Youth Survey Shows Young People Are Anxious, Depressed … Yet Also Hopeful
Analyzed microdata from a survey of over 22,000 people and created interactive graphics using the Datawrapper API, Python, and Javascript.
I have an eye for stories hidden in plain sight. Using my skills in Excel, Python, and R, I can analyze data and spot major trends, patterns, and outliers. I can then visualize that data to make complex information accessible for a general audience. Here's some code I'm proud of:
- I created customized, interactive election maps for three neighborhoods in New Orleans. See the maps here, here, and here.
- For my story on restraint and seclusion in special education private schools, I wrote a Python code to scrape data on Washington, D.C. private schools scattered across dozens of separate PDFs. For the same story, I also wrote a Python code that read through hundreds of pages of school records and compiled them into a searchable spreadsheet.
- I used Excel to analyze racial disparities in restraint and seclusion, finding that Black and Hispanic children in Connecticut were twice as likely to be restrained.
- I used the ggplot2 package in R to produce graphs for public policy reports on racial disparities in schools and this arts education. Read the code for these reports here and here.
Diplomas for sale, $465: Inside one of Louisiana’s unapproved schools
Over 21,000 students are enrolled in unapproved, off-the-grid private schools in Louisiana, nearly double the number from before the pandemic. It's a rapidly growing example of the nation's continuing fallout from COVID-19: families disengaging from traditional education.
Thousands of kids are missing from school. Where did they go?
Hundreds of thousands of students around the country disappeared from public schools during the pandemic and didn’t resume their studies elsewhere. An analysis by The Associated Press, Stanford University’s Big Local News project and Stanford education professor Thomas Dee found an estimated 230,000 students in 21 states whose absences could not be accounted for.
These Are the Top COVID Hot Spots in the U.S.
I update the data in this article weekly by using a Python program that queries the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's API.
'It hurts your bones': Private special ed schools can restrain kids with disabilities 1,000s of times. Parents might not know.
I took the lead on this investigation into shocking levels of restraint and seclusion in special education schools. After sending public records requests to all 50 states and Washington, D.C., I analyzed the data with the programming languages R and Python and created interactive graphics with Infogram.
Karen Carter Peterson won 2 out of 3 Uptown precincts in congressional race
I used Datawrapper, R, and Excel to create a customized, interactive map of precinct-level election data for a special Congressional election in Louisiana.
The Cost of Inequality
This scrollytelling-style visualization illustrates the stark differences in funding for predominantly Black schools compared to White schools. Tools used: Scrollama, R, Mapshaper, QGIS, and Illustrator.
Their son had autism. Mom didn't speak English well. COVID-19 put school online: One family's fight for special ed services
Nationally, Hispanic students are consistently the most underrepresented group in terms of accessing private placement. In 2019, the Teacher Project surveyed all 50 states for data on students placed at private special education schools at the public’s expense. Of the 15 states where demographic data was available, Hispanic students were significantly underrepresented in 13 of them. I co-reported this story with a Teacher Project colleague and worked with her on data collection and analysis.
NYC 2021 Ranked Choice Voting
In June 2021, the citizens of New York used rank-choice voting for the first time in the mayoral primaries. For this project, I used Python to scrape election results from the Board of Elections website and then created a D3 data animation to show how the process of ranked-choice voting played out in the Democratic primary election.
Where is it safe to open schools?
There is no more fraught question in education right now than the question of whether or not to open schools in person during the COVID-19 pandemic. This interactive graphic, created with Datawrapper, shows where in the U.S. it's considered likely safe to reopen schools.
Access to Arts Education in New Orleans
I used ggplot2 in R to create the graphics for this report on the state of arts education in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. I then styled the graphics in Adobe Illustrator.
Voices of New Orleans Youth: Visualizing Racial Disparities in Education
I used the R programming language to visualize data on racial disparities in New Orleans schools. My graphs were then published in a policy report by the the Education Research Alliance for New Orleans.
Brewery map of the USA (or: why beer fans from Vermont and Mississippi are happy)
The craft brew scene has exploded all across the U.S. in the past few years. But if you’re a true hophead, which state’s the place for you? Using data from the Census and the a federal trade bureau, I made an animation that shows which states have the highest concentration of breweries per 100,000 people.
Disciplining disabled students
Which states punish students with disabilities at the highest rates? I used Department of Education data and QGIS to map out the states with the highest percentage of disabled kids who were expelled or suspended over the 2014-15 school year.
Filters & Sorting
