<p>If you were to start your own HS ranking system what would you pay attention to? </p>
<p>You can state specifics or talk philosophically. </p>
<p>For example: I would rank a school where a very large majority is very high achieving, and where a smaller, but still significant, percentage does not do very well, significantly ahead of a school where everyone does ok and very few students are high achieving. </p>
<p>My reasoning would be that in the first example the children could do well if they wanted, but choose not to. In the second school something inherent in the structure must be holding them back from getting high achievers.</p>
<p>Ha, I was thinking about this last night while attending an impressive high school jazz band concert.
So, percentage of students participating in the arts.</p>
<p>I think basics like graduation rates, % of kids going on to 4 year colleges, average scores on ACT/SAT are all great benchmarks but add in the overall satisfaction with the school by both parents and students, I agree that participation in the arts is a great indicator of motivated students but also participation rates in everything, sports, clubs, etc. Then how well is the teaching staff supported by the administration and how well does the the teaching staff support the administration. That good working relationship is essential.</p>
<p>Ranking for what purpose? For determining where I’d want my kid to go? For determining where I’d donate my money? For helping Adcoms decipher applications?</p>
<p>I’d like to see the percentage of kids who graduated from the school and who are still enrolled in college following freshman or sophomore year. I’d also like to see regular public schools (all comers) broken out from magnet or specialty academics within the public sector.</p>
<p>You’re basically just going to rate public schools by their demographics / wealth. Your well-to-do suburbs will come in first, then your more middle-class ones, then your poorer ones. What’s the point?</p>
<p>How do you figure? Do have any proof that it would work out that way? I totally disagree that your scenario is what would happen.</p>
<p>Edit- In fact, I would think a method that discounted a group that did poorly would favor poorer schools by no longer counting that subset, and just using their higher achievers for the ranking.</p>
<p>I’ll answer as if I’m choosing for my own particular child:</p>
<p>I want to see the array of extracurricular programming – are there strong performing arts, community service, and sports programs? Do large numbers of kids participate in them, or are they limited to a handful of students. </p>
<p>I want to see scores broken down enough that I can compare subgroups that include my child in various ways to similar subgroups at other schools e.g. as a parent of an African American child, it’s important to know if a school with higher test scores is doing better because they have a narrower achievement gap, or if they have higher test scores because they have fewer children of color. If there are specialized programs, whether they’re test in magnets or special education programs, I want to know how kids do inside or outside of those programs.</p>
<p>I want to see some kind of “value added” measure. Keeping kids performing at a higher level is less impressive than taking kids up a level or multiple levels.</p>
<p>I want to see surveys for parent satisfaction, student satisfaction, etc . . . </p>
<p>I want to see how well they serve the children most at risk. What’s the drop out rate? The failure rate? How are the kids with the most significant special needs served? Do they stay in the community or get shipped off elsewhere? What are suspensions, expulsions, and retentions like? Although hopefully none of these things apply to my child, in my experience when schools let kids fall apart it effects the fabric of the whole community, and when schools problem solve well for the most vulnerable it benefits everyone.</p>
<p>I want to see an array of academics, without tracking. Kids should be encouraged to move up, take risks, etc . . . I’d rather see high numbers of kids attempting some APs with a somewhat lower pass rates, than schools gatekeeping. At the same time, I think that schools should set limits on kids taking crazy schedules and encourage kids to find balance.</p>
<p>I agree with PizzaGirl completely on this one (cue: sound of PG fading dead away). To compare, for example, Neequa Valley or Naperville North or Hinsdale Central or New Trier or Stevenson (some of the top high schools in the Chicago metro area - did I mention they’re all in uber-wealthy suburbs - all with several thousand students) with the school in my home town (a lower-middle class rural community, and a school with about 120 students) would be simply ludicrous - much less a school in the inner city. Look at the preparation of the incoming freshmen, the education level of the parents, the economic situation of the family, the opportunities available that depend on nothing more than size - they simply cannot be put on the same plane.</p>
<p>What you could do, were the data easily available, is administer the PLAN to all incoming freshmen (many schools do this already, but few report the results publicly) and compare that to ACT/SAT scores taken senior year. You’d have to control for a bunch of factors - academic program selected, move-ins and move-outs etc. - but it would have some validity for assessing what effect a school has on its students. And I think you would still need to compare schools with like populations with similar schools.</p>
<p>In general if you are looking for high scores and high graduation rates you’re going to be looking at the wealthy district.</p>
<p>And I do think those numbers are important. I wanted a diverse school where there was at least some diversity in the AP and honors courses and lots of diversity in the art and music programs. I wanted a school where top kids regularly got into top schools. I wanted a a school where kids did well on AP tests. I wanted a school that offered band(s), orchestra(s), AP Art, a literary magazine, a newspaper, the usual sports teams, Science Olympiad, a science research program, and teachers who at Meet the Teacher night made me wish I were in their classes. I wanted teachers that could write, and would teach my kids to write well. </p>
<p>My kids schools have always had all of those things.</p>
<p>if I could go back and do it all again, though, I would homeschool. My youngest lost her natural love of learning in school and so much of her creativity was shunted to the side because she is a superstar athlete. I regret allowing that to happen, personally, though we have always lived in highly ranked school districts.</p>
<p>mathmom, I like your list of school requirements, but it has me thinking. Most people in this country do not get a choice of schools. I did have the luxury of choosing our latest school district, but couldn’t afford the best because I couldn’t afford the housing. Most of us sen our kids to local schools, and even choose jobs that are close to friends, family, etc.</p>
<p>I actually like annasdad idea, but I don’t trust our politicians or school administrators to deal with making improvements in the lower tiers because those improvements aren’t often found within the classroom walls.</p>
<p>In spite of all the negative press NCLB has received - some of it deserved, it was not a well-thought-out piece of legislation - in the dozen or so school districts I have reported on over the last decade it has made a difference, and on balance a positive one. It has required teachers and administrators to pay attention to the lower-end kids, which wasn’t happening before. As one school superintendent who I came to respect immensely said about the district where her own kids went to school, “They can’t just shove the strugglers under the rug any more.” Another administrator, while complaining (justifiably) about some of the onerous red tape, said on balance he thought it was a positive, because “it’s forced us to concentrate on meeting objective standards.” You can have endless debates about whether its standards are the right ones or not, but the situation before NCLB was that there was no counter to the educator’s mantra, “We’re all doing a great job, our school is above average, trust us.”</p>
<p>So MizzBee, your skepticism is warranted. Whatever replaces NCLB, it needs to keep the heat and the focus on the local districts.</p>
<p>Couldn’t agree with you more, annasdad. My biggest issue with NCLB is the teaching to the test. I can’t explain why our hs went from failing to being listed as a school of distinction. I haven’t seen the real changes in culture that would be necessary. At the same time, I have seen real improvements in the schools in Gary nearby, but the state is only too happy to take them over and replace them with a company that has poor results in their high school track record. Until we can stop teaching to the test we will continue to struggle. Just as we are discussing failing students in Florida, we havent been able to address the need for better preschool in poor neighborhoods.</p>
<p>MizzBee, we couldn’t afford “the best” either. It certainly doesn’t have the top scores, but the top kids in our school do just as well as the kids in schools that most people consider better. But my kids have been exposed to a lot more real life for better or worse than those in neighboring towns. Sometimes I felt guilty that my kids didn’t get the personal attention of a smaller wealthier school, but my youngest, in particular, has gone out of his way to thank us for sending him to the school we did. He feels he is much less naive than many of his college classmates.</p>
<p>In my rankings the AP pass rate would be significant. Our local HS encourages (in some cases pushes) every student to “try” an AP class. The result is that there are some AP classes (typically english/history and gov) which have to teach down for many of these students Thus the classes aren’t really meaningful and the pass rates are awful. No one benefits.</p>
<p>TVCaster, are you a parent or a student? Because I find it hard to believe that a parent with real-life experience wouldn’t get that from a public school standpoint, the “goodness” of a public school is generally very broadly correlated with the socioeconomic status of the neighborhood that it’s in. Wealthier areas generally have better schools, due to how schools are funded in this country. This isn’t rocket science.</p>
<p>CuriousJane–do you really think that the color of your skin makes a difference in education? Yes, there are achievement gaps but largely due to economic status, not the color of your skin. It is just that a large portion of the poor in the US happen to be people of color–for many reasons. The people of color in our high school, in a solid middle to upper middle class, do just as well as their white counterparts. </p>
<p>As for your comment on tracking, the biggest reason why schools are not performing like they used to is because they have gone away from tracking. I don’t think kids should be locked into tracks however, offering classes at various levels and speeds benefits every student. If schools went back to tracking, they would see a lot more success and the strongest kids would get pushed, those that need more time would have it and do better, those at the very bottom would have more assistance to get to grade level, etc.</p>
<p>I think funding is an incomplete answer, Pizzagirl. The best predictor of student success is parental education level. While education and income are highly correlated, they aren’t the same measure. But no question it is better to be in a wealthier school system.</p>