The World Class Index tracks progress around aspirational goals and priority regional strategies. This World Class Index identifies approximately 30 key indicators to monitor, track progress, and assess on an ongoing basis. The data, collected every spring, allows our organization to explore what’s driving progress for our region and what’s holding us back. The spatial analysis project is a way for us to visualize the change in these indicators over time – to depict growth, decline, and change in the areas of education and talent development, business growth, and infrastructure.
Why a World Class Index?
Our ultimate aim with the index is to drive conversation among leaders about where we should focus limited resources to spur regional improvement.
Our datasets include both regularly-updated public datasets as well as a few reliable proprietary datasets. All raw data is organized into organized excel spreadsheets.
For population-based datasets including regional poverty rates and median household income, we rely the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Our business-related data such as growth of businesses and small business employment comes from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Quarterly Census of Employment & Wages, the U.S. Census Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics Quarterly Workforce Indicators, PricewaterhouseCooper’s MoneyTree Report, and the Association of University Technology Managers’ (AUTM) Statistics Analysis for Technology Transfer (STATT) database. For education and talent development data, we rely on our region’s State Departments of Education, Measure of America’s Opportunity Index, and the National Science Foundation’s Higher Education Research & Development Survey. Infrastructure data is mainly derived from the U.S. Census trade statistics and American Community Survey, Amtrak, and local departments of transportation.
We would like the maps and analysis to focus on the following three priorities:
We want to ensure that this project is a good fit for the 12 week timeline and so are flexible as to how many indicators are included in this analysis. What we are most interested in looking at:
The indicators below are examples of the total of approximately 30 indices for which we have collected data.
Every year in July, we host a World Class Summit to highlight the findings of the Index. Though the maps and reports will not be completed in time to serve as the focus of this year’s summit, we would use the findings for a mid-year update. If possible, we would like to have this spatial analysis serve as a template for future years. We would like to continue to update the maps using annual data collected for years to come.
The Summer 2020 session has finished. Sign up for notifications about future opportunities.
