Katherine Mangu-Ward at Reason writes that interested parties can now find out how their school stacks up against other schools using the Education Nation Scorecard. “In fact, most people think their neighborhood public school is pretty OK, or even good,” writes Mangu-Ward. “That’s because they don’t know better.” Mangu-Ward hopes the data will result in a more engaged, knowledgeable parent/student body. Readers, what do you think? Will more data give parents and students the ammunition to help improve schools – or just to complain more? (HT: Megan McArdle) [%comments]
How Does Your Kid's School Rank?
TAGS: data analysis, Education
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Whomever designed the info-graphics on that page need to to back to school themselves. It takes time to learn how to use it and they don’t do a good job of presenting the information in an easily understandable format.
I don’t know about other parents, but being a new(er) parent with a 1 year old and 2 1/2 year old, I really appreciate these types of resources as we try to plan where we want to move and where we want our kids to go to school.
Thanks for the heads up on this one.
Personally, if my kids school would give me a ranking of how they are compared to others schools, it wouldnt make me complain more. I mean, I havent been in that situation but I think that what I would reason is to try to make it a better place. Organize a comittee of parents, set out what the schools weaknesses are, and work on them. I think every parent, or most parents have their childrens best interest first. If this is the case, they would want them to have the best education they have. Schools giving out the rankings and the scoreboard of the school will make parents get mor einvolved, and it will help the school improve. Either that or students just move to a better school they are willing and able to pay for and attend.
Where are the scores for the private and CHARTER schools? Shouldn’t they be required to put their students through the same torture as the public school students, or are they actually teaching subject matter, like public schools did prior to No Child Left Behind.
Having a comparison of different schools will be able to have a positive effect on all schools. Though the competition will increase amongst the different schools, parents, teachers, and other administrators will be more willing to improve their education in order to be more widely recognized.
In order to increase the quantity demanded for certain schools (students applying), the institutions will raise their quantity supplied by providing higher quality teachers and educational instruments/tools.
This competition will offer the buyers (parents/guardians) with a greater variety of choices when selecting the school depending on the ranking.
This data shows which schools/school districts/states score well on specific tests, but does it necessarily follow that the best teachers are in those places? How much of the scores can fairly be attributed to the quality of the teachers?
If it works like it does here in Vancouver, where rankings like these have been publicized for several years, you’ll find that the ranking of the school is highly correlated with the income of the parents. (Although the people who do the rankings are careful not to point that out.)
I think I agree that the data presentation can use some work. I checked some schools in NJ that I know from other sources to be very good, and they didn’t ‘pop’ as superior schools. I think I want percent with better/worse rates (state wide or in ten mile radius) and perhaps some sort of combined score since maybe fourth grade math is bad but everything else is great.
Further I wonder if something is wrong with HS graduation rates, according to the site 96% of HS students in NJ graduate(?!?) I meant that would be great, but hardly seems possible