This handbook was developed for high school teachers looking for new sources of timely information and ways to make courses more engaging and relevant to students. The American Community Survey (ACS) provides a wide online array of social, economic, and demographic information about the nation, states, and local communities. These data can be…

Choropleth maps and scattergrams (scatter diagrams) provide a way for teachers to use available statistics from census tracts to map area differences among neighborhoods. This document describes and illustrates a method of constructing and comparing choropleth maps for selected Iowa communities. The use and construction of scatter diagrams as a…