What makes a school a good school?
We had this discussion in class this morning and it got us all thinking quite a bit about how we quantify good schools. Typically, schools are rated based on student achievement scores on standardized achievement tests. Schools get report cards based on these scores. Parents look at report cards and see the school's rank or grade, and schools become good or bad. If they have the means to do so, some families actually move for the sole reason of being districted for the good schools. And that kinda makes sense, right?
But that's putting an awful lot of faith in a complicated and flawed metric for assessing good. Achievement tests themselves are limited snapshots of students' academic abilities. Even if you accept that these tests are valid and reliable measures of student learning, you have to consider the bigger picture or rating schools based on mean student achievement scores. There are certain subgroups of students whose scores on achievement tests tend to be lower than others. If a school has a relatively high percentage of students designated as economically disadvantaged, of limited English proficiency, or with documented disabilities, odds are that this school's achievement scores will be lower than a school whose population does not include many students in these groups. Or, to put it crudely, school full of rich white kids = high achievement; school with more economically and culturally diverse population = lower achievement. At least as measured by these sorts of achievement tests.
So what is good?
I've spent some time in schools widely recognized as good schools. The ones that parents move to get their kids into. I've spent some time in schools where parents aren't waiting at the door to get their children enrolled. And I've seen incredible teachers in both schools. Teachers who do their jobs well still captivate me - they differentiate instruction for each student, they manage behavior as well as academics, they integrate curriculum, they work with other educators and parents. You could pay them $100,000 per year and I'd still say they deserved more. I've also seen teachers who probably should - and probably want to - be somewhere else. Good teachers, bad teachers. They're in good schools and bad schools.
If you look at it just from a measurement perspective, and you consider all of the potential confounding variables influencing one overall judgment of a school as good or bad, it only makes sense to try to pare down that assessment. Look at it on the classroom level and you'll see that kids in bad schools can get an excellent education with the right teacher. Or kids in good schools can suffer with the wrong teacher. So I think it comes down to teachers. Which is why I'm okay with teacher accountability... although of course we'd have to find a pretty good way to measure what makes teachers good or bad.
If you live in North Carolina, you can access school report cards here. I'd encourage you to read them carefully, and not just take one piece as the single indicator of a school's quality. Be skeptical of the "word on the street" assessments of one school as good or bad - ask questions about why people think a certain school is better or worse.
I foresee Evelyn going to public schools - whichever one we're districted for, wherever we live (which probably won't be determined by the school). So I don't anticipate much, if any, school shopping in my future. But I do still have things I'd like in a school, and if our public school is weak in one of these areas then I hope that I can work with other parents and educators to improve it. And I'm privileged enough to have the time and resources to work with my child outside of school to give her the extra support she might not get if she is with a "bad" teacher for a year. Anyhow, here's a list of some things that I think matter more than achievement test scores in my assessment of a good school:
- Parental involvement: Parents are a welcome and active part of the school community, beyond PTA. The school reaches out to parents. You see parents in the classrooms on a regular basis. Parents reach out to other parents.
- Cultural, economic, and academic diversity: Students and their families represent a range of cultures, languages, economic statuses, and academic skills.
- Recess: Outside, generally unstructured, twice-a-day recess.
- Arts: In an age of increasing emphasis on reading, math, and writing proficiency, I like a school that still finds a way to cling to the arts.
- Resources: I like a school with supports available for struggling students, regardless of whether my student is the one struggling.
- Universal screening for academic and social/emotional issues, starting in kindergarten: Because a girl can dream... I think we really ought to screen every child at least twice yearly on proficiency in all core subjects as well as social and emotional functioning.
- Play-based kindergarten (rather than academically-based, reflecting the downward thrust of curriculum): Because there are good, longitudinal, conclusive studies that if you want to create positive academic outcomes that maintain beyond the elementary-school years, you need to give kids play-based kindergartens. They are developmentally appropriate and they will give you the gains you are trying to get with academic kindergartens. Actually, they will give you greater academic gains.
Oh, and good teachers, of course. But sometimes it takes a bad one to know the good ones, so I'll take a school with a few of those thrown in. And why do I have recess and arts on the list? Because if a school can keep those, it tells me something about that school's administration - something good. It tells me that they care about the research on the importance of physical activity and arts to children's functioning well-being and academic functioning. And it tells me about the administration's strength to buck the trend to abandon arts and recess and have kids sitting at desks trying to raise their end-of-year achievement scores all day.
**************
Alright, that's my school talk for now. Evelyn's been doing all sorts of earth-shattering stuff lately I have posts all ready to go except for the video... which needs to be edited... which hasn't happened... *sigh*
We had this discussion in class this morning and it got us all thinking quite a bit about how we quantify good schools. Typically, schools are rated based on student achievement scores on standardized achievement tests. Schools get report cards based on these scores. Parents look at report cards and see the school's rank or grade, and schools become good or bad. If they have the means to do so, some families actually move for the sole reason of being districted for the good schools. And that kinda makes sense, right?
But that's putting an awful lot of faith in a complicated and flawed metric for assessing good. Achievement tests themselves are limited snapshots of students' academic abilities. Even if you accept that these tests are valid and reliable measures of student learning, you have to consider the bigger picture or rating schools based on mean student achievement scores. There are certain subgroups of students whose scores on achievement tests tend to be lower than others. If a school has a relatively high percentage of students designated as economically disadvantaged, of limited English proficiency, or with documented disabilities, odds are that this school's achievement scores will be lower than a school whose population does not include many students in these groups. Or, to put it crudely, school full of rich white kids = high achievement; school with more economically and culturally diverse population = lower achievement. At least as measured by these sorts of achievement tests.
So what is good?
I've spent some time in schools widely recognized as good schools. The ones that parents move to get their kids into. I've spent some time in schools where parents aren't waiting at the door to get their children enrolled. And I've seen incredible teachers in both schools. Teachers who do their jobs well still captivate me - they differentiate instruction for each student, they manage behavior as well as academics, they integrate curriculum, they work with other educators and parents. You could pay them $100,000 per year and I'd still say they deserved more. I've also seen teachers who probably should - and probably want to - be somewhere else. Good teachers, bad teachers. They're in good schools and bad schools.
If you look at it just from a measurement perspective, and you consider all of the potential confounding variables influencing one overall judgment of a school as good or bad, it only makes sense to try to pare down that assessment. Look at it on the classroom level and you'll see that kids in bad schools can get an excellent education with the right teacher. Or kids in good schools can suffer with the wrong teacher. So I think it comes down to teachers. Which is why I'm okay with teacher accountability... although of course we'd have to find a pretty good way to measure what makes teachers good or bad.
If you live in North Carolina, you can access school report cards here. I'd encourage you to read them carefully, and not just take one piece as the single indicator of a school's quality. Be skeptical of the "word on the street" assessments of one school as good or bad - ask questions about why people think a certain school is better or worse.
I foresee Evelyn going to public schools - whichever one we're districted for, wherever we live (which probably won't be determined by the school). So I don't anticipate much, if any, school shopping in my future. But I do still have things I'd like in a school, and if our public school is weak in one of these areas then I hope that I can work with other parents and educators to improve it. And I'm privileged enough to have the time and resources to work with my child outside of school to give her the extra support she might not get if she is with a "bad" teacher for a year. Anyhow, here's a list of some things that I think matter more than achievement test scores in my assessment of a good school:
- Parental involvement: Parents are a welcome and active part of the school community, beyond PTA. The school reaches out to parents. You see parents in the classrooms on a regular basis. Parents reach out to other parents.
- Cultural, economic, and academic diversity: Students and their families represent a range of cultures, languages, economic statuses, and academic skills.
- Recess: Outside, generally unstructured, twice-a-day recess.
- Arts: In an age of increasing emphasis on reading, math, and writing proficiency, I like a school that still finds a way to cling to the arts.
- Resources: I like a school with supports available for struggling students, regardless of whether my student is the one struggling.
- Universal screening for academic and social/emotional issues, starting in kindergarten: Because a girl can dream... I think we really ought to screen every child at least twice yearly on proficiency in all core subjects as well as social and emotional functioning.
- Play-based kindergarten (rather than academically-based, reflecting the downward thrust of curriculum): Because there are good, longitudinal, conclusive studies that if you want to create positive academic outcomes that maintain beyond the elementary-school years, you need to give kids play-based kindergartens. They are developmentally appropriate and they will give you the gains you are trying to get with academic kindergartens. Actually, they will give you greater academic gains.
Oh, and good teachers, of course. But sometimes it takes a bad one to know the good ones, so I'll take a school with a few of those thrown in. And why do I have recess and arts on the list? Because if a school can keep those, it tells me something about that school's administration - something good. It tells me that they care about the research on the importance of physical activity and arts to children's functioning well-being and academic functioning. And it tells me about the administration's strength to buck the trend to abandon arts and recess and have kids sitting at desks trying to raise their end-of-year achievement scores all day.
**************
Alright, that's my school talk for now. Evelyn's been doing all sorts of earth-shattering stuff lately I have posts all ready to go except for the video... which needs to be edited... which hasn't happened... *sigh*
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