Exploring Society By The Numbers

Education and Children in the United States

Kathy Rowell, Sinclair Community College

Summary

Students will look at correlation and causation by exploring the relationship between high school dropout rates and violent crime, poverty, teenage pregnancy rates, and teenage death rates.

Learning Goals

Skill
After the completion of this module, the learner should be able to:
  • State a hypothesis
  • Explore and Examine the relationships between various indicators in KIDS COUNT data
  • Use KIDS COUNT data to make a scatterplot and rank data.
  • Interpret data presented in both table and graphic form.
  • Define the various indicators(variables) used in the module
Substance
  • Discuss the relationship between the dropout and other indicators in the United States and Ohio.
  • Discuss the relationship between education and other social problems in the United States.
  • Demonstrate critical thinking skills and use of the sociological imagination.

Context for Use

This exercise was designed for a sociology course. In this, the student explores high-school drop out rates and compares the data between national rates and those in Ohio.

Description and Teaching Materials

Exercises: PDF (Acrobat (PDF) 102kB Mar25 09)
Exercises: DOC (Microsoft Word 53kB Mar25 09)
Grading Rubric: PDF (Acrobat (PDF) 43kB Mar25 09)
Grading Rubric: DOC (Microsoft Word 24kB Mar25 09)

Teaching Notes and Tips

This activity uses the charts, rankings and maps on KidsCount. KidsCount is an easy-to-use tool to investigate U.S. trends using census data.

Assessment

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References and Resources

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