The Dot Map of American Education

Educational Attainment in America is a dot map which visualizes the level of education achieved by the American population across the whole United States. Using the map you can zoom in on any town or city and see the local distribution of educational attainment.

The map shows five levels of educational attainment ranging from those who didn't finish high school to those with graduate degrees. As you can see in the screenshot above the map reveals the often quite stark differences in educational achievement which can exist in different neighborhoods, even in the same cities and towns. You can examine the distribution of any of the levels of educational attainment by selecting any combination of the five levels of achievement (click on the levels in the map legend to add or remove them from the map).

The map also includes an option to view a chart of the percentages who have achieved different levels of achievement in the current map view. This is very useful for comparing the different levels of achievement in different neighborhoods or cities. For example if you zoom-in on Manhattan you can see a very high percentage of the local population holds some kind of college degree. Conversely zoom-in on the Bronx and you find that the largest percentages of educational achievement are high school & less than high school and a far smaller percent of the population has achieved a degree level of education.