EDU101ContextualFactorsAnalysis

Before you start your student teaching experience, you will research the school and community in which you have been placed. Getting a feel for the community in which your students live and learning about the population of your school will only help you have a context for who your students are. This research report is called "Contextual Factors Analysis."

Let's do a little analysis of some of the contextual factors of Mount Blue Middle School compared to the school in which you attended 8th grade (where possible).

Open this[| link to a Google Spreadsheet] and be ready to participate in the activity and the discussion.

You will get the data you need for the class spreadsheet from the [|National Center for Education Statistics](NCES).

Vocabulary you will encounter:

__**NCES Urban-Centric Locale Codes:**__
 * **City, Large:** Territory inside an urbanized area and inside a principal city with population of 250,000 or more. City, Midsize: Territory inside an urbanized area and inside a principal city with population less than 250,000 and greater than or equal to 100,000.
 * **City, Small:** Territory inside an urbanized area and inside a principal city with population less than 100,000. Suburb, Large: Territory outside a principal city and inside an urbanized area with population of 250,000 or more.
 * **Suburb, Midsize:** Territory outside a principal city and inside an urbanized area with population less than 250,000 and greater than or equal to 100,000. Suburb, Small: Territory outside a principal city and inside an urbanized area with population less than 100,000.
 * **Town, Fringe:** Territory inside an urban cluster that is less than or equal to 10 miles from an urbanized area.
 * **Town, Distant:** Territory inside an urban cluster that is more than 10 miles and less than or equal to 35 miles from an urbanized area.
 * **Town, Remote:** Territory inside an urban cluster that is more than 35 miles from an urbanized area.
 * **Rural, Fringe:** Census-defined rural territory that is less than or equal to 5 miles from an urbanized area, as well as rural territory that is less than or equal to 2.5 miles from an urban cluster.
 * **Rural, Distant:** Census-defined rural territory that is more than 5 miles but less than or equal to 25 miles from an urbanized area, as well as rural territory that is more than 2.5 miles but less than or equal to 10 miles froman urban cluster.
 * **Rural, Remote:** Census-defined rural territory that is more than 25 miles from an urbanized area and is also more than 10 miles from an urban cluster.


 * //Thank you to Johanna Prince for some of the ideas and the introduction to the NCES resource used in this activity.//**

Dr. Theresa's notes to herself

Use this Google survey document (just delete last semester's data) https://docs.google.com/a/maine.edu/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Av-2z09C23fqdHJ1cDdhNlhsYTVPYm5iNUJITkQyTWc#gid=0

http://nces.ed.gov/globallocator


 * create a Google Spreadsheet and everyone puts in their data
 * OR make a chart that they fill out with Mt. Blue Middle School info in it and they find their school with 7th and 8th grade and fill in their school's info?; then do a lineup by one of the numbers, do a split, and create partners with fairly diverse info and they compare their schools to each other and to Mt. Blue Middle School
 * look at district info (link on top of school page) and especially expenditure per student (click on "all details" on the district page)
 * which terms need explaining?