LINK TO MAP: www.google.com/maps/d/u/0/edit?mid=1DUp7gtlpKcEqfIxlGJRu4UsrbI-3vhs&usp=sharing

1. What I notice

I colored the map by percentage of white students and the first thing that stood out to me was how far apart the two exam schools were from everyone else, with Bronx Science at 20 percent and Stuyvesant at 16 percent sitting way ahead while the other three were all stuck down between 1 and 8 percent. What made it interesting was looking at the rest of the table and realizing those same two whitest schools were also the highest performers and the ones spending the least per pupil, around 21,000 dollars each, while Flushing International and HART are almost entirely students of color, spend more, and score way lower. So I set out to map demographics and ended up staring at something about selectivity and money and outcomes all at the same time. The map shows me the concentration is real but it can't really tell me why, since that percentage at an exam school is really just the result of an admissions test and who gets prepped to pass it, so I'm looking at the end of a sorting process and not the process itself. The 20 percent only looks high because the district around it is mostly students of color, so the colors could fool somebody who doesn't know that baseline. The demographic data itself was clean and there for all five schools, but the achievement columns are where I got tripped up, like Bronx Science showing 0 percent in Living Environment but 100 percent in Biology, which isn't a real swing, just different cohorts taking different versions of the Regents. That plus matching up school names across reports is where my false starts came from. Five schools is a small sample too, but seeing it on a map is what made those exam schools jump out at me in a way the spreadsheet never did.

2. Challenges and tinkering

Honestly most of the work happened before the map even existed, just pulling clean data from sources that don't agree on school names or keep anything in one place. Once I was in the tool I messed around with ranges versus categories and how many color buckets to use, which gets awkward when you only have five points to split. I tried coloring by a few different columns to see what each one would show me, and percentage of white students ended up telling the sharpest story.

3. What I wonder

I keep thinking the demographic split at the exam schools is really about the admissions test and who has access to test prep more than the schools themselves. I'd love to see what this map looks like with fifty schools on it instead of five. And I have a feeling the higher spending at the lower scoring schools is about need and not waste, since schools serving newcomers get funded to do more.

4. What I'd change

More schools first of all. Then I'd want context layers like percentage of English language learners and economically disadvantaged students so nobody reads the colors without the baseline. I'd pull a few years to show growth instead of just one snapshot, maybe shade by district instead of dropping individual pins, and next time finish the whole data table before importing so I'm not patching gaps one at a time.

1. I haven't been to too many parks besides Morningside Park, Bryant Park, and Central Park, so it was interesting to see the stark differences in height, vibe, busyness, and overall feel of Morningside Park. I wondered why someone would leave the war on drugs poster behind, since it seemed like a great poster to hang up somewhere. I also wondered how long it took for this park to form from a geologic standpoint, since it had some real elevation to it, with multiple staircases that let me explore pretty extensively in the time we were given. And I noticed how many different species of animals were living in the park, which made me wonder how that would compare to other parks in the city.

2. I think taking students on this forest walk could tie into a lot of topics. The hydrangeas I saw near where we met up could feed into the idea of how traits and colors get passed down from one generation to the next in that family of hydrangeas, and reinforce Punnett squares and how traits shift based on allele frequencies. Another lesson I thought could be really strong is the importance of the layers of the ecosystem in this park, which connects to the concept of mutualism and how everything works together to live in balance.

3. I built my photomap around the one thing that defines Morningside Park, which is the drop. The park sits on a cliff, so the west side is way up high, and the land falls off to the low east side near Harlem. Instead of dumping my photos in the order I took them or lining them up in a grid, I arranged them by elevation. The Cathedral and the cliff-top stuff go at the top, the staircases sit in the middle as the way down, and the pond, lawns, and animals land at the bottom. Where a photo sits on the page tells you where it actually sits in the park, and reading it top to bottom is basically my walk downhill. I laid the photos out like loose, tilted prints instead of a clean grid on purpose. Morningside is wild and overgrown and a little messy, with a fancy Cathedral up top and a spray can next to a squirrel at the bottom, so I wanted the arrangement to feel scattered and human the same way the park does.

1. How easy is it for youth to travel to other neighborhoods, and how is the transit?

Getting out of this neighborhood is easy, and you can tell that before you even swipe in. The station on the walk has a whole mosaic built right into the wall, this big crowd and a film camera under a Liberty marquee, so the transit here isn't just functional, it's decorated like it actually matters to the people who use it. That stuck with me. A kid from this block can be downtown in twenty minutes for the price of one swipe, and honestly, that's the thing that makes the rest of the city reachable for a family that isn't driving everywhere. The catch is the one you'd expect. The train is close and runs often, but those fares add up fast for a whole household, and a station that doubles as an art gallery is still stairs, heat, and a packed platform at rush hour. For most of these students, the subway is basically the bridge to the rest of New York, and the fact that it sits right here probably matters more to their day-to-day than almost anything else on the street.

2. How navigable, safe, and usable is the infrastructure?

The bones of the street are solid, and the details are where it got interesting for me. The sidewalks are wide and continuous and easy to walk, which on a block this dense, is nothing, and the crosswalks and signals all do their job. What kept catching my eye was everything packed into the ground and the storefronts. There are water and gas caps set into one square of pavement, which is basically the buried city showing itself right under your feet. There are rows of trash and recycling bins chained together under the new containerization rules, quietly changing how the whole curb looks. And there are cameras on half the doorways, plus trespass and no-loitering signs bolted to the fences. So the infrastructure is navigable and basically safe, but it's also heavily watched and heavily managed at the same time. The street works the way it's supposed to, and the whole time it's also telling you exactly where you are and aren't welcome to stop, which was interesting to sit with.

3. What kinds of businesses are present, and is the neighborhood changing?

The businesses are where you really feel the neighborhood getting pulled in two directions at once. One stretch is a Mexican corridor that announces itself with papel picado strung clear across the street over a taqueria called Los 3 Charros, all flags and festival paper and food, an immigrant anchor that has clearly been here a while and isn't going anywhere. Then a few blocks over, you've got Aperi Bar, this polished hotel-style entrance wrapped in fake bougainvillea and Pride ribbons, a completely different economy that's designed and branded for somebody with money to spend. And in between are the institutions still holding their ground, like the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in a converted brownstone and the corner stores sitting behind their gates. So no, this isn't a settled neighborhood. It's changing fast and unevenly, and you can read the whole thing just by walking one block and paying attention to who each storefront is actually talking to.