Title Determining The Most Suitable Elementary School For My God-Child

Author Janet Ochikubo American River College, Geography 26: Data Acquisition in GIS; Spring 2003 Contact Information (Address, phone, email: Optional)

Abstract A geographical information system was used in selecting the most qualified school for my God-Child. The system displayed the caliber of academics each school provided, the proximity of the schools to my God-Child's residence and the in class ratio of teacher to students for each school. In addition, it demonstrated that although Gates Elementary School was not the closest school, it did remain within the 10-mile buffer boundaries, had the highest quality of education and the best teacher to students ratio. Therefore,with the help of the geographical information system and some analysis, I was able to determine that Gates Elementary School was the most suitable school for my God-Child and that it may be possible to use a Geographical information system to solve almost any predicament.

Introduction Parents of all ethnicities and background one day prepare to face the problem of where to send their children to elementary school. Elementary school is the first step in preparing the child for a University education. Therefore, it is important that the most suitable school is chosen. However, with numerous schools to decide from, selecting a school can be quite difficult. I am in this particular situation. I do not have children of my own, however, I do have a God-Child preparing to enter elementary school. As a result, to ensure that my God-Child attends the most suitable Elementary School as possible, I will utilize a Geographic Information System to help relieve some of the difficulty in selecting a school. The following requirements, quality of education, proximity, and teacher to student ratio, make the school a potential for candidacy. Consequently,I will rank the schools according to standardized test scores and label the ranked scores on a map. Then I will add a buffer to the map so that only neighboring schools to my God-Child's residence will be considered. In addition, I will group the schools according to their teacher to student ratio and label them on the existing map. Finally, I will analyze the map to determine which of the schools are the most qualified. In the end, I hope that the Geographic Information System can be instumental in selecting a suitable elementary School for my God-Child.

Background The most important factor in determining which Elementary School my God-Child will attend is the caliber of education my he is receiving . Because I think it is most important for My God-Child to graduate from a University and usually if the children perform well on the California Standards Test, that indicates they are receiving a quality education and will eventually graduate from college. In addition,if my God-Child is surrounded by children who perform well in school and on the test, I believe he is more likely to duplicate this behavior. Therefore, I have collected the California Standards test scores of every Elementary School in the Roseville Unified School District from the website http://www.greatschools.net/modperl/ browse_district/506/ca and ranked the school according to their student's performance. I chose the Roseville Unified School District because that is the district he belongs to. Using a gps unit, I then created a point map of the schools and his residence and attached to the school points, a number, representing the level of the student's academic performance on the California Standards Test. This map shows the schools with the best academic performance. The second factor is the proximity of the elementary school to my God-Child's Roseville residence. His parents are full-time employees, therefore, the school must not be located more than 10miles from their 3316 Mammmoth Drive residence in Roseville. As a result, I will create a map using a 10-Mile buffer from the residence. My intention is to create a map that will clearly show the schools that come within a 10 mile radius of the house. The third factor in determining a suitable elementary school for my God-Child will be an assessment of the teacher to student ratio that I was able to aquire from http://www.greatschools.net/cgi-bin/ca/other/4141#teachers. The smaller the ratio the more attention I believe he will receive from the teacher and therefore the better the education he will receive. I will add to the existing map the ratio rankings. Hence, I will have produced a map that will clearly indicate the most suitable schools for my God-Child and all I will be left with to accomplish is to analyze the final map.

Waypoint#	School Name	English	Math	Test Rank	Ratio
1	Cresmont	57%	63%	3	1:20
2	Sargeant	59%	54%	5	1:19
3	Sierra Gardens	39%	33%	8	1:20
4	Cirby	34%	31%	11	1:18
5	Kaseberg	36%	32%	9	1:19
6	Woodbridge	31%	35%	10	1:18
7	Spanger	52%	43%	7	1:19
8	Diamond Creek	56%	53%	6	No Data
9	Brown	62%	63%	2	1:19
10	Gates	69%	76%	1	1:17
11	Stoneridge	50%	56%	4	No Data

This is a table showing the data which includes the California Standard Test Scores and Ratio.










In creating the map of each Elementary Schools academic performance. I first acquired the gps points of every school in the Roseville Unified School District and my God-Child's residence. I had to set my Garmin to NAD 83 with a UTM projection. Then I took waypoints with the Garmin by pushing down the mark button and pressing enter. I then used waypoints plus to create a comma delimited file. To do this , I hooked up the Garmin to the computer then downloaded the gps points on to Waypoints Plus. I then plotted the waypoints by selecting Plot Waypoints and saved the waypoints as a comma delimited text file. My next step was ranking the schools according to their students academic performance from one to ten. I gave the schools with the highest percentage the lowest numbers then gave accordingly,the schools with the lowest percentage the highest numbers. I added an academic performance field and a schools name field to the comma delimited text file and populated the column with my rankings. Finally, I opened ArcMap and went to the tools menu and selected add x,y coordinates. I then went to the table of contents and highlightted the school theme, right-clicked, selected properties, selected the labels menu and selected expression. Inside the window I typed (School Name) & vbNewLine & (Academic Performance). All the windows were closed. Right clicking once again on the schools theme I selected label features from the context menu. Displayed on the screen were points representing schools, with their school name and academic performance score associated with it. Determining which schools were in the vicinity of my God-Child's residence was my next step. To accomplish this, I buffered a distance of 10 miles from the residence using the Buffer Wizard. The result was a 10-Mile buffer surrounding my God-Child's home. My third step was adding the ratio, teacher to students. I created five categories. The first was very good, the second was good, the third was average, the fourth was average and the fifth was No Data. If the data had a ratio of 1 to 17, I gave it a very good. If the data had a ratio of 1 to 18, I gave it a good. If the data had a ratio of 1 to 19, I gave it an average. If the data had a ratio of 1 to 20, I gave it a below average. And finally if the data was not available, I gave it a No Data. I then added a field called Ratio to the comma delimited text file and populated the column. I right clicked on my schoool theme, highlighted properties and selected the label menu. Again I clicked on expressions and added & vbNewLine & (Ratio). Closed all the windows and right clicked on schools then selected label features. Displayed on the screen was a map showing the levels of teacher to students ratio, a number for academic performance, school name, and a 10-mile buffer. I added the USGS topoquad tiffs as background to show the schools and residence relative to geographic features. My final product was a map that took into account the student's academic performance, location of school relative to my God-Child's home, and teacher to students ratio. This is a map showing my God-Child's residence, the locations of all the schools, their names, the ranked California Test Scores, the 10-Mile buffer, and the teacher to students ratio. In the end, ranking the schools based on thir academic performance resulted in Gates Elementary being the school with the highest quality of education,including a score of one, followed by Brown with two, Cresmont with three, Stoneridge with four, Sargeant with five, and Diamond Creek with six. I felt that if the ranked score was higher than six, I seriously wouldn't consider those schools. But I left the other schools in the map just to see how they would compare when the other factors were applied. Then when I used a 10-mile buffer to view all the schools that were in close proximity to my God-Child's reseidence, I found that , Diamond Creek, was the closest followwed by , Brown, Gates, Spanger, Woodbridge and Kaseberg. These schools were contained inside the buffer. Finally, I rated the schools according to the teacher to students ratio. The end result was that Diamond Creek and Stoneridge had no data. Therefore, I didn't consider these two schools at all. Sierra Gardens was below average so that was tossed out of the running. Crestmont, Sargeant, Spanger, Brown, and Kaseberg were average. Woodbridge and Cirby are good and only Gates was very good. Therefore, Gates had the best teacher to students ratio.

This is my final Map that represents Gates Elementary School as the star, indicating it is the most suitable Elementary School for my God-Child.

Although, I originally wanted academics to be the most important factor, my God-Childs parent's informed me that proximity must be the most important factor because there was no practical way that they could transport their child to a school that was more than 10 miles away. So, first I eliminated all the schools outside of the buffer. That left me with Diamond Creek, Brown, Gates, Spanger, Woodbridge, and Kaseberg. Then out of these six schools Gates and Brown were the two best schools respectively, according to academics and of these two schools Gates also had a better ratio 1 to 17 compared to Brown's 1 to 19. Brown is also closer. However, Gates had two factors that were better than Brown. In addition, Gates was inside the buffer boundary. As a result, Gates was determined to be the most suitable school for my God-Child. By resolving the predicament of which school my God-Child should attend, I've demonstrated that a Geographical Information System could be used in selecting a school for any child or loved one and that it could be used to resolve almost any situation. In addition, I believe that this Geographical Information System was instrumental in helping me determine the most suitable school for my God-Child.