State_Education_Rankings <- read.delim("C:/Users/benmu/Downloads/State Education Rankings.csv", header=FALSE)

Intro

Everyone in the US knows we don’t have the best education as a whole country but I wanted to see how states measure up in a few categories related to education with this project. In 2018 New York spent the most per student on education out of any state in the country but how does that measure up to the quality of education that the students are getting? Based on the U.S. News rankings they are 19th in pre-k to 12 education while New Jersey tops the charts. So this got me thinking is there a relationship between Education spending per student, Income per capita, and the education rankings for Pre-K to 12th grade. (To see state rankings go to https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education)

            <script type='text/javascript'>                    var divElement = document.getElementById('viz1619667667482');                    var vizElement = divElement.getElementsByTagName('object')[0];                    vizElement.style.width='100%';vizElement.style.height=(divElement.offsetWidth*0.75)+'px';                    var scriptElement = document.createElement('script');                    scriptElement.src = 'https://public.tableau.com/javascripts/api/viz_v1.js';                    vizElement.parentNode.insertBefore(scriptElement, vizElement);

Understanding the Map

This map shows the Instruction Spending per student by varying from low(orange) to high (blue). When looking at this map it shows how the northeast invests the most money per student. New York leads the charge with a lofty 16 thousand a year per student almost quadrupling the lowest state which is Arizona at 4.4 thousand per student.

To understand the relationship between education ranking/quality and education spending per student I matched up the top ten in both categories and found the difference between the amount a state spends and the quality of education given. An example of this is New York as they spend the most per student on education but based on the ranking they are at 19th meaning they are given a +18 to its score. Another example is New Jersey as they are ranked number one in education quality and number 4 in spending so its difference came out to be -3. So after adding up all the totals of the top ten states in spending the score came out to be 59.

Income per Capita Vs Education Rankings

Just like the system above I want to compare education rankings to Income per Capita.

Just using the same system used above compared to the same national US News rankings compare to Income per capita the total score comes out to be 19. This means when looking at the top ten states in both categories that Income per Capita is a better way to determine the education quality of a state in comparison to Education spending per Student.

Final Visualizaton

This final visualization compares income per capita and Education spending on one map to see where the two overlap or dont. As you can see on this map New York is high in both categories while many states in the midwest and south dont come out very highly on either metric. To conclude when looking at the two metrics of education spending per student vs Income per capita the latter is a better metric to show education quality based on the top ten states in both categories.