Model Project Example

Where are your teachers from?

In this model we will look at the gravity of Fife High School to teachers.

This model will be made using a 2 question survey asking for department (if I wish to break it down further) and high school. This could be broken down much further into demographics.

Prediction:

I predict that 25% of Fife staff is from Fife. Another 60% are from neighboring counties. I know that a lot are from FHS or local schools, enough that I added specific schools to the form. If more than 15% are from out of state I would be very surprised

I believe that I am right because I know where most of the staff attended high school. I just have not done the math.

Findings:

As I saw results add to my form, I was reminded of staff members that I don't see as much (out of building) or categories that I left off (nursing, CTE, Counselors, etc). I was just thinking of the teachers that I see! My plan was to include pins for each department in a map. I added my form results into a sheet, which then added to the Google MyMap which then made departments correspond with the colors on the pins. The google form did need to be reformatted. Initially it read Fife as in the UK! and White River as in South Eastern Africa! This was because I did not use the specific locations. Because of this I had to go into the google sheet and add more specific information, such as city or state in parenthesis.

Fife had 8 teachers (I know of 3 more!). Puyallup/Stadium/Auburn/Thomas Jefferson high schools all had 2 (and I can think of at least one more in each case). These are all neighboring districts, which follows my hypothesis of local districts having the strongest gravity.

This is incomplete data. I know I'm missing about 10 teachers!

The FHS Staff is international! If we look at the maps in an world scale we see that all respondents were from American High Schools, except one Spanish high school graduate (click on the pin in the MyMap to see who)

If we increase the scale to a national level, we see that the majority of FHS teachers come from the western US

Finally, if we increase the scale to a county level we see that the majority of FHS teachers went to FHS (18.7%), or within the neighboring counties. A circle with a 25 mile radius would include 53.3% of the FHS staff. A total of 68.9% come from King, Pierce or Thurston Counties.

Outside Research:

It was difficult to find percentages of teachers that attended the school in which they teach, in order to compare rates in neighboring districts, or even in any case. Instead, I was able to find data on teachers living in districts (which correlates imperfectly) or better paying districts (which talks of incentives of location). Neither incorporate the familiarity that a home district provides, nor do they include the appeal of not working in your home district

Conclusions:

FHS Teachers come from the local area (68.9%), or are drawn here by family connections. I know that the teachers that have come from out of state (NV, NM, IL) mostly have family connections to the area. I was slightly off on the percentage of FHS alumni that have come back. I predicted 25% and found 18.7%. The vast majority of the staff comes from 3 counties (which fits my prediction), and almost all (97.7%) come from US high schools. I predicted that 60% would be from the local area, but not from Fife. This number was 50.2%.

While my numbers weren't totally accurate, I was close enough to feel good about my predictions while enjoying finding out the true numbers (at least by my survey results). This was interesting information to find out!

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