Anonymous wrote:What is the definition of a "good" school?
Here's mine:
1. good programs
2. good job educating low income children who usually score lower - this is also subjective.
If a school is mostly made up of wealthiesh families, of course the scores will be higher. It would not matter where the school is located.
That's why the GS rating makes sense to include the equity rating. It gives a much better picture of how "good" the school is. It's easy to have wealthier students score well; it's a lot harder to educate lower income students such that they score well .
Let's say you have two schools with similar demographics of low income students:
School A low income students score very well
School B low income students score poorly
Which is school is "better"? School A, because clearly, they are doing something right. Obviously, this is an oversimplification as there could be a myriad of factors, but as a parent coming from the outside, you can only know the stats, and not those other factors.
Having stated that, there's nothing wrong with Ashburton.
Except you'll rarely have a situation like School A, because it is very difficult to help low income students score well, let alone very well -- unless there are very few low income students in the school. It's not because they are low income, it's because such students often need a lot of other supports, and if you have lots of low income students in a school, school will often be about providing these supports, rather than teaching what students need to score well.
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