Household Languages in Red Hawk Country
Cassady Shoaff
Introduction
Essex County, New Jersey is the home of Montclair State University and currently over 800,000 people from a wide variety of diverse backgrounds. This project takes a look at languages spoken at home in Essex County households, using data from the 2015 American Community survey.
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## x dplyr::lag() masks stats::lag()## Getting data from the 2011-2015 5-year ACS## Downloading feature geometry from the Census website. To cache shapefiles for use in future sessions, set `options(tigris_use_cache = TRUE)`.##
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Languages Spoken at Home
Identifying ESL Need
Certain municipalities may benefit from increased availability of English as a Second language educational resources and at local schools and libraries. To identify which areas may be in need, we will look for places where the language spoken at home is not English and the residents were rated Speak English less than “very well” on the American Community Survey. By investigating the primary language spoken at home, we can better provide ESL materials in the native languages of the learners, improving accessibility.
## Getting data from the 2011-2015 5-year ACS## Downloading feature geometry from the Census website. To cache shapefiles for use in future sessions, set `options(tigris_use_cache = TRUE)`.
There may be an area in need between Livingston and South Orange. (However, this may be due to the location of the South Mountain Reservation park skewing population data. Information about how this tract/PUMA was determined could not be found.)
## Getting data from the 2011-2015 5-year ACS## Downloading feature geometry from the Census website. To cache shapefiles for use in future sessions, set `options(tigris_use_cache = TRUE)`.
## Getting data from the 2011-2015 5-year ACS
## Downloading feature geometry from the Census website. To cache shapefiles for use in future sessions, set `options(tigris_use_cache = TRUE)`.
## Getting data from the 2011-2015 5-year ACS
## Downloading feature geometry from the Census website. To cache shapefiles for use in future sessions, set `options(tigris_use_cache = TRUE)`.
## Getting data from the 2011-2015 5-year ACS
## Downloading feature geometry from the Census website. To cache shapefiles for use in future sessions, set `options(tigris_use_cache = TRUE)`.
## Getting data from the 2011-2015 5-year ACS
## Downloading feature geometry from the Census website. To cache shapefiles for use in future sessions, set `options(tigris_use_cache = TRUE)`.
## Getting data from the 2011-2015 5-year ACS
## Downloading feature geometry from the Census website. To cache shapefiles for use in future sessions, set `options(tigris_use_cache = TRUE)`.
## Getting data from the 2011-2015 5-year ACS
## Downloading feature geometry from the Census website. To cache shapefiles for use in future sessions, set `options(tigris_use_cache = TRUE)`.
Referring to Google Maps for approximate municipality names
The following areas could benefit from increased ESL resources for…
- Italian speakers in the Caldwells
- Spanish speakers in East Orange / Newark Highest Need
- French speakers near Vauxhall
- Portuguese speakers in Newark
- Chinese speakers in Short Hills
- Vietnamese speakers in South Orange and Bloomfield
- Arabic speakers in Little Falls / Cedar Grove
Further Questions and Concerns
How can we be sure these populations actually “speak English less than very well”? The criteria was arbitrarily assigned by the census taker, so it may be subject to bias. For example, were the speakers rated poorly just for having a non-standard accent, even if they could be easily understood? We should cross-reference this ACS data with another source.
Conclusion
Survey data can be used to effectively ascertain locales in need of English as a Second Language educational resources.
