New York State Test Scores To Rank Schools? Do You Think It's A Good Idea? (Hempstead: buying)

[CoolaTroopa]

..when it comes to ranking schools?

Cold Spring Harbor School District - New York State Test Scores - The New York Times

Example: Cold Spring Harbor

I thought Cold Spring Harbor had one of the best school districts on Long Island for various reasons but a lot of schools districts are beating it- including a lot of unexpected ones. (e.g: Bethpage, East Meadow)

Is it fair to base the rankings off how a bunch of elementary school kids do on an exam or not?

On a side note, I'm happy to see Syosset is ranked so high since it seems likely that's where my future wife and I will be buying our first house,

[twingles]

CSH is such a small district that I wonder if their lower enrollment skews the scores any.

Standardized testing is the only way to compare school districts since all the kids are taking the same tests at the same time. I don't think anyone loves standardized testing but you can't compare districts any other way, KWIM?

THat said, I would't turn down CSH based on that ranking. I mean gets a little silly when you talk about "only" the 93rd percentile, etc.

[Crookhaven]

Shouldnt this be by the HS #s?

[sean sean sean sean]

Originally Posted by Crookhaven

Shouldnt this be by the HS #s?

Yes, absolutely. I don't bother looking at anything but the high school data....even districts like Hempstead and Roosevelt are up around 80% passing at the elementary level.

Bad job by the NYT....although if HS figures were considered, it would've made NYC public schools look a lot worse off. Anytime you hear any New York politicians talk about what an improvement the city's schools have made, you can rest assured they are talking about 3rd-5th graders inching up a few percentage points each year.

Fortunately, there is a mountain of legit information elsewhere on the internet...
PSK12.com
Greatschools.net
NY State Report Cards (https://www.nystart.gov/publicweb/Home.do?year=2008 - broken link)

[villager-li]

Regarding Greatschools.net - for some period of time, they had rankings for Long Island high schools. Now they all say "N/A". I wonder why they were removed.