Anonymous wrote:“The people screaming about Great Schools are the ones in schools in a larger population of low income kids. They don't like that their scores dropped.”

Wrong. Those in high FARMS schools may not like Great Schools but it was already well known that their score effectively was just an SES short hand as a proxy for how many poor kids are at the school since on average those kids tell worse than UC/MC kids.

The screaming in the last year or so has been from MC/UMC schools that have a non-negligible but still minority of FARMA kids and so overall tend to have good scores for most kids. But the new formula for GS basically penalized schools simply for having a mix of kids testing well and poorly in the same school by taking points off for any in-school testing differences rather than looking at how well a school educated demographics compared to the state average for that specific demographic. This made a lot of middle class schools scores tank.

nailed it!

Anonymous wrote:The people screaming about Great Schools are the ones in schools in a larger population of low income kids. They don't like that their scores dropped. The reality is that having lots of failing kids in a school does present challenges and problems. You have to decide for yourself whether you are comfortable with an environment like this or want something else.

The ones who embrace this nonsense live in largely segregated districts and mistakenly confuse an absence of poverty with achievement.

“The people screaming about Great Schools are the ones in schools in a larger population of low income kids. They don't like that their scores dropped.”

Wrong. Those in high FARMS schools may not like Great Schools but it was already well known that their score effectively was just an SES short hand as a proxy for how many poor kids are at the school since on average those kids tell worse than UC/MC kids.

The screaming in the last year or so has been from MC/UMC schools that have a non-negligible but still minority of FARMA kids and so overall tend to have good scores for most kids. But the new formula for GS basically penalized schools simply for having a mix of kids testing well and poorly in the same school by taking points off for any in-school testing differences rather than looking at how well a school educated demographics compared to the state average for that specific demographic. This made a lot of middle class schools scores tank.

Don't use Niche. Test scores are entirely self reported and not accurate. Go to your state's page for the test scores. Figure out your cut off for scores. Then you'll have to ask around on local parent sites for reviews on those schools. Tour a handful that you are interested in. Then, you take a leap of faith. I'm a teacher and I can tell you bluntly that ALL schools are dysfunctional in one or more major ways. They just are. At the same time, for most kids, many schools despite their faults are good enough. You do the best you can, support your children outside of the school day and enjoy your life.

The people screaming about Great Schools are the ones in schools in a larger population of low income kids. They don't like that their scores dropped. The reality is that having lots of failing kids in a school does present challenges and problems. You have to decide for yourself whether you are comfortable with an environment like this or want something else.

Anonymous wrote:GS mostly punishes diverse schools with their craptastic rating system. The same kid would probably do the same at either of the schools in the above example which illustrates how unreliable their scores are.

It's mostly a scheme cooked up by the real estate industry to boost home prices in some areas.

GS mostly punishes diverse schools with their craptastic rating system. The same kid would probably do the same at either of the schools in the above example which illustrates how unreliable their scores are.

Think of the GS rating (especially ES as it's the most localized/granula) as more of a proxy for neighborhood SES (which of course also often maps to racial diversity). If you prefer living in a more diverse area with higher FARMS rate amongst your peers, then you probably aren't going to find that at an 8-10 GS school. But many (not all) 5-7 GS schools are great schools where an UMC class will do just as well as their peers at the 8-10 GS school a few miles up the road. You can dive into the ratings a bit to see if the breakdowns.

For example, Haycock Is a 10 GS, Lemon Road just down the street is a 7 GS. The test score breakdown for white kids is slightly higher at Lemon Road than Haycock in Math and Science (and 1 percentage point lower for English)... but let's not split hairs, basically they're the same. But Hispanic kids are struggling at Lemon Road by comparison (and there's many more of them)... which also tracks with the higher % of low-income students at Lemon Road.

So there's a bit more diverse environment, and thus a lower aggregate GS rating, but seems like the peer-to-peer comparison of performance at these schools is pretty much even... GS is really measuring SES makeup, not school quality per se. That said, the higher SES schools do probably have a bit better funding for after-school enrichment opportunities, etc. that wouldn't be reflected in SOL test scores.