“I want to be in a good school district,” is a common phrase touted by most homebuyers. And who can blame them? Everyone wants their child to have a great education. And even for those who don’t have kids or choose to pay for private or parochial educations, good public school districts generally make for stronger, safer communities, raise the property values and make resale easier.
With 50 million children going to public school (pre-K through 12th grade) this fall, ranking the 13,500 public schools in the United States is no easy task as there are objective and subjective factors that need to be considered.
There are several publications which rank or measure schools against key factors including U.S. News and World Report, Niche Rankings, and Global Report Card.
U.S. News & World Report teams with RTI International, a global nonprofit social science research firm. RTI implements the U.S. News comprehensive rankings methodology, which is based on these key principles: that a great high school must serve all of its students well, not just those who are college bound, and that it must be able to produce measurable academic outcomes to show it is successfully educating its student body across a range of performance indicators.
• Step 1: The first step determines whether each school's students were performing better than statistically expected for students in their state. They look at reading and math results for all students on each state's high school proficiency tests. They then factor in the percentages of economically disadvantaged students – who tend to score lower – enrolled at the schools to identify schools performing much better than statistical expectations.
• Step 2: For schools passing this first step, the second step assesses whether their disadvantaged students – black, Hispanic and low-income – were outperforming other disadvantaged students in the state.
• Step 3: Schools that made it through the first two steps become eligible to be judged nationally on the final step – college-readiness performance – using Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate test data as the benchmarks for success, depending on which program was largest at the school.
The Niche Rankings measure different categories of the educational experience with the highest weight given to academic achievement. They rely heavily on student and parent surveys. A high ranking in Overall Experience generally indicates that:
•Students are very happy with their experience in all aspects including academics, teachers, health, safety, resources, facilities, extra-curricular activities, sports, and fitness.
• District schools are exceptional academic institutions in terms of teachers, students, resources for learning, and student outcomes.
• District schools are made up of a diverse population and fosters an accepting, positive school culture.
• Students are actively involved in a variety of extracurricular activities and sports the district offers.
The Global Report Card (GRC) score indicates the level of math or reading achievement by the average student in a public school district compared to student achievement in a set of 25 developed countries. The score represents the percentage of students in the international group who would have a lower level of achievement.
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