We are looking to move soon and my husband is super set on a school with great ratings but I am super suspicious of this. Thoughts?
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The ratings used by real estate sites are pretty bad. If he wants to rate the quality of schools I recommend that he looks at the school level report card put out by the state
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I realized I didn't answer your question. The rating sites typically uses assessment data. That's fine if the states use good assessments and every student and grade was assessed, by they aren't. What you see is how students in 7 grades so in reading and math. You get some bare minimum data on school climate. All are highly correlated with poverty.
When looking at houses I went to the school's websites, checked out their curricula and if it was research based. I also looked at school climate data and if there is recess
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I wouldn't trust school ratings. One year, I knew for schools that were all Bs, all of which my friends and I worked out. Let me tell you, there was a vast difference between all of them.
Though it takes more work, I would definitely research their websites, to see their curriculum choices, their instructional minutes, their recess minutes, etc. You can also ask for tours.
What state are you in? Is open enrollment allowed?
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I do think high ratings basically mean lack of diversity ... there are so many good schools out there with middling ratings, because there are involved parents and teachers making them great despite challenges. Our elementary is rated a 5/10, and being semi urban we expected that, but so far it’s been great for my kid and while I don’t know everything that goes on at school obviously, I’m proud of how much parents volunteer to improve the school and even life outside of school supporting community needs.
If you can tour a school and talk to parents there that is great. The schools near us all have so-so ratings but you can see in the fierce loyalty parents and kids have to the schools that they’re doing something right.
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I was on Great Schools the other day looking at our local high school. This might be new because I haven't seen it before but it broke the test score results into results by demographic (race and income). I found this super enlightening and think it could be a great tool for seeing how a school is doing with diversity.
*Edit to add* I would interpret the below data in 1 of 2 ways based on my knowledge of the area.
1) The school is catering to its white/Asian students and underserving its Hispanic and minority students.
2) The school is underserving all students, but certain populations come from such high performing households that they can excel at the state standards without strong support from the high school.Would be interested to hear if anyone interprets the data differently.
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From what I see on my local FB mom group, it exacerbates segregation.
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I wouldn't totally discount ratings/rankings, but I absolutely think a school is so much more than that! It really depends on what you look for in a "good" school. Purely strong academics? Strong sports programs? Diverse?
Where I live it's very common/accepted knowledge which are the top school districts. They are pretty much in the most expensive towns with less diversity.
Personally, I grew up in an excellent school district, but there was a lot of pressure and back then definitely not diverse at all (I am a minority). At the same time, good funding + great resources allowed me to get all the help I needed as an ESL student in middle school where as I might not have gotten as much 1-1 help if I was in much lower rated school lacking the funding/resources.
We are not in a great district, but not THE top 3-5 in our area and I prefer that. I think those districts really do exacerbate segregation/racism/classism (sp?) from my own experiences. But obviously, I think as parents you want your kids to be in good school/districts that's within your means.
It's such a complicated thought process really...
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I agree with you. We just bought a house and moved to a "nicer" school district because my husband was adamant about it based on the ratings. Our initial district where my daughter went to school was a 4/10 Title I school with a ton of diversity. Our current is a 7/10 with a lot less diversity and much higher income brackets. Educationally they seem pretty on par so far, so we'll see what my daughter's experience ends up being like but from a policy/perception perspective I do think the ratings drive segregation and competition for "good schools" more than they actually reflect the quality of the schools, and it frustrates me.
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@Mrs. Carrot: I would love a follow up on your experiences at the two different schools.
I am deeply suspicious of ratings. My daughter goes to an inner city title I school with a 4/10 rating and we are very happy. Great principal, great teachers, involved parents. I think school ratings, if not done very carefully, are just another tool used to divide us further.
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The challenge is that the main underlying factor determining test scores is socioeconomic background, so if the ratings are based on test scores (especially if unadjusted for anything), they basically are just telling you socioeconomic background.
I think the best way to get a sense for things is to try to get information on the pedagogy used, parents perceptions of the school, etc.
Even on the ratings site, they may have other information, like student to teacher ratio, that could relate more closely to the type of education your child will get.
I think there can also be a real tradeoff, since schools are usually locally funded, and locally supported by parents. More affluent communities can provide more resources, and depending on what you are looking for and the specific needs of your child, the extra resources may be more or less valuable than the benefits of higher diversity...
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@Pollywog: agree get your info from their state report cards, if you have that avail. The online sites I think seem informative but I don't think they are all that accurate.
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Thanks for all the great responses! I ended up looking into the school and it seems really great in lots of other ways. It’s actually a fair amount more diverse than the population of the city and they have a lot of information on their site about being very welcoming to all walks of life. They also have a large percentage students with disabilities and have a good special education program. We are in California if that makes any difference to anyone.
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@JCCovi: I would say that's definitely concerning, but not the Black or Pacific Islander part as much because they only account for a small % of the population so a few students in that category could throw the scoring way off, if that makes sense.
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@DesertDreams88: I agree that’s a small sample. I was more concerned by the low income and Hispanic scores compared to the school as a whole.
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@JCCovi: In all fairness this could be a problem with the tests or other circumstances around poverty and not the school. I had a brief experience many years ago at a school with a large ESL population who'd just recently moved to the U.S. On top of the language barriers, many faced severe challenges at home that prevented regular attendance. The math portion of the state test consisted largely of word problems written in ways that were not easy for an ESL student to follow, so even those students who'd mastered math concepts struggled just on the basis of language skills. It was infuriating because they had worked so hard to master math concepts and doing poorly on the test for reasons related to language killed their confidence, which we know in and of itself further lowers performance. Undoubtedly underserving minority and low income populations is extremely widespread, but there's also only so much schools can do in the context of an obsession with standardized testing and circumstances of poverty that require a much broader social safety net to address...
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@JCCovi: I too love to dig into that data on GreatSchools. I'm not sure it's the school's fault or that they're underserving any population. This breakdown (2/10 for low income, 10/10 non-low income) seems to be what I see across the board, at nearly all the schools in our area and probably the country. It seems unfair to pin inequity that's been created by enormous systemic inequality for decades (centuries?) on schools when there are so many factors. It's a complicated situation with no easy solutions.
To the question at hand, I think ratings are not a good indicator of what actually makes a good school. They're so predictable - pretty much just reflecting the socioeconomic makeup. My kids' school is a 3/10 and we love it. I think they gain a lot from being in a diverse environment. I went to a school that was 9/10 which was great, but it was full of people just like me. I want my kids to have a broader perspective on the world.
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