Much of the news that circulates regarding the state of education is not positive, but one trend that remains underreported is the significant rise in public high school graduation rates during the past decade. By the end of this month, around 85,000 high school seniors are expected to have graduated from Virginia’s public schools.That is nearly 8,000 more than would have been expected to graduate just a few years ago.
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Tag Archives: map
Home Construction: Running to Stand Still
New home construction rose over 23 percent in Virginia between 2012 and 2013, according to building permit data collected by the Census Bureau and the Weldon Cooper Center. In suburban counties, the number of new homes built during the past year increased much more than in urban localities, but construction levels still remain a fraction of those seen during the early 2000s housing boom.
Homes Built Annually in the Mid Atlantic
Click on arrows at bottom of slideshow to scroll through years
Ancestry: Who do you think you are?
Largest Ancestry: 2000
This is one of my favorite demographic maps. It was produced by the Census Bureau to show the most commonly reported ancestry for each county in the United States in 2000. Even though the data is over 13 years old, the map remains very popular.
Since a follow-up map for 2010 has not been produced yet, I thought it would be more than worthwhile to create this map using Census American Community Survey data.
Largest Ancestry: 2010
The methodologies used in making the 2000 and 2010 ancestry maps are similar, but there is one important alteration in the 2010 map. Ancestries that can be logically grouped together were combined so they might be better represented on the map. For example, Scandinavian ancestries: Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Finnish, are very common in the Upper Midwest. Individually, they are the most popular ancestries in only a few counties, but when grouped together, Scandinavian is the most common ancestry in over 70 Upper Midwest counties.
Stat Chat 