Measuring and ranking "is our children learning?"
December 7, 2019 1:34 PM Subscribe
The website GreatSchools.org uses standardized testing scores to rate schools nationwide. The claim is that this data helps all parents, but principally those in poorer families. However, a recent report by Chalkbeat and Vox has shown that rather than ratings schools by how much they educate children, GreatSchools has been echoing the common assumption that the best schools are white/Asian and rich.
For those who are curious, Chalkbeat and Vox have a separate page about how they analyzed the information.
For those who are curious, Chalkbeat and Vox have a separate page about how they analyzed the information.
I've always had a hard time understanding what people mean when they talk about "good schools," except that maybe it's a socially acceptable way to be racist. My parents spent a lot of time worrying about me being in a bad school and that we had to move to a school district with good schools. But they could not tell you, for example, which school offered more AP classes (mine did), or compare the music programs (the other school was still developing theirs). They couldn't comment on the curriculum or the counseling or the extracurricular opportunities offered. All they had was a vague idea that because their Asian friends were all choosing to live in this other school district, it must be because the schools were better. From what I can tell, most people are the same way. Maybe you hear about test scores, but no one ever talks about what the tests are testing or how the schools influence test scores. Like if test scores are high because everyone pays for private tutors, that says nothing about the schools, only the tutors.
posted by chernoffhoeffding at 2:48 PM on December 7, 2019 [17 favorites]
posted by chernoffhoeffding at 2:48 PM on December 7, 2019 [17 favorites]
I'm a parent in the LA area, who lives in a "bad" neighborhood for schools, and yet was determined to send my (white) kid to public school, mostly for $ reasons. I worked the system as best I could, and now he's in 11th, at a school that is predominantly Latino, and poor (a Title 1 school). I love it, and I see that it gets a 9 from GreatSchools.
What I'm struck by, over and over again, is that parents opting for public school have no real good way of figuring out if a school is decent. Do you go by the state testing info? The GreatSchools website? Word of mouth in your neighborhood? We can say, over and over again, that testing isn't a good way to rate a school's effectiveness, but what *is* the effective way? I had the time and the willingness and the intellect to try to visit schools and ask around and comb around online and then combine everything i was learning and make a choice. I also had the ability to volunteer a lot at school, and be around enough that I was able to suss out my own info. But what about parents who don't have the time, or the language/internet skills, etc.?
You toss your kid into the system and you hope for the best, and yes, you do wonder is our children learning?
posted by BlahLaLa at 3:00 PM on December 7, 2019 [6 favorites]
What I'm struck by, over and over again, is that parents opting for public school have no real good way of figuring out if a school is decent. Do you go by the state testing info? The GreatSchools website? Word of mouth in your neighborhood? We can say, over and over again, that testing isn't a good way to rate a school's effectiveness, but what *is* the effective way? I had the time and the willingness and the intellect to try to visit schools and ask around and comb around online and then combine everything i was learning and make a choice. I also had the ability to volunteer a lot at school, and be around enough that I was able to suss out my own info. But what about parents who don't have the time, or the language/internet skills, etc.?
You toss your kid into the system and you hope for the best, and yes, you do wonder is our children learning?
posted by BlahLaLa at 3:00 PM on December 7, 2019 [6 favorites]
parents opting for public school have no real good way of figuring out if a school is decent
People, really, really hate this fact - and always respond with reasons why they and their kids are an exception to the rule - but: it doesn't matter.
Research has demonstrated time and time again that the biggest factor of educational success and attainment for kids is income level of the parents (there is also some research showing education level is a very large affect too, maternal more than paternal).
School doesn't come into it. The fact is, wealthy kids from wealthy backgrounds will do fine at any school you care to put them in, and poor kids from poor backgrounds will struggle even at fancy "Top performing" schools.
People don't like it because choosing school is on of the few things that parents feel they can control and influence, suggests paying a lot of money for schooling is often wasted, and it gives lie to popular myths about social mobility.
posted by smoke at 3:55 PM on December 7, 2019 [17 favorites]
People, really, really hate this fact - and always respond with reasons why they and their kids are an exception to the rule - but: it doesn't matter.
Research has demonstrated time and time again that the biggest factor of educational success and attainment for kids is income level of the parents (there is also some research showing education level is a very large affect too, maternal more than paternal).
School doesn't come into it. The fact is, wealthy kids from wealthy backgrounds will do fine at any school you care to put them in, and poor kids from poor backgrounds will struggle even at fancy "Top performing" schools.
People don't like it because choosing school is on of the few things that parents feel they can control and influence, suggests paying a lot of money for schooling is often wasted, and it gives lie to popular myths about social mobility.
posted by smoke at 3:55 PM on December 7, 2019 [17 favorites]
School may not matter, but I'd bet a lot of money that what town you are in and who lives there matters a whole lot.
posted by grumpybear69 at 4:05 PM on December 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by grumpybear69 at 4:05 PM on December 7, 2019 [1 favorite]
What I'm struck by, over and over again, is that parents opting for public school have no real good way of figuring out if a school is decent.
That is because "decent" is a loaded word, with a thousand different meanings for a thousand different people. Do you care about test scores? Great, then you can engage with test scores--they're easy to grok, and federally mandated, and quickly separate the wheat from the chaff, and are almost entirely the wrong metric to judge anything by. So that leaves... graduation rate? AP scores/courses offered? Sure, for high school--but high school is much too late. You're left with an amorphous sense of "goodness" that actually requires boots on the ground: do the teachers actively give a shit? Is the principle engaged and focused on professional development as much as on test scores? Does the school have a core set of values that actually drive day-to-day decisions by administration? Are the hallways safe? Are there art and gym classes that everyone takes?
It's impossible to represent an n-dimensional problem with a single score. And yet, that is exactly what NCLB did, so now we're stuck with it until such time as federal educational stops tying funding to standardized test performance.
I actually feel terrible saying this, because what it translates to is "you have to actually go spend time in the schools that are open to you, and pick the one that most emphasizes your values. Then you have to invest in your kid's classroom and school enrichment, and not trust that an improving One Score To Rule Them All actually implies anything about how your kid specifically is doing." These are behaviors that are overwhelmingly the province of middle-to-upper-class folk, which is code for "rich white people." That's who benefits from public schooling. I say this as the parent of one (and soon two) kids in the Boston Public School system, notoriously one of the most segregated and bimodal urban school populations in the country. We like our school. It's diverse, and well-rounded, and safe, and working for us. But that's not really the point--we're relatively affluent white folk; the answer would be the same for us anywhere. I honestly have no idea whether the parents of my daughter's first-grade classmates can say the same.
posted by Mayor West at 5:16 PM on December 7, 2019 [2 favorites]
That is because "decent" is a loaded word, with a thousand different meanings for a thousand different people. Do you care about test scores? Great, then you can engage with test scores--they're easy to grok, and federally mandated, and quickly separate the wheat from the chaff, and are almost entirely the wrong metric to judge anything by. So that leaves... graduation rate? AP scores/courses offered? Sure, for high school--but high school is much too late. You're left with an amorphous sense of "goodness" that actually requires boots on the ground: do the teachers actively give a shit? Is the principle engaged and focused on professional development as much as on test scores? Does the school have a core set of values that actually drive day-to-day decisions by administration? Are the hallways safe? Are there art and gym classes that everyone takes?
It's impossible to represent an n-dimensional problem with a single score. And yet, that is exactly what NCLB did, so now we're stuck with it until such time as federal educational stops tying funding to standardized test performance.
I actually feel terrible saying this, because what it translates to is "you have to actually go spend time in the schools that are open to you, and pick the one that most emphasizes your values. Then you have to invest in your kid's classroom and school enrichment, and not trust that an improving One Score To Rule Them All actually implies anything about how your kid specifically is doing." These are behaviors that are overwhelmingly the province of middle-to-upper-class folk, which is code for "rich white people." That's who benefits from public schooling. I say this as the parent of one (and soon two) kids in the Boston Public School system, notoriously one of the most segregated and bimodal urban school populations in the country. We like our school. It's diverse, and well-rounded, and safe, and working for us. But that's not really the point--we're relatively affluent white folk; the answer would be the same for us anywhere. I honestly have no idea whether the parents of my daughter's first-grade classmates can say the same.
posted by Mayor West at 5:16 PM on December 7, 2019 [2 favorites]
I worked at gs from 2004-2007 on the team converting the site from Perl to Java/Hibernate. It was in its early days and doing what seemed like good work as a non-profit. Toward the end of the time I was there they'd begun affiliating with newspapers around the US. After that, I noticed that they had started providing school data to Redfin. Looking at the contents of their site now, they're probably making more profit than non-profit.
Our Christmas party one year was at the founder's home - a 3-story single-family home in an upper-middle-class white neighborhood in San Francisco. Even in 2005, it was probably worth $1M.
posted by bendy at 5:34 PM on December 7, 2019 [2 favorites]
Our Christmas party one year was at the founder's home - a 3-story single-family home in an upper-middle-class white neighborhood in San Francisco. Even in 2005, it was probably worth $1M.
posted by bendy at 5:34 PM on December 7, 2019 [2 favorites]
My kid's school has a 3 on Great Schools. It's fine? I don't super love it, but it's not harming my kid. He's safe, he's cared for, he's learning, he likes school. I used to work in educational research and pretty well internalized the "it doesn't matter" findings before I even got pregnant. This kid's family--both nuclear and extended--is just ridiculously overeducated. And white. My parents can just barely keep their mouths shut about our choice to send him to city schools (I went to private). People have said some wild shit to me over the years in an attempt to get me to basically tell them whether or not his school is too black or nah without actually using the word "black." (It is indeed 75% black children, most lower income. It is also a perfectly fine normal school.)
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:08 PM on December 7, 2019 [12 favorites]
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:08 PM on December 7, 2019 [12 favorites]
I attended quite a few different schools growing up. My definition of "good school" does not seem to be reflected here. Are kids taught kindness, or is bullying tolerated? Do kids feel safe and able to be themselves? Does everyone get adequate nutrition at lunch without any stigma? Are there opportunities for community engagement? Is seeking out new experiences valued? Do kids get to meet people from different walks of life than themselves? Do kids learn to interact with people who are not just exactly their own age? Academic and extracurricular opportunities are helpful too, but they seem to me, in my experience, to be easier to provide or to arise a little more naturally when these other foundations are in place.
posted by eviemath at 6:16 PM on December 7, 2019 [16 favorites]
posted by eviemath at 6:16 PM on December 7, 2019 [16 favorites]
Spending money to figure out how to rank schools while basically no money is available for running them seems like the kind of thing we'd do.
posted by bleep at 1:20 AM on December 8, 2019 [12 favorites]
posted by bleep at 1:20 AM on December 8, 2019 [12 favorites]
In a sense, GreatSchools penalizes Knapp for being segregated, even as GreatSchools ratings could make it more difficult for the school to attract a diverse student body.
posted by doctornemo at 10:58 AM on December 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by doctornemo at 10:58 AM on December 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
I try to reconcile the two apparently contradictory facts that (a) parental socioeconomic status is what really matters and (b) school integration was overall highly beneficial for the black kids who bussed to well-resourced "white schools" (even though the experience was often pretty awful for them in the short term).
Can this be explained by saying that choice of school does matter to poor black kids but doesn't matter to rich white kids? Is there a rigorous look at this somewhere?
posted by splitpeasoup at 11:51 AM on December 8, 2019
Can this be explained by saying that choice of school does matter to poor black kids but doesn't matter to rich white kids? Is there a rigorous look at this somewhere?
posted by splitpeasoup at 11:51 AM on December 8, 2019
Anecdata from a child of Chinese immigrants: a sufficiently privileged family will compensate for inadequate schooling by doing more education at home.
In my case, my parents were basically political refugees, without much money or English competency, but they were highly educated, mostly healthy, stably and legally employed, stably and legally married.
So they could do stuff like, teach me calculus at home, or borrow lots of English books for me from the library, or send me off to Borders for the day with a sandwich to work through all their test prep books for free.
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 7:46 PM on December 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
In my case, my parents were basically political refugees, without much money or English competency, but they were highly educated, mostly healthy, stably and legally employed, stably and legally married.
So they could do stuff like, teach me calculus at home, or borrow lots of English books for me from the library, or send me off to Borders for the day with a sandwich to work through all their test prep books for free.
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 7:46 PM on December 8, 2019 [1 favorite]
This sort of non-racial privilege is why I get pissed off when people write about education as if it were whites and Asians against blacks and Hispanics.
When people talk about Asians, they're probably imagining people like my parents: cherry-picked from the best and brightest of China, Korea, or Japan for their technical skills, could probably have come over on work visas if they'd started out in Europe.
There are a lot of Asians that are more like your traditional political refugees, and they get real short shrift because everyone's thinking about my parents. The Hmong, the Burmese, the Cambodians, they mostly do not come over with graduate degrees in STEM fields. A lot of them would be first generation college students. But to the authors of this article, they would be Asian.
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 7:58 PM on December 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
When people talk about Asians, they're probably imagining people like my parents: cherry-picked from the best and brightest of China, Korea, or Japan for their technical skills, could probably have come over on work visas if they'd started out in Europe.
There are a lot of Asians that are more like your traditional political refugees, and they get real short shrift because everyone's thinking about my parents. The Hmong, the Burmese, the Cambodians, they mostly do not come over with graduate degrees in STEM fields. A lot of them would be first generation college students. But to the authors of this article, they would be Asian.
posted by meaty shoe puppet at 7:58 PM on December 8, 2019 [2 favorites]
As a parent, if I have to choose between higher average test scores, or a school community that teaches action towards inclusion and justice and emotional courage... that's not a hard call for me. Who do I want my children to be?
I hear parents talk about, yes, we put our child into a highly segregated school and we feel bad about that, we take that on ourselves, for her benefit, because it's such a good school and it's so perfect for her. And I think and sometimes say, what is good? Perfect for her to do what? To learn that this is what is due to her, and this is the choice good people make? That's a lot of damage to do to your child.
posted by away for regrooving at 10:40 PM on December 8, 2019 [3 favorites]
I hear parents talk about, yes, we put our child into a highly segregated school and we feel bad about that, we take that on ourselves, for her benefit, because it's such a good school and it's so perfect for her. And I think and sometimes say, what is good? Perfect for her to do what? To learn that this is what is due to her, and this is the choice good people make? That's a lot of damage to do to your child.
posted by away for regrooving at 10:40 PM on December 8, 2019 [3 favorites]
Or I could have just quoted Robin DiAngelo,
The most profound message of racial segregation may be that the absence of people of color from our lives is no real loss. Not one person who loved me, guided me, or taught me ever conveyed that segregation deprived me of anything of value.posted by away for regrooving at 10:41 PM on December 8, 2019 [5 favorites]
...
Yet if my parents had thought it was valuable to have cross-racial relationships, they would have ensured that I had them, even if it took effort—the same effort so many white parents expend to send their children across town so they can attend a better (whiter) school.
I try to reconcile the two apparently contradictory facts that (a) parental socioeconomic status is what really matters and (b) school integration was overall highly beneficial for the black kids who bussed to well-resourced "white schools" (even though the experience was often pretty awful for them in the short term).
Can this be explained by saying that choice of school does matter to poor black kids but doesn't matter to rich white kids? Is there a rigorous look at this somewhere?
Yes, this has been extensively researched. Integration was (and I use the past tense purposefully here) beneficial to all kids. Test scores went up across the board. College attendance went up across the board. Drop-out rates went down across the board. And of course there are huge societal benefits to all kids and to society as a whole, from less fucking racism to higher property values and more stability even in the poorer neighborhoods.
I attended schools that were integrated through busing in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg system in the 1980s and 1990s. It was not awful. It was a huge success for ALL of us. The white supremacists obsessed with helping their own children by hurting others destroyed that.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:41 AM on December 9, 2019 [7 favorites]
Can this be explained by saying that choice of school does matter to poor black kids but doesn't matter to rich white kids? Is there a rigorous look at this somewhere?
Yes, this has been extensively researched. Integration was (and I use the past tense purposefully here) beneficial to all kids. Test scores went up across the board. College attendance went up across the board. Drop-out rates went down across the board. And of course there are huge societal benefits to all kids and to society as a whole, from less fucking racism to higher property values and more stability even in the poorer neighborhoods.
I attended schools that were integrated through busing in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg system in the 1980s and 1990s. It was not awful. It was a huge success for ALL of us. The white supremacists obsessed with helping their own children by hurting others destroyed that.
posted by hydropsyche at 4:41 AM on December 9, 2019 [7 favorites]
I try to reconcile the two apparently contradictory facts that (a) parental socioeconomic status is what really matters and (b) school integration was overall highly beneficial for the black kids who bussed to well-resourced "white schools" (even though the experience was often pretty awful for them in the short term).
If you read the 2nd article, the benefits to the upper income quartile in an integrated school are more abstract, less measurable, and (depending on your racism) possibly negative, and that is why people are perfectly happy to resegregate.
However, on point (A) - I personally find that 'parental socioeconomic status' is way overstated in terms of student achievement, as if it was that highly correlated, then we would see essentially castes develop overtime and that various economic quartiles would be more homogenous than they are. The reason I think it's overstated is that that income is generally the measuring factor for student achievement, and incomes are very tightly bounded (like the median income across the entire US is +/- like $5k from city to city and (no college degree) plumber vs teacher (college degree) salaries are essentially the same ) and therefore not neatly defined enough to really grade school quality.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:10 AM on December 9, 2019
If you read the 2nd article, the benefits to the upper income quartile in an integrated school are more abstract, less measurable, and (depending on your racism) possibly negative, and that is why people are perfectly happy to resegregate.
However, on point (A) - I personally find that 'parental socioeconomic status' is way overstated in terms of student achievement, as if it was that highly correlated, then we would see essentially castes develop overtime and that various economic quartiles would be more homogenous than they are. The reason I think it's overstated is that that income is generally the measuring factor for student achievement, and incomes are very tightly bounded (like the median income across the entire US is +/- like $5k from city to city and (no college degree) plumber vs teacher (college degree) salaries are essentially the same ) and therefore not neatly defined enough to really grade school quality.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:10 AM on December 9, 2019
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