S/O of Great Schools Rankings.... If your school has a low ranking

[elise1mds]

It's a sad situation--schools that are designated as "failing" get worse partly BECAUSE they were designated as failing.

 

Yeah, that's very true. Nobody wants to send their kid to a "bad" school. Our district bills itself as the "district of choice" meaning that you can request a transfer from any school TO any school. (There are some schools that use a lottery system and are highly sought after, such as the schools that use language immersion, but only a few.) However, this means kids who have to ride the bus actually don't have a choice. So the bad schools continue to stay bad/get worse.

 

The district is looking at helping out its current budget difficulties by consolidating the district and closing some schools, but some of the poorer districts are in a huge uproar about it (even the NAACP is getting involved), saying that their schools will be closed based on test scores and not based on what the kids need. Honestly, though, I think it would be a great idea to close some of these schools because there are others that are in better shape where classrooms aren't even being used! However, since I don't send my kids there, I keep my mouth shut. I don't envy the administration the job they're facing.

[justamouse]

Many of the schools in my area are rated 10. The population they serve is affluent, usually college educated, and almost all white. Are these schools really more "effective" or do they just process the kids of rich, white, smart people?

 

A school in a district 3 over from mine has the lowest ranking in our county; it's ranked at 7. When I clicked over to the test breakdown section it clearly shows that the white kids in this school do as well as the white kids in the neighboring district ranked at 10. They had equivalent test scores. But, because there is a black population with lower overall scores, the school ranked at 7 has a lower over all average. Unfortunately, socio-economics and race are huge predictors of outcome.

 

When comparing schools it's really important to compare by demographics. When a school does a superior job compared to others with a similar populations, then you have a Great School. Otherwise, it's mostly BS.

 

 

Yup.