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What is the Great Schools Ranking of Your Local PS Elementary School?


What is the Great School Rank?  

1 member has voted

  1. 1. What is the Great School Rank?

    • 10
      63
    • 9
      79
    • 8
      75
    • 7
      59
    • 6
      72
    • 5
      54
    • 4
      59
    • 3
      38
    • 1-2
      37
    • N/A
      17


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Ours is listed as n/a. I think it's probably too new still. The one ds went to before they built the new one is ranked as an 8, and the other schools in our area run in the 7's and 8's, and I would guess 'ours' is in the same ballpark.

 

ETA: Maybe I'm just tired (it has been a long day) I'm not seeing a place where they list the criteria ranking...?

Edited by MamaSheep
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The neighborhood school gets an 8. I checked out the district that runs DD's enrichment program, and the program was listed. It gets a 7. The school a friend sends her son to in the same district only gets a 4...they've expressed dissatisfaction with that school. Gee, I wonder why. The high school my stepson goes to (and DH graduated from) rates a 6.

 

The charter I might consider sending DD to in 6th grade (a 6th-12th grade classical charter school) rates a 10.

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Elementary ranked 4. The 5th/6th middle school ranked an 8, 7th/8th middle school ranked a 7 and the high school ranked a 5. I am not fond of the elementary school and refuse to send any of my children back there. Not real fond of the middle schools either but both get decent scores on this site and have decent test scores. The high school I am not familiar with but I've heard varying reports.

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They are evidently based on the results of State test scores, for what that is worth.

 

Bill

 

Ahhh, this makes sense. Our schools teach to the test above anything else. In fact, I tutored an 7th grade girl who was so stressed about testing that her family hired me. She didn't need to be tutored but it helped relieve some anxiety. Easiest job I've ever had!

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All of our schools rated a 10. It is intereting that besides some hsers, we also have A LOT of parents who pay $$ to send dc out to private schools. I need to go over the criteria because math and reading instruction are two key areas I think are atrocious in our district.
Same here. Every school is a 10, yet we looked at more than a dozen private schools before deciding to homeschool. Why are private schools flourishing in our "10" district? And why did we drive past seven for profit tutoring facilities (Sylvan, Kumon, etc.) on our five minute drive to supper last night? It certainly doesn't match up to our schools deserving their "10" rating.
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The school my boys would attend is rated a six and it is the best in the city. The closest other elementary school is a two. I didn't check to see what the others are in the city. The middle school is ranked a 4. It also is considered the best in the city. AND our school are considered good compared to surrounding counties. People bring their kids in and pay tuition to have them attend in the city.

 

Our two high schools are both threes, and both are touted as the best schools in a 50 mile radius. People pull their kids out of the private schools in order to send them there. MANY homeschoolers put their kids in because one of them has such a good reputation.

Edited by Old Dominion Heather
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Elementary range from 1-6 -- high schools from 2-6.

 

OK, so we live in the inner city, with a lot of new immigrants who can't speak English yet (making it a bit hard to do well on a standardized test). Other than that, though, I find it hard to fathom an entire school that scores a 1. (But it does explain to me why the school we left was so sorry to see us go -- not that they took any responsibility for it. They just blamed us for being stupid.)

 

But even the AP classes at the best high school near us (which one would assume only have the upper scorers in the class) are really a joke. The kids either have to study on their own or just fail the AP test. And most of the brightest kids just skip AP and go directly to college classes in their last 2 years of high school. As far as I can tell, the teachers around here -- even the ones who get the plum of teaching the "best" kids in the AP classes -- just do NOT care. Or perhaps they're incompetent and don't understand what a challenging high school class is meant to be.

 

I have a very low opinion of teachers, but it may just be our neighborhood. I mean, seriously, I can do a better job half-asleep with my eyes closed never having taken any college classes in the field.

 

We do have some great colleges and universities right in our district, though. It's a really odd neighborhood.

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These scores don't mean anything to me. They're comparing them to the other schools in the same state. So if your state is 2nd to last on the list of the US, it could still receive a high rating, just because it's not as lousy as the rest of the state.

 

We already now that US is NOT tops on the list. So they can "10" these schools all they want, but it means nothing. Your "2" score could be a better school than one of ours that's a "10". Dumb.

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I'm skeptical of these ratings based on the three elementary schools dd went to here and on how they are now. Two of them are an 8 and one is a 4. However, the one that is a 4 is a better school in many ways than one of the ones that got an 8 (her first school) and is one of the schools preferred by parents.

 

These ratings for my stater come from state standardized tests (they even mention that that's where the ratings come from in their information,) which mean that they show in part each school is teaching to the test. This means that none of the parochial schools in our school district have a number rating. Another other factor is that not every state gives the same standardized tests, so how well does that compare?

 

Our state is rated number 2 in the nation for schools, so what does that mean in all of this?

Edited by Karin
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My area schools rank "8" but I cannot see how. I work with these kids in scouts, some of the other workers in scouts are teachers, and everything I see and hear would suggest that a "4" would be more appropriate.

 

These kids are graduating without knowing how to construct a proper sentence much less a proper paragraph. If this is indicative of an "8" I would hate to see anything lower!

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Actually, I think this has the most recent results (September 10, 2010) http://www.alec.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Report_Card_on_American_Education

 

Confirmation for me that HS'ing is the right thing for DS. Our state ranks 34th, so even with an elementary school ranked a 9 on the great-schools site, in context, that's a 9 in a state in the bottom third nationally. No thanks.

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These scores don't mean anything to me. They're comparing them to the other schools in the same state. So if your state is 2nd to last on the list of the US, it could still receive a high rating, just because it's not as lousy as the rest of the state.

 

We already now that US is NOT tops on the list. So they can "10" these schools all they want, but it means nothing. Your "2" score could be a better school than one of ours that's a "10". Dumb.

 

Is there some relative ranking of States?

 

Bill

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Oh oops. lol I just saw that.

 

Okay - the elementary school is ranked 5 out of 10, and the middle school is 6 out of 10. I think that's interesting because supposedly the elementary school got an award last year for being one of the top WA schools...what a joke. And the middle school fell below state testing scores, so they had to send out a letter to all parents offering sources for free tutoring.

 

Personally, I'd give the elementary school a 2 though. uggh (personal issues there, sorry lol)

Edited by snipsnsnailsx5
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Ouch! :(

 

How can they be so low?

 

Since it's ranked by state, based on performance on standardized tests, I'm guessing other districts must test better. I'm wondering if maybe our schools don't teach to the test as much????? No clue.

 

All I know is that it's ammo for the rare times our family tells us we need to put the kids in school.:D:D:D

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4's for both the elementary school and the middle school.

 

However on the Great Schools website, the rating scale only goes up to 5?

 

Does yours go up to 10?

 

There is a ranking by "stars" that goes up to 5. These are "parent rankings", but these aren't the "number ranking" by test scores we have been talking about here. Some schools don't get a "number" rank (no private schools, to my knowledge) and that has caused some confusion.

 

Bill

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Hey Bill,

 

I'm snickering here because my bil was bragging this summer about how the high school in his daughters' school district was the top rated high school in South Carolina.

 

I'm snickering because the guy is seriously convinced our kids will be dumb from homeschooling and his kids will be geniuses because they go to this school. Well, I was looking at some state rankings and one of them, which seemed to be fairly highly reputed so I wish I had saved the link, put Michigan at 49th and South Carolina at 50th.

 

So, his #10 school is a number ten in a state at the bottom!

 

Of course, my head is still reeling because our local schools are a #4 and that's in the state that was nearly the bottom. If there is anything at all to the rankings, these schools are in the bottom half of the bottom.

 

This might also explain why it is that when his daughters speak to my dd homeschool graduate on scientific and literary matters, they appear to be incredibly low functioning for their ages despite having taken "honors" classes. I'd be a little frightened to consider what "honors" means in their high school. Or maybe it's because when they didn't know who Socrates or Plato was and wanted to know if "Pascal" was pop singer, my brain kind of starting popping circuits and coming up with error messages, "Can not compute, Can not Compute!"

 

The oldest just received a full tuition scholarship to a private university. Good for her, but I shudder to think about the dashed hopes of her literature, history, and science profs when they try to strike up a conversation with her. The younger daughter is even worse and yet is a 4.0 student. However, she's the most amazing boy crazy flirt - very pretty - and they are sending her to a private uni with lots of rich boys. I'm figuring they are counting on her to marry well because as her mother says, "She's just smart enough to make her looks sell."

 

What's that phrase, oh yes, "I'm standing here beside myself!" (Short Circuit, 1980's movie.)

 

Faith

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