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
and 
. You can also watch it on 
Face it, we do not rank the quality of education of an adult acquaintance by the prestige of their elementary, junior high or high school. You are marked by your alma mater or college, grad school or even post grad instituitons.
Who remembers their 6th grade school?….it is buried behind paparazzi stories of Lady Gaga, Elvis and the lyrics to the Macarena.
The newest trend in NYC due to Kindergarten Research, is trying to get into the best ELITE KINDERGARTENS. It can be more competitive and subject to wooing pressures as entering Harvard grad school.
Speak to a kid for 5 minutes and you will know his personality and a sense of his knowledge, curiosity and IQ. Our kids are growing up scared of all adult strangers and this is not conducive to curiosty, openess and overall intellectual development. Flash: Not every adult stranger is a perverted vicious homicidal murderer. In fact adults form our community that kids must learn to engage and interact with.
Unfortunately our kids are moles and seak the warmth of electronic gadgets and not simple conversation, community and engaging friendships.
I do believe that if i had access to a rank like this, I would be glad to see if my kid’s school was a nice place to study at, and if it wasn’t, I’d do my best to improve it.
Every parent wants his kids to get the best education they can have, there’s no way to contest this.
The idea is great and should be applied. Let’s make our education even better everyday. After all it’s the only way we can be sure that our children will have a sucessfull career.
Maybe the government should start ranking us as parents based on how well we monitor and enforce our children’s education. Parents who are doing a good job at this will know well in advance of published school rankings whether their child is receiving a good education from that school. The real questions should be not how are schools being ranked but how are we helping our children learn, how are we getting involved in our children’s schools, and what are we doing to ensure that the schools in our neighborhoods are good enough to educate our children.
Although I am not very familiar with the educational system in the US, this only deepens my perception that education, as the traditional US American ideology in general, is extremely competitive. It’s a good idea obviously to monitor the level of teaching etc. in schools, but publishing rankings seems harsh. This would probably only polarise the learning community so, that the best learners (who tend to come from well-off families where education is appreciated and encouraged) would transfer to better schools, leaving the poor and mediocre students at the other end of the scale.
Children and teenagers should be allowed to explore different opportunities in life and feed their curiosity while in school. Ranking schools emphasizes competition and successfulness, placing a lot of pressure on kids, who should be allowed to enjoy learning and being at school without extreme stress about being in the best school, having the most successful friends and so forth.
Instead of inducing competition between schools, could the educational community join their efforts and try to help the weaker links without alienating them publicly from the rest?
In the Australian experience, publishing rnakings is counter-productive. In some cases the lowest ranked schools have had half their kids leave.
If I put myself in the shoes of a mother, and my son is at the neighborhood school I would certainly like to know how that school stacks up compared to other schools. I believe in the best education possible for my son, and for this I wish for them to be in the best school possible. So, my reaction wouldn’t be to complain more to the school if it is ranked bellow other schools, but to try to help it by investing more to make it better.
But there may be other responses to this. Some parents might blame the school for being ranked bellow other schools and therefore complain and demand more technology or better teachers. But, in order to accomplish this, parents need to contribute to the school as well. So, in return of their complaints they will have to contribute (usually money) to make the school better.
So, in my opinion this may increase complaints, but it will definitely increase parents’ involvement in making the schools better for their children.
“Mangu-Ward hopes the data will result in a more engaged, knowledgeable parent/student body. ”
OK, I can support that. What other positives could this national database bring about?
Well, assuming that a more engaged parent body means more contact with school officials, this could result in increased efforts on behalf of parents to push states for more funding in their district, an all around benefit that could atleast provide for better teachers, or what have you.
Or not.
Considering the belt-tightening state governments are undergoing, the ability to direct cash to poorer/lower performing districts would probably be done at the expense of other, more well off parts.
Another positive would be the ability of parents to make more informed decisions about where their children attend school. This could again have unintended consequences, as many parents may leave the district for better performing schools, thus leaving poorer mediocre districts to rot. As they say though, knowledge is power.
Hmm… Kati from Finland has made me realize something here. We as Americans tend to look only at capitalist solutions to problems. Standardized testing is the equivalent of looking at a company’s bottom line. School choice is obviously capitalist. My school district has apparently started selling advertising space targeting parents. The problem with these approaches is that universal education, by its very nature is a socialist institution. Unfortunately, “socialism” might as well be banned by the FCC, the way people use it. However, a well educated populace is VITAL to a healthy democracy, so, despite it’s socialist nature, I would argue that public education is more important to democracy than is the free market.
If we can get over thinking of all things socialist as being of the devil, and embrace the socialist nature of public education, it might lead to improvements which are more harmonious with what our democracy needs from public education.