User:Willowhist/Evaluate an Article

Which article are you evaluating?
Education segregation in Indiana

Why you have chosen this article to evaluate?
I chose this article because we have been looking at it throughout the semester and commenting on how it desperately needs improvement. The subject matter is also relevant to our final project work for the class.

Evaluate the article
(Compose a detailed evaluation of the article here, considering each of the key aspects listed above. Consider the guiding questions, and check out the examples of what a useful Wikipedia article evaluation looks like.)

Lead Section:

The lead section starts with a good, concise explanation of the article's purpose (Indiana's schools are highly segregated). The lead does not include information that does not appear elsewhere in the article, however it is very brief and does not give an overview of the topics covered in the rest of the article.

Content:

Although the content addresses a gap in Wikipedia knowledge, it has many gaps within the article's content. Primarily, the article's History section is muddled in its discussion of mid-20th century school segregation policies in the state (only focusing on Gary, IN), and the history section abruptly ends with the topic of busing in the 1980s.

The school demographics section could probably be expanded or absorbed into the demographics of Indiana section above it. I would be interested to also see the "Studies" section expanded to include some of the findings/outcomes of the studies listed.

Tone and Balance:

The article maintains a neutral tone throughout. There is not an overt bias.

Sources and References:

The sources are largely current, but they could probably be more thorough. There is also a resource from USA Today that does not necessarily fit with Wikipedia's type of approved sources.

Organization and writing quality:

The article contains a few grammatical errors that could have easily been fixed with a cursory read through of the article before publishing. In terms of organization, I think that separating "Demographics" and "School Demographics" is unnecessary. They could be one section that is more focused on schools specifically and less on Indiana as a whole. Other than this, the article is fairly easy to read and well-written.

Images and Media:

There are no images and media for this article.

Talk Page Discussion:

The Talk page is inactive for this article. It has been rated as a start-class page and is of low-importance.

Overal Impressions:

The article could definitely use improvement and expansion. Presently, the article's strength is that it underlines the fact that Indiana's schools are some of the most segregated in the nation, even in the present-day. The drawback is that the article does not include a thorough history of segregation policy in Indiana and its content does not fully extend to the present-day. There is mention of school vouchers, but it is not explicitly stated how this is relevant to school segregation in the present-day.