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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]So if a school was 25% very high achieving vs a school that was 90% passing, the 90% school would be rated higher?[/quote]

It depends on how many of the first school's students in the not "very high achieving" group passed the SOLs.  But, if you mean one school had 25% who passed the SOLs and the rest didn't vs. a school where 90% passed, then yes, the second school would be rated higher.

If you want to see the breakdowns by group or subject matter, you have to click DIRECTLY on the numeric rating circle on the Great Schools website.  (The colored circle with the 1-10 rating).  That will give you the option to see the ranking for each subgroup compared to the state average.  So, if the economically disadvantaged kids are doing really poorly (2 out of 10), but the "not economically disadvant." kids are doing really well (8 out of 10), you know that the school as a whole might be rated in the middle (like a 6 out of 10 --- depending on how much of the student population is econ. disadv. vs. not econ. disadv.).

You see the effect of each group's size in schools like Herndon, South Lakes, Hayfield, and Wakefield (which all have high performing groups and lower performing groups --- making their cumulative ranking somewhere in the middle -- and thus they get the label of being a "bad" school compared to the schools which have little or no economic diversity like Langley and McLean and Oakton and Yorktown.

The non-econ. disadvantaged kids at the first set of schools are often doing as well as the kids at the second set of schools.... but the cumultive rating/ranking of the first set of schools is lower b/c they have a mixed population.

Check out Twain's subgroup ratings.... White and Asian kids are passing at a rate "9 out of 10" -- which is tops in comparison to the state average pass rate.... but there are other kids who aren't doing so well.

It's all about the housing in the area.  Lower-cost housing appeals to people with lower incomes (often b/c of lower education or lack of language skills)... which means the kids of those people have fewer advantages/enrichment and less access to academic help at home.  And they might have less stability in their living arrangements, food instability, less supervision, and less savory neighbors (i.e. criminal enterprises flourish where people see fewer legitimate opportunities for income).   I'm not saying this in direct reference to Twain  -- I'm just saying that any area with lower-cost housing (relative to the general area) is going to have kids who don't do as well as kids from families where the household income is $150K+.  The school rating is usually a reflection of the proportion of well-off kids vs. eonomically disadvantaged kids.

How does that affect you or your kids?  That's where the administration and community involvement come into play.  You have to decide whether it's worth the money to buy into an area where the classmates are all higher income or whether you are o.k. with classmates being mixed income.  Ultimately, when you buy (or rent), you are paying for your neighbors and your kids' classmates.  [/quote]

Thank you so much. I had no idea you could click on the number.

Just to clarify, if one school has more top students scoring higher but not as many total students passing, it would be rated lower than a school that has a 90% pass rate.

My kids are still in elementary school but DH and I discuss moving for better schools constantly. We probably talk about this at least once a week. I moved around a lot when I was a kid so I prefer to move sooner than later. DH always argues that our kids will do fine and the school pyramid we are in is fine. Our school pyramid just has a high percentage of Hispanics who are in ESL.[/quote]

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