This is what makes it so difficult to buy real estate. When we were looking, how does one actually compare quality of schools without personally knowing people with kids at those schools (and even then, it's anecdotal). I know I had a hard time.

I don't think it's ironic. I think it's sad.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But doesn't this still mean that schools with no diversity are getting a total pass? E.g., a very wealthy district that is mostly white, and even the small number of minorities are also high-income and high-performing get a great score. The schools with much greater SES diversity that are dealing with tons of ESOL kids, etc. get dinged - not necessarily because the quality of the school is worse, but because the challenges they are dealing with are greater.

It's not a perfect system, but what the new metric does is allows schools that are actually doing a good job with high needs populations to raise their scores a bit by showing that even kids coming into the system with multiple marginalizations perform better than the state average.

What about schools like Stonegate Elementary or Woodlin Elementary? For both schools, kids in all demographics (race and SES) outperform their counterparts across the state, yet both schools dropped 3 points in their GS rating.

Maybe what we need to learn is that GS doesn't actually tell you how good a school is? It's pretty ironic, though, that Black and Latinx activists have been telling us that for years but it has only become a "problem" when majority white schools are impacted.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But doesn't this still mean that schools with no diversity are getting a total pass? E.g., a very wealthy district that is mostly white, and even the small number of minorities are also high-income and high-performing get a great score. The schools with much greater SES diversity that are dealing with tons of ESOL kids, etc. get dinged - not necessarily because the quality of the school is worse, but because the challenges they are dealing with are greater.

It's not a perfect system, but what the new metric does is allows schools that are actually doing a good job with high needs populations to raise their scores a bit by showing that even kids coming into the system with multiple marginalizations perform better than the state average.

What about schools like Stonegate Elementary or Woodlin Elementary? For both schools, kids in all demographics (race and SES) outperform their counterparts across the state, yet both schools dropped 3 points in their GS rating.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But doesn't this still mean that schools with no diversity are getting a total pass? E.g., a very wealthy district that is mostly white, and even the small number of minorities are also high-income and high-performing get a great score. The schools with much greater SES diversity that are dealing with tons of ESOL kids, etc. get dinged - not necessarily because the quality of the school is worse, but because the challenges they are dealing with are greater.

It's not a perfect system, but what the new metric does is allows schools that are actually doing a good job with high needs populations to raise their scores a bit by showing that even kids coming into the system with multiple marginalizations perform better than the state average.

But that wasn't the point of PPs post: the issue (correctly raised, I think): is that GS conflates having majority wealthy and/or white students with quality of education offered. The highest ranked schools don't even have "high needs" populations, or at least, very few of them.

I think the point is that GS has ALWAYS had this issue. Since the moment it was invented and pushed onto every real estate website in the country, it has contributed to maintaining and deepening segregation. Racial and economic justice advocates have been yelling about this for YEARS. See here: https://www.npr.org/sections/ed/2016/10/10/495944682/race-school-ratings-and-real-estate-a-legal-gray-area

So, this has always been an issue. Now Great Schools has responded to public pressure and tweaked the algorithm a little so that schools with some diversity will be dinged if they aren't moving those kids along as well. However, you are right that it doesn't touch the issue of all-white, all-rich schools. Unfortunately, that's the problem GS has had since the go. So the newest iteration is slightly better than the original GS algorithm but racism and classism are still baked into the crust. Still, incremental change is still change.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But doesn't this still mean that schools with no diversity are getting a total pass? E.g., a very wealthy district that is mostly white, and even the small number of minorities are also high-income and high-performing get a great score. The schools with much greater SES diversity that are dealing with tons of ESOL kids, etc. get dinged - not necessarily because the quality of the school is worse, but because the challenges they are dealing with are greater.

It's not a perfect system, but what the new metric does is allows schools that are actually doing a good job with high needs populations to raise their scores a bit by showing that even kids coming into the system with multiple marginalizations perform better than the state average.

But that wasn't the point of PPs post: the issue (correctly raised, I think): is that GS conflates having majority wealthy and/or white students with quality of education offered. The highest ranked schools don't even have "high needs" populations, or at least, very few of them.

Anonymous wrote:But doesn't this still mean that schools with no diversity are getting a total pass? E.g., a very wealthy district that is mostly white, and even the small number of minorities are also high-income and high-performing get a great score. The schools with much greater SES diversity that are dealing with tons of ESOL kids, etc. get dinged - not necessarily because the quality of the school is worse, but because the challenges they are dealing with are greater.

It's not a perfect system, but what the new metric does is allows schools that are actually doing a good job with high needs populations to raise their scores a bit by showing that even kids coming into the system with multiple marginalizations perform better than the state average.

But doesn't this still mean that schools with no diversity are getting a total pass? E.g., a very wealthy district that is mostly white, and even the small number of minorities are also high-income and high-performing get a great score. The schools with much greater SES diversity that are dealing with tons of ESOL kids, etc. get dinged - not necessarily because the quality of the school is worse, but because the challenges they are dealing with are greater.

Greenwood ES got dropped from a 9 to a 7. Because the 12% of minority students apparently way under-performed on standardized testing. Seems kind of harsh to drop a school 2 points for 12% of the students.

Anonymous wrote:So a GS rating is determined by the not only low performing students, but the low performing ESOL, Latino and Black students. If this is not racist, please tell me what is?

No, GS has ALWAYS been determined by percentage of low-performing students, which for complicated historical and systemic reasons does mean that scores are lower for schools with large numbers of low income families or kids of color.

The NEW system is meant to ameliorate that inherent bias a bit by looking at how a school does with low income kids and kids of color compared to state averages. So, my child is at a Focus School where about half the kids get free and reduced meals, and that is majority Black. Our GS score actually went up under the new system because Black kids and low-income kids at our school tend to do better than the state average, which suggests the school is doing a good job with a high needs school community. This gives me faith that middle class kids will ALSO be well-served, since a rising tide is lifting all boats.

Anonymous wrote:So a GS rating is determined by the not only low performing students, but the low performing ESOL, Latino and Black students. If this is not racist, please tell me what is?

What, specifically, do you think is racist about it? There are lots of possible reasons a person might think that GS scores are racist. Why do YOU think they're racist?

Anonymous wrote:So a GS rating is determined by the not only low performing students, but the low performing ESOL, Latino and Black students. If this is not racist, please tell me what is?

+1

So a GS rating is determined by the not only low performing students, but the low performing ESOL, Latino and Black students. If this is not racist, please tell me what is?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:GS has started giving more weight to equity. So, a school like Oakland Terrace where the white non FARMS kids do well, but Latino kids and kids receiving FARMS do only a little better than the state average is going to result in a ding to the score.

I truly do not understand why this is a metric that would take a score down.

It's like this: if the white kids in your school perform higher than most white kids in the state, and the Latino kids in your school perform lower than most Latino kids in the state (maybe because they are more likely to be recent immigrants) then you have a large performance gap and thus a poor equity score. The score would be much better if there were fewer Latinos, even if the white kids performed much worse than they do now. This is why the score system is screwed up. It punishes schools for the composition of their student body, in particular ESOL and immigrant students.

Not quite, your school will be dinged even if its Latino students perform better than Latino students state-wide. It's the fact that a gap between white and Latino students exists period at the school which causes the ding.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:GS has started giving more weight to equity. So, a school like Oakland Terrace where the white non FARMS kids do well, but Latino kids and kids receiving FARMS do only a little better than the state average is going to result in a ding to the score.

I truly do not understand why this is a metric that would take a score down.

It's like this: if the white kids in your school perform higher than most white kids in the state, and the Latino kids in your school perform lower than most Latino kids in the state (maybe because they are more likely to be recent immigrants) then you have a large performance gap and thus a poor equity score. The score would be much better if there were fewer Latinos, even if the white kids performed much worse than they do now. This is why the score system is screwed up. It punishes schools for the composition of their student body, in particular ESOL and immigrant students.