to support visible and invisible disabilities); migration and language barriers; insecure housing and access to campus.
As faculty, we need to better understand the community: the quantitative data from multiple sources and the qualitative data from the students' actual voices. As faculty, we can use these community information as central to curriculum but also to pressure administration, board of trustees, and voters to address real success. As faculty, we can listen to students' real lives and consider constructive, critical, and flexible learning relationships in each every semester. Unfortunately, most faculty live outside the service area of the college; they often merely commute to campus, driving major streets without spending more time in the smaller streets, the neighborhoods, the business, health access, job opportunities, and gross lack of public transportation to get students to campus. Many faculty make assumptions, wishing that they had taught a college that they had attended, their universities, their family resources, their stability. But the data show that our students don't live in the same experiences as most faculty's experiences. The data show the opposite.
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