"Failure Factories" and data visualization

The Tampa Bay Times wrote a series called "Failure Factories: How Pinellas County is failing its black students." In addition to being an important and compelling read about our schools that includes a lot of data, they have provided a prologue that tells the basic story via data visualization. You simply must check this out:

Link to prologue: http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2015/investigations/pinellas-failure-factories/chart-failing-black-students


Link to whole series: http://www.tampabay.com/projects/2015/investigations/pinellas-failure-factories/

What do you think? Does the visualization enhance the powerful nature of the story? Why or why not?