The Problem with “Great Schools”

by | May 30, 2018

Real estate segregation and school segregation have obviously been linked for a long time. This was no accident when it started – government policies, redlining, restrictive housing covenants, and more, created a lasting phenomenon. But now, we have an app, we have a rating and we have our GoHere! Drops and StayAway! Circles that do the job even more efficiently than ever, even if the overt racial animus that originally caused segregation has lessened.

by Ali McKay

If you have young kids or use online realtor sites, you’ve probably seen the school ratings from GreatSchools. Our school is rated a “4”. That’s out of 10. When I was in school, forty percent is not a grade that I or my parents would have been happy with. In fact, there would have been a fair amount of freaking out about a 4 out of 10. And yet, my children, and all of the other 330 kids in that school, are learning, having fun, and occasionally misbehaving or letting off steam. They are being kids. The more I think about it, the more I wonder how a building full of people – actual kids, teachers, parents, staff – can be described by one number.

 

I am very happy with our school, even though it has some pretty significant challenges. It isn’t a “4” to me, or to most other parents I’ve talked to. I have friends at other nearby elementary schools with ratings of “3”, “4”, even “2” – they also love their schools.

 

So why is our school’s Greatschool.org rating not fitting my experience, and so many other people’s experience? And why do ratings in general, and Greatschool.org’s ratings in particular, perpetuate segregation and resource hoarding?    

 

First, a little bit more about my experience. I knew our school was a remarkable place when we toured. I saw a young girl put her arm around the shoulders of her classmate (who appeared to have significant special needs) and guide her carefully across the library. This act of care stuck with me, but mostly, I just saw lots of cute kids. Many were students of color, some girls wore headscarves, and there were a wide range of disabilities and special needs. This was, and is, a community that was a better reflection of the world than a school that is white, privileged and segregated. We believed this would be the kind of education my kids needed. So, we left our more white, privileged and segregated school and moved our children to this school.

 

And it has been the kind of education they need. Truthfully, it’s also been the kind of education I also need as a white, privileged parent. My older son, an “Advanced Learner”, is thriving, especially socially. I won’t say the academics are as rigorous (or stressful) as before, but he is a reading fiend and I have seen his anxiety drop and his social life develop in a very healthy and positive way – in ways I don’t think it could have at the whiter, much richer school he attended before. In our previous school, there was a clear majority (white, wealthy, high achieving) from whose norms he desperately did not want to deviate. With such a clear norm, his drive to conform was strong. He cried in class often. And, our platitudes to him about diversity held little weight or relevance to him there. Now, he is one among many – different races, different economic classes, different religions. It seems his need to conform can’t find root.

 

Importantly, from that also flows an active dialogue and conversations between us and our kids, and between my husband and I as their parents, about race, class and difference. Why does a classmate wear a head scarf? What is her experience fasting for Ramadan? What is a Christian? What is an Atheist? These are all conversations we’ve had. We’ve had to engage with these issues as parents much more deeply than when we could float lazily on the river of sameness at our old school. We are now “riding the rapids” of difference, which is sometimes scary, but also empowering. Empowering because we learn and develop critical thinking skills rather than float along doing what everyone else does.

 

As for my younger son, who is in Kindergarten, he just told me the other day that he actually likes school. He’s enjoying himself, and he’s learning to read, write, and interact with peers who look and act differently and have different abilities than he does. He gets a social education as much as an academic one. Most importantly, there are loving, dedicated and hard-working teachers and staff at school every day telling all the students that they matter and that they can learn. These things are very important to me, and a number rating will never be able to tell me about them.

 

Now, let’s talk about the problem with GreatSchools. Our previous school is a “good” school, rated 7 out of 10 on GreatSchools. Search on GreatSchools and you’ll see these ratings right away. The “good” schools are marked with big green tear drops (let’s call them “GoHere! Drops”). The schools who rate 7 or less are depicted by tiny little orange, red or gray circles (let’s call them “Stay Away! Circles”). Here is Seattle, where I live:

Screen Shot 2018-05-29 at 11.59.45 PM.png

 

Parents who see those little orange and red dots (Stay Away! Circles) are, understandably, worried. The ever-present narrative is that you MUST send your kids to the good schools. And you must do whatever it takes to send them to those schools. Or you go to private school (and many do in Seattle).  Why is this the narrative? Because that’s what everyone else says and does. Because we are asking and answering other people’s questions. But we need to be asking other (or at least more) questions. Questions of the schools, questions of ourselves, and questions of GreatSchools.

 

So what, exactly, is GreatSchools measuring? Mostly socioeconomic status, it turns out. In fact, Jack Schneider, an historian and researcher who studies schools, has written that factors the schools can control usually explain only about 20% of test scores.  That means at least sixty percent of test scores is determined by socioeconomic status. Low income students will tend to score lower and high income students will score higher – and this is regardless of where they go to school. Much has been written about why, but, as just one example, researchers have found that poverty affects kids’ language environments. And, middle and upper class parents are, from day one, cultivating their kids’ language and other skills, setting them up to stay in the middle or upper class.

 

Certainly, the more words you know and the more your parents and your upbringing have cultivated you for tests, the better your test scores will be.  It is these scores that account for 47% of GreatSchool’s school rating for elementary schools (and a whopping 72% if you add in their ‘Student Progress’ on tests factor). This means that the GoHere! Drops and the StayAway! Circles are mostly telling you to find high socioeconomic students and avoid lower socioeconomic students (and English language learners, kids who qualify for special education services, and so on . . .).

 

I can attest that the testing situation I’ve just described is true for my kids. Ours is a Title I school where 65% of students qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch, and, significantly, upwards of 30% are homeless and 48% turn over (i.e. leave) every year. While many students at our school do not meet the standards for their grades, my kids test fine (as mentioned above, the older one is even an “Advanced Learner”).

 

GreatSchools seems to be aware that there may be a problem, and changed their ratings late in 2017 to include an equity component. This component accounts for 28% of a school’s rating (i.e. whether it is a GoHere! Drop or a StayAway! Circle). Their website says: “We believe that every parent — regardless of where they live or how much money they make — needs reliable information in order to ensure their child is being served by their school.” They have many pictures of Black and Brown families on their site.

 

They may be sincere and wish to effect positive change. But they are an organization that relies heavily on test scores. And importantly, appears to be funded by revenue from ads for private schools and funders, like the Walton Foundation (a conservative foundation created by the Walmart family), that have often been hostile to public schools – hostile to the very idea that public schools are a common good that supports a robust, flexible and tolerant democracy. We also need to ask how useful these school ratings are to the Black and Brown families they picture on their website. The GoHere! Drops show up almost exclusively in mostly white neighborhoods where, in Seattle and cities like it, a small single family home costs at least a million dollars and where there is little or no affordable housing. (That school with the 10 in the map above is in a neighborhood where, as of this writing, there was nothing for sale below about $1 million, and I happen to know many desirable houses go for 30-40% over asking.) Similarly, how much revenue does GreatSchools generate licensing their ratings to online realtor sites and other real estate sites targeting people who have the wealth to purchase a home in the first place? Those who have enough income and wealth to purchase a home in zone with a “good” school (GoHere! Drops) are not low income or low net worth families. Even GreatSchools’ president Mathew Nelson says that the best way to know if a school is right for you is to visit and talk to people in the community. So, what is that single digit rating really for then?

 

These facts are troubling by themselves. More importantly, and as I said above, we should view anything that assigns one number to a school building full of people – kids, teachers, custodians, librarians – with a hefty dose of skepticism. And, to ice this rather yucky cake, these ratings perpetuate segregation.

 

There is evidence that families seeking those GoHere! Drops on Greatschools.org, the “good” schools, are in fact a big cause of housing segregation (See, The Chicken or Egg Debate: Housing v. School Integration by Halley Potter of The Century Foundation). The increasing income segregation our cities are experiencing is exacerbated by families with high incomes seeking good schools, sometimes causing up to two times more segregation (See Neighborhood segregation is driven by income inequality, choice of school districts). [Mar 2019 Update: a study released in October 2018 finds evidence that online school ratings systems are accelerating segregation.] Schools are about as segregated now as they were before Brown v. Board of Education. For poor and non-poor students, housing segregation increased between 1991 to 2012 by 40%. Real estate segregation and school segregation have obviously been linked for a long time. This was no accident when it started – government policies, redlining, restrictive housing covenants, and more, created a lasting phenomenon. But now, we have an app, we have a rating and we have our GoHere! Drops and StayAway! Circles that do the job even more efficiently than ever, even if the overt racial animus that originally caused segregation has lessened.

 

If school ratings, especially test score focused ratings like GreatSchools’ ratings, are a problem, how are you supposed to pick a school? Take the two tour pledge: set foot inside two schools. You wouldn’t buy a house without going in it, so why do so with your child’s education? When we were deciding on our current school, we toured and we talked to teachers and parents. It didn’t take that much time, and walking around and seeing the actual people in the building was the most important factor for us.

 

Second, remember that parents tend to pass along the dominant narratives, whether they are actually true or not. They will tell you a school is “good” or “bad”, even though they might not have ever been in the school they are talking about. I noticed this when talking to other parents. People who had never set foot in our old school called it “the private school of Seattle Public Schools,” probably because it has high test scores and middle and upper class families, and they heard it from other middle and upper class families. Researchers like Jennifer Jellison Holme and others have found this to be true (i.e. that families listen to and value a school based on what other privileged parents say about it).

 

And then, investigate your values and your goals for your kids. I am guessing your goals for your kids when they are 50 is not that they had high test scores. Like me, you probably want a lot more than that for them. Like me, you might be anxious about academics or anxious that not being around high achieving peers or watching screen time at school sometimes (gasp!) will hurt their prospects as adults in a competitive world. Anxiety is a small price to pay for seeking justice and dismantling systems of segregation and racism. And, it makes me feel icky but it bears repeating: socioeconomically advantaged kids will get high test scores wherever they are, because of the luck of their birth.

 

You can also read more about how parenting to advantage your kids can cause harm. Ask yourself if you can participate in the increasing segregation of our schools and the continuation of separate and unequal educational opportunities. If it is important to you that the kids in your school be like your kid, and the families be like yours, ask yourself why and don’t allow racist stereotypes to go unchallenged. Talk to some families who have chosen integrated schools, read about a Seattle parent’s choice to attend a mostly Black school, and read this Kids & Race post on sending your privileged kids to a “low performing” school.

 

For more about integration and its positive effects, read all of Nikole Hannah Jones work and How Racially Diverse Schools and Classrooms Can Benefit All Students, by The Century Foundation. Finally, never forget that integration is not about benefiting the privileged kids, or letting them see Black and Brown children in the halls on their way to their segregated advanced placement classrooms, but about deeper and equitable learning for all students.

 

The decision may not be easy, we certainly spent a lot of time on ours. I do know a school isn’t a number – my kids are not a number, and neither is any other child.

 

 

**(Note: Ali removed a reference to one study that showed that kids from low-income families may have 32 million less words directed to them than their middle and upper class peers. I did so because of some problems with the methodology of the study and concerns that focusing on things like word gaps may blame families for their own poverty rather than the racism, classism and ableism of this country.)

 

54 Comments

  1. Eileen Kugler

    This says it all. I hope every parent trying to find a “good school” for their child reads this and thinks deeply about the best place for their child.

    • anotherrecoveringteacher

      Have children shadow a student for 1/2 or full day at prospective school!
      Authentic results!

  2. JMCH

    Shared on facebook. This says it all and says what I have been saying to people for years.

  3. Rebecca Moon Ruark

    Where I live, outside Washington, D.C., people get all excited about “Blue Ribbon” school status. Our majority black Catholic school with a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds is currently Blue Ribbon status in reading, and we’re working on the math. HOWEVER, I’m secretly hoping we don’t get it, because once we get to hang that banner outside the school I fear we’re going to be dealing with overcrowding and parents simply chasing a banner.

  4. katxn3

    It’s all about resources not the quality of education and care the kids are getting. I’m sure New Britain, CT falls pretty low on the scale but some of their elementary schools (the only ones I’ve had dealings with) love their kids far more than my “well to do” school in Wolcott.

  5. Emily

    Thank you for writing this. As someone who was homeschooled K-12, I know absolutely nothing about public schools and how to find out if a school is right for your child. This very usefully reminded me that I cannot trust a single number.

  6. Namrata D Prabhakar

    So very true. Whether schools or universities rating are others perception s.

  7. Namrata D Prabhakar

    Reblogged this on In the World of Thoughts and commented:
    The author of the post has very effectively highlighted the myth about rating whether schools or universities

  8. may hem

    thank you for this well researched and nuanced piece. Sometimes teachers in public schools don’t help either. when my daughter was having “behavioral” issues in spite of good grades I was told to get her tested for ADHD. When she aced every test and the report said she was simply understimulated and suggested teachers give her some enrichment tasks. The “inclusive” public school told us they had too many children with “real” difficulties to bother with those who progressed too quickly (adding that we should stop reading so much at home) and we should go to a private school if we wanted “differentiation” or she would have to grow up and learn to wait for others. She was 6.

  9. Sabreenah Rochelle

    I’m not a parent, or even married yet, but I really enjoyed your article. I think the best thing you wrote in all of it was, “he is getting a social education and not just an academic one”. I think that society too often favors how well people can read and write, do math or solve science equations, but never how to interact with the people he’s supposed partake and shape society with.

  10. Liz

    Thank you from New York…where resources go to the best neighborhoods while children with in poorer demographics scrape by. Teachers are bullied into providing basic supplies that should be in the building; even books for the mandated curriculum. Reposting right now. Thank you again for echoing my heart.

  11. Lindi Roze

    Great article. You are on point. I grew up in public schools in NYC and I always tell people that it was the best experience because I was exposed to so many different cultures and people of different colors. Granted it was a different time. My kids also went to “inner city” public school and when they went to college, people who knew our city were amazed that they survived and loved it. A few years ago I was selling real estate and many young families coming new to the area only wanted to look in neighborhoods with schools with the higher ratings. You guessed it, they were usually the more affluent neighborhoods, sometimes out of reach financially. You are also correct about a new type of segregation and “school choice” programs sound great in theory but often not necessarily in the best interest of the child. I have a writing assignment to “mine the Reader for a story topic”. I think I found it. I may be re-blogging or referencing you today or tomorrow. Thank you for writing this. All the best.

  12. pkadams

    You touched on the real issue which is socioeconomic disparity and prejudice against the poor of all colors .This ‘classification’ divides people much more than race , religion or other identities. This app or website is not the issue. The fact is the majority of Americans want their kids to go to schools with people like themselves. Middle and upper income people like you who purposely put their children in low income , low test score schools will always be rare. And I believe most poor kids would feel uncomfortable in a rich school.

  13. amydwestphal

    I have used greatschools and was so disappointed with the rating of my children’s school. I agree that significant changes are needed to make it a valuable resource.

  14. Yanglish

    Reblogged this on Teachers thoughts, quotes and dreams and commented:
    You wouldn’t buy a house without going in it, so why do so with your child’s education? When we were deciding on our current school, we toured and we talked to teachers and parents. It didn’t take that much time, and walking around and seeing the actual people in the building was the most important factor for us.

  15. Jess Stranger

    Fantastically written. This sounds a lot like my experience with the school system in Albuquerque, New Mexico. We have state run charter schools that are strategically placed in high income neighborhoods. They get special funding and the lure of “better” teachers (qualified from Ivy League schools, for example) and most of the student body ends up looking like one another. Some kids from the Valley school districts were so hurt by this labeling of them that they, as high school students, put together one of the best NPR KUNM radio broadcast stories I have ever heard during my time living in NM – they voiced exactly what you wrote about here. They talked about how labeling them as a druggy school or gang school was entirely inaccurate and actually affects their morale on test days – thinking they will never amount to what society has labeled “better or great schools”. I grew up in the army school system being a product of my military family. I interfaced with such diversity that it has allowed me to recognize languages and traditions clear into my adulthood that I may not have learned elsewhere in the USA. You are a great parent to recognize that high test scores are not the essence of your children’s future. They will thank you when they are old enough to reflect on their youth and see how these choices prepared them for the real world. Fantastic piece and I’ve just shared it to my FB.

  16. BreakingBone

    If good schools had more diversity it would also course correct some of the things mentioned

  17. EoverT

    Eternal life or temporary life?
    You choose.

  18. nickihodgepodge

    Thank you for your much needed thoughts on this subject. I agree that people need to look beyond just a rating they see when they log onto sites like goodschools. It’s so easy to form an opinion of a school off just one number. However, like you mentioned, there are so many other factors to consider. In an effort to send a child to the “best” school, some parents miss the opportunity to send their child to the right school for their personal and educational needs.

  19. anjanasundariyer

    This helps a lot to those parents who wants to provide a better education for their children and to find the so called “good school”…

  20. hoffas-photographic

    There are no segregated schools, except perhaps a black college.

    NYC De Blasio wants to remove admission testing for it’s elite high schools. Bronx high school of science, Quens high school for the sciences etc. That means the whole curriculum will be dumbed down in the quest for fairness, equality, and diversity. And we will have no more excellence, breakthroughs, and pioneers. We will all be equal for the progressive agenda that wants everyone to feel good.

    I don’t want to send my kids to school with a lot of fatherless, gang banger, drug abusing prison bound kids.

  21. marymtf

    I am a parent and a grandparent. It’s been my responsibility to raise my children to be the very best they can be. They are now doing the same for their children,

    I hear the word white priveledge bandied about a lot but don’t know what that means. Not all people are priveledged.just because they are white and not all people of colour are disadvantaged because of their colour, We are all individuals . Stop lumping us in groups.

    Schools are as good as the teachers in it, the children who strive and the parents who support them. Your advanced student may thrive wherever he is, but without your support, I predict he will drop.out as soon as he can. If you want to teach your children lessons about respect and diversity do it at home. That’s your job. Shame on you.

  22. The Melanin Educator

    As an educator, this is all too familiar. I strongly feel that great schools depend on the people inside of it. I have an opportunity to choose which schools my children attend in the district. I steer away from the “great schools” grading and focus more on word of mouth from my colleagues. Every student will have different experiences. It is your job to determine what is best for your child.

  23. Austin Hooe

    This is fascinating. Take a look at Nora Gordon’s research on Title I. It turns out that federal grants aren’t doing much to increase the school funding for these red and gray dots. An interesting angle to consider.

  24. Catherine

    Interesting read. Thank you. When we moved to another state, I admit I was one of those parents chasing the high scoring schools. I knew nothing about the community we were moving to. All I had to go on were pictures and parent comments on sites like Great Schools.

    But as my kids grow older, I am realizing the fault in this system. The reason these schools rank so high in testing is because the school lessons are taught to prepare kids for tests (because higher test scores mean higher funding) rather than learning for general knowledge. Learning to spell, writing in cursive, and other common knowledge that I learned in elementary have not been addressed in school to my kids. Yet they’ve had plenty of lessons on how to properly fill in a bubble for standardized tests.

  25. historicalthomas

    As we move towards an era of greater data analytics, will we attempt to change the statistics for the betterment of society or will we follow what options are considered the best?

  26. Beth T

    Interesting read – I’m from the UK so don’t know Great Schools but so much of this resonates with the picture here, at least in London.

  27. Lissa

    I admit we used Great Schools when we bought our house, not knowing at the time how they operated. It’s frustrating to learn how they determine the scores. We knew we wanted a diverse student body for our kids & a good special needs program–it’s sad that this combination is so hard to find. He will be going to a great school, but we learned for the town, as a whole, that it’s not as diverse as we hoped. I agree that Great Schools does help keep schools segregated & it’s disheartening.

  28. SuperMOM

    Interesting read. I appreciate that you also took the time to do some research on this topic. I reside in Canada, but I do agree that simply putting a number rating on schools without gathering all the evidence and providing concrete facts/examples as to how the results were concluded and all the factors that help determine them is a problem; moreover, an issue that we should be shedding more light on. School is one of the foundations that shape our children, whether good or bad; so for me, it was an easy decision choosing the school my children attend; multicultural, a strong sense of family/community feel, promotion of understanding and anti-bullying, academically strong but with an equal amount of activities that focus on teaching our children the importance of recycling, working together, helping others, etc., and providing awards to students not solely based on their academic achievements but on their willingness to help other students and their community. This is definitely a topic that I will be discussing on my website: DiaryOfSuperMOM.com – I’m just getting started!

  29. readingisthemostgloriouspastime

    Thank you so much for this article. This happens all the time here in the New Orleans area and it saddens me to the nth degree. I went to school in another city where there weren’t all these “choices”. We all went to school together, black, white and in between, rich and poor, various faiths and religions. I received a fantastic education. I graduated at the top of my class in high school and college, undergraduate and graduate. Guess what, I was dirt poor but I worked hard and wanted to break the cycle of poverty. After becoming a teacher and learning how these “scores” are calculated, I wish I could explain to people what a disservice they are doing to their communities and children by buying into this way of thinking. I know that the public education that I received in my hometown is the model that our public schools was built on, not what it has evolved into. Thanks again.

  30. pkadams

    I keep getting LIKES on my previous comment and that keeps making me think about this article. One thing I would like to ask is for those who want so called privileged Whites to put their kids in mostly non-White, low income schools, are you willing to LIVE in those neighborhoods with the people your kids will go to school with? If not, then you are not really integrating,are you? And even more important, are you willing to give away your excess income to those kids so they can REALLY have equal opportunity to succeed? Do you want your children to date, marry, and have similar lives as these low-income families? If not, then this is just hypocritical do-gooderism at it’s worst.

    • School worker

      EXACTLY!! Diversity is as diversity does! And usually it doesn’t do much. You don’t send your kids to school based on the complexions in the classroom. I work at a Catholic school in San Francisco and there’s plenty of diversity there enjoying all the “white privilege” to include getting a boatload of financial aid even if their incomes are beyond the 150k mark! Yet there are still people there who think our school is “too white”. ALSO we have an idiot principal who thinks the once in a blue moon ratings we get on great schools is really helping. NOT!!! And when you think about it… Rating a school on a review site is ridiculous.

  31. RobertLovesPi

    Thank you for writing this. I am a public school teacher who has often been dismayed at low scores on the GreatSchools website for schools in my area, and even schools where I have worked. This article has given me much to think about . . . and reasons not to worry so much about GreatSchools rankings.

    • quantopic

      Robert, are you sure you were not looking for excuses and pretexts (for the mediocrity of your school) and now you’re glad you finally managed to find some?

      • RobertLovesPi

        You’re being both presumptuous and offensive.

  32. Christina L.

    Thank you for writing this thoughtful piece about not just the Great Schools app, but the way we, as Americans, tend to approach our public school system. It was so heartwarming to know that there are other parents out there who look beyond a school’s test scores, and rather, try to focus on the overall benefits that their child would receive–both academically and socially speaking. I grew up in what is considered one of the best public school systems in the nation and I am grateful that I was academically stimulated to the point where college was expected of graduates, not a privilege. It certainly set me, and my peers, up for success in adulthood. However, as an adult, I am entirely certain that “success” and “happiness” go hand-in-hand. I also know that being “successful” does not mean a person is living a rich, fulfilling life. In fact, many times, those of us that have gone through the upper or middle class systems have been failed miserably. Growing up, my parents were very hard working folks who struggled to keep up with the bills. Even so, I cannot remember one family of color living in our neighborhood. They still live in my childhood home and unfortunately, not much has changed. While we thankfully did have some people of color come to the school, most black and brown individuals lived in nearby apartments and because of their leases, were only around for a couple years at most, making it difficult to make lasting friendships with people who were different. I, too, grew up in the Seattle-area, in a suburb. Because of the unobtainable cost of living, the only people buying homes were wealthy white folks and sadly, not much has changed. When looking back, I wish that not only myself, but all of my peers would have had a much different social experience at school. I think that if we would have been immersed in a more racially, culturally, and socioeconomically diverse setting, many of us would have ended up being more compassionate, kind, open-minded, and unselfish members of society. We may have had good test scores, but those tests certainly weren’t setting us up to be good people.

    I was lucky enough to score a good job in a new location, where diversity is more common. Kids here don’t look at the people of color and assume they live in apartments or have to worry that they won’t be able to build lasting friendships. My neighbors are people of all backgrounds and it is something to be celebrated and embraced.

    Ironically, I made the choice to send my kids to a Catholic private school, but for once, it had nothing to do with the lack of diversity they’d experience at the nearby public institution. Instead, the choice was made because their school not only offers a Spanish immersion program, but does so in an environment where the demographics are mostly people of color. Even neater is the fact that almost 70 percent of families receive some sort of financial aid. To me, that is a huge indicator that they are among a group of other students and families who encourage diversity, who want to make their children more culturally aware, and who work their tails off to make sure their children can go to a school that none of us can really afford. The best part is, none of us seem to be their for the test scores because, at the end of the day, scoring higher on a test may be a measure of success, but it certainly isn’t a measurement of a fulfilling life.

    Thank you again reminding us to look beyond the numbers.

  33. A Journey Called Life

    Great Post about schools. As a teacher, there is no doubt, I’ve looked at this website a couple of times regarding the schools’ rankings and information, but to base it only on the numbers and how they rank, people shouldn’t make it the dominant factor in deciding a school.

  34. alacritical

    I wasn’t aware of those before! Thank you for writing about it.

  35. yinkaraji

    Thanks

  36. TaffyKathy

    I think about my future children’s school life all the time. One part of me will want to be that devouring mother and just home school them, but that is not realistic. They need a social life. Especially at the ages of 2-4 when it’s most important.
    Your post certainly made me think about the school system more, and the fact that I don’t really know much about it. I definitely have my research cut out for me.
    Good read!

  37. sunshineinthewoods

    Very thought provoking blog. I’d like to add that in some areas( for example East side of Seattle, think Bellevue-Redmond) privileged isn’t necessarily white, privilege is distributed across multiple races. But there is still a glaring gap in privileged vs non privileged school districts.

  38. Keren Horn

    Thank you for writing this. I was looking to see if you posted it on twitter but I couldn’t find it there. Seems like a great place to share more broadly and also to send to Great Schools. I do think they are sincere in their desire to help families send children to the best possible schools and are starting several community projects to improve their ranking system. My school is also ranked a 4 and I too believe it to be an amazing place. Thank you again for this thoughtful piece.

  39. Naresh Patel

    Nicely penned indeed. I also wonder often what makes some schools get better ratings than others. A good school is surely one that raises a good human being and your blog tells me your school is pretty good. Thank you for sharing this blog. Loved it really very much.

  40. Billy

    Agreed. It is unfair to rank a school with just a number. The number simply doesn’t tell the whole story of the students who excel, and the teachers who work tirelessly to better the students. Does the number indicate that a school is a nurturing environment or is it all based on a test score?

  41. James Farkas

    Anyone actually work for GreatSchools.Org who can whistleblow about real sources of their revenue? I’m very suspicious that developers and Koch Brothers may be biggest sources. If we can follow the money, we’ll know how much the numbers can really be trusted.

  42. Yvette Jones

    Before relocating to Georgia, Great Schools was my go-to in deciding which area of Georgia I wanted to move to. Once I became an educator, I transitioned to other resources to use as research when looking at school districts. Thank you for the post!

  43. Keith

    Thank you for writing this. Greatschools is doing more harm than good. Even if a school is improving, Greatschools data is years old! So the results do not show on the web site until years later. In the meantime, we are losing Great students because of an old unsubstantiated score, which in the short term hurts the school.

  44. realgone_@excite.com

    I don’t disagree that in the wealthy white suburbs there is quite a bit of pretentiousness and competition, even some bullying. But having experienced a diverse public school with my daughter, I can say I would prefer they more wealthy environment. The kids in our diverse school are unruly, there are many distractions and disruptions during the day that impact the high achievers. My kid has also come home with a foul mouth and culturally different expressions that I find inappropriate. I have noticed that the diverse school does not pursue excellence and instead looks to sooth “feelings”. Generally these environments are not about learning but about making sure diverse peoples get along and that has been the most frustrating experience for me.

  45. Brenda Chappell

    I looked up, “Great Schools is biased against diverse student body” and this article popped up. You’ve summed it up absolutely correctly. Thank you.

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