Why is this important?
More so than ever, a high quality education is the surest route to upward mobility in American Society.  The good jobs in our modern economy require high levels of education. For most children, public schools provide the underpinnings for workforce readiness and higher education.  To assess Long Island’s public schools, we have assembled a series of indicators and traced them for Nassau and Suffolk counties.  Taken together, these items provide an overview of the demographics and academic performance of Long Island’s schools and show that, on average, Long Island’s educational system fares quite well. On all indicators, Long Island outperforms the New York State averages.

How are we doing?
While Long Island at large has strong academic performance, we disaggregate these indicators by school-level poverty and discover that some children on Long Island are not sharing in the educational bounty.  As the data show, there continue to be substantial inequalities based on where a child goes to school, and these differences create an uneven starting line as some children must contend with less than ideal learning and social environments.  If our goal is to provide each child with a solid foundation for future success, then the inequalities that continue to exist across our schools and districts will have to be addressed.