BONUS – 2015 Westchester County Community Snapshot

2015 Community Snapshots

[UPDATE:  We’ve updated our 2015 Community Snapshots to include 2015 ELA/Math Proficiency Data.  Download the updated version for Westchester County here.]

Last week, we gave you the impression that we were wrapping up the 2015 Community Snapshot series, but I’m afraid you’re going to have to put up with us one more time as we release our truly final one for 2015:  Westchester County!

We’ve been hearing so much positive feedback from you and it truly is appreciated. However, we also heard that it would have been nice to include Westchester County averages in our infographics, as to provide communities a way to benchmark themselves against a standard baseline. Although we could have easily pointed individuals to our 2015 Data Bulletin, we also felt that engaging users in a game of hunt and peck as they tried to compare documents with completely different layouts was a waste of their time. We want to encourage, not discourage conversation! As a result, we whipped up the Westchester County snapshot not only to provide a basis for benchmarking, but also to show you that we welcome and encourage all feedback.

[If you’ve missed any of the other  snapshots, take a look at: Yonkers, New Rochelle, Mount Vernon, White Plains, Ossining, Port ChesterPeekskill. You can now also download the entire pack!]

Again, we encourage you to share the Community Snapshots with friends and coworkers who live in these communities. Becoming aware of the existing conditions is the first step in advocating for our county’s children!

2015 Westchester County Community Snapshot

Westchester County, with a population of almost a million people, does not have to deal with some of the small sample size and margin of error issues affecting some of our other community snapshots. Some highlights:

  • One third of Westchester County public school students receive free or reduced lunch.
  • Less than half of Westchester high school graduates (48%) are college ready.
  • A countywide school suspension rate was not available.  As a result, we decided to show the range of district school suspension rates across the county (NOTE: we excluded the Special School Act Districts from the range.)  There were a number of school districts that had 0% suspension rates in 2013, but there were school districts reporting suspension rates of higher than 10%.  Hendrick-Hudson School District recorded the highest rate at 22%, but further investigation showed that this may have been an outlier.  Hendrick-Hudson’s suspension rates in previous years were in the neighborhood of 3%.  The second highest district suspension rate was Yonkers at 17%.

Download the 2015 Westchester Community Snapshot and its accompanying data set. Enjoy!

You can still download the older version of the 2015 Westchester Community Snapshot and its accompanying data packet
Updated Westchester 2015 Community Snapshot