Examining Regional Science Attainment and School—Teacher Resources Using GIS

Using percentage of students at proficient and advanced levels for science on the Missouri Assessment Program in St. Louis area school districts, this study investigates the relationship of scientific attainment with school variables of enrollment, percentage of students receiving free/reduced lunch, instructional expenditures per student, teacher/pupil ratio, and teacher variables of percentage with master's degrees, salary, and years of experience. At the district level, the results suggest a significantly large negative correlation between science performance and percentage of students receiving free/ reduced lunch and moderate positive correlations for science attainment with instructional expenditures per student, teacher salary, education, and experience. Geographic information system (GIS) is used to produce spatial and geographic representations of relationships between school, teacher, and science attainment variables. This geospatial representation gives a unique perspective on how educational data are distributed across the region and shows district variation in student science attainment in relationship to where school and teacher resources are located.