School District History (Chicago, Rankin: house, unemployment, buyers)

[bengalih]

I'd like some insight into how School District ratings change over the years. While I think input from any market is valid - obviously I am looking to buy in the Chicago Burbs.

So, I am going off the assumption that regardless of how important "I" feel a good school district is for my children, it is looked at as one of the primary indicators of how well a house will hold it's value appreciate/depreciate as well as how attractive it is for buyers in the future. So, although I might feel a "7" is a good enough rating to send my kids to, since most people would think they need a "9" or a "10", when I sell it would behoove me to have an area rated as high as possible.

That being said, how can I be assured that if I move into an area that is rated "X" today, that the school's will maintain their ratings when my children are able to attend them? Or, 15 years from now, if we sell, that the decision to buy in an "X" area will still be valid as the schools may have dropped to an "X-Y" rating?

Obviously the best situation would be to find a deal in a place with a low-mid ratings, have that increase to at least acceptable mid-high ratings by the time your kids attend, and then have it go to high ratings when ready to sell...but of course this can't be predicted.

Even in a scenario where my kids are ready for kindergarten, and all the schools are rated 8+, that doesn't mean in 8+ years that the H.S. will still be rated good, does it?

Also, what are the valid concerns one might have that their highly rated school becomes theirs no longer if a new school is built or some other change in the area means that they are now served by a different school/district?

I would love some historical examples, or any data of known quantities of burbs that should either be avoided because of falling districts, or investigated because of rising ones.

thanks!

[chet everett]

First you need to learn that because of poorly designed tests the gradations that available in the ratings for Illinois' public schools are way too gross to be helpful. It less like a "tape measure" and more like a seive with the filter being "quite bad" "eh" and "blows the test away"...

You are going to have a pretty much impossible task of find ANY school district that is truly "on the upswing". You might find some districts that in "eh" category that are underpriced a little in terms of housing value but even that is pretty rare as there is an almost ironclad relationship between high performing schools and high income residents -- some me one and I'll so the other...

Many disticts have been on a very long decline and the difficulty in reversing this goes well beyond any quick fix. In contrast there are a relatively small number of districts that have most / all of their schools on the Academic Honor Roll -- in general the towns that fall into that category are the ones that are most likely to remain highly desirable.

Finally I cannot recommend any of the third party sites that allow random folks to give a score to schools. I have no idea who finds these sites useful. There is a major fallacy about any parent / community member / student being able to "rank" their school -- they simply lack any kind of basis of comparison. Even in the rare case where someone moves from one town to another the odds of them having access to anything that would allow for an objective rating is laughable.

[bengalih]

So, in your opinion what is the best place to check rankings for IL schools?

And, are you saying that when checking you can give credence to something in the 10-30% range, and something in the 80-100% range, but anything in between is unreliable?

Obviously someone is rating these schools on a comparison scale to each other and determining which ones are good and bad (and in between) and from there assigning a value to homes based partially on this data.

There has to be some level of legitimacy to it.

[chet everett]

Sadly the scale that the ISBE has in place is even worse than what you suggest. Schools where 90% or more of students "meet or exceed" learning goals are about the only ones that are uniformly good. Schools where less than about 70% of student "meet or exceed" are almost certainly worth steering clear. The school in that 70-90 range are not great might be worth the trade offs if they are convenient to work, well funded and safe.

The Illinois State Board or Education posts statistical information about all public schools on a site: Illinois Interactive Report Card. The data is not super easy to go through but it is all objective and if you know what to look at you can make comparisons between schools.

[Sodium]

The character of a school district can change on a dime with the appointment of a superintendent -- we've seen it happen. If the board names some ed school wonder who is enthralled with the latest constructivist buzzwords your kids will spend their most important growth years is small workgroups doing meaningless projects.

Rankings: the only measure of importance to a parent is what will a school do for YOUR child. New Trier is great for the super-achievers and also for kids with serious problems, but the average student ("level 3" in New Trier parlance) often feels lost and ignored. The ISBE rankings are worthless, since they are based on cut scores low enough that most schools can get halfway decent "meets" measures.

The best way to evaluate a school is to take the tour, but NOT to be satisfied with its curb appeal. (Most parents who take the school tours never ask any serious questions or dig beneath the surface!) Are the desks arranged for learning, or pushed together for endless projects? Is the math curriculum one of the trendy balls of fluff (Everyday Math, Trailblazers, IMP, and many others) or is it solid on developing skills? Look at the bulletin boards with student work: are they heavy solely with art, or do you see compositions and other academic work as well? In academic work, is the work as good as you would expect for the grade, and are spelling, grammar and punctuation errors corrected? What books are on the assigned reading lists? Are classrooms welcoming, but not so festooned with decorations that distractions are everywhere? Examine the textbooks: are they linear and rich with juicy content, or glitzy with photos, cartoons, callout text boxes, multiple fonts and superfluous junk?

I wrote an article about this once, and it is here: http://www.illinoisloop.org/choosing.html

Best wishes on the hunt!

[chet everett]

I have seen NO data that correlates either classroom decorations or even the math textbooks in use with any measure of school success. Believe me if touring schools was all that it takes to find a school with long term record of success things would be very different than they are in everything from Illinois land values to unemployment statistics.

I have very little evidence that switching superintendents does anything other than throwing another pension into the mess that is Illinois fiscally disgraceful system...