Top 5 Elementary Schools (Chicago, Naperville, Skokie: sales, apartment, home sales)

[Lookout Kid]

looking at a few other really good schools, the reading score is the toughest to beat. I've found a couple of schools with higher math, but the average isn't 96% due to lower reading scores.

[Lookout Kid]

Originally Posted by holl1ngsworth

I think it's a great exercise and will help ppl learn the Report Cards.

Here is how to play. Go to the report card for a specific school, and then click on the "Academic Progress" tab. Then on the left side click on "Subgroup Comparisons". Then over on the right, change the pulldown menu from "Black/White" to "Low Income/Non Low Income" and push the green "Go" button.

Then you can click on the dots on the graphs to see the percent "meets or exceeds" for each test in each year.

[Paige65]

Originally Posted by holl1ngsworth

As a side note, Longfellow feeds into Wheaton North High School.

Among public high schools, Wheaton North has the 11th highest PSAE score for non-low-income students.

Only 1 point seperated Wheaton North from Glenbrook North in 2013 -- Glenbrook North being the high school associated with Greenbriar School, which the OP mentioned. That said, Wheaton North has 22% low-income enrollment and 27% minority enrollment. Compared to Glenbrook North's 8% and 20%, respectively.

Remember: apples-to-apples. You show me your non-low-income students and I'll show you mine!

;-)

Could you post a list of the top ten public high schools when breaking out the PSAE for non-low-income students. Or, alternatively, direct me to how I can get that information myself. I've always thought that my local high school would have even better marks with this additional cut.

[Lookout Kid]

I don't think that list is available, Paige65.

[chet everett]

Part of me is upset / angry with ISBE for not making the data easier to sort, but a bigger part of me wants to remind people that the mindset of comparing a school which is clearly "nailing" the admittedly WEAK test with scores of over 90%+ is pointless in "comparing" to schools that are at 96%+ -- clearly these are BOTH excellent schools and worthy of even the most demanding / academically driven families.

As I stated earlier, the better measure is what districts have very solid performance across the board and that is much harder to find. Part of the reason is that the larger districts almost always have some concentrations of lower income students and there is little dispute that in general kids from these backgrounds need more help to reach higher levels of performance.

While I can understand some folks desire to have a broader mix of students alongside their own kids I have never seen any data would support the "value" of this other than in a "feel good sense", which may be good enough for some families.
What I will caution is that areas that do have a broader range of perfromance have a much tougher job of doling out the limited resources in a fair way AND the incidence of "in group / out group behaviour / cliques" tends to be more of a problem....

[Lookout Kid]

I might even put the threshold for "good school" below the 90% mark. But it's very interesting to me that a school in Wheaton is outperforming all of these higher-priced school districts that people quibble over and drive up home prices to move in to. Not that Wheaton is an inexpensive place to live either... But there is a higher level of competition in school districts that perennially on the top of these "best of" lists, and this just proves how dumb that is.

[chet everett]

Originally Posted by Lookout Kid

I might even put the threshold for "good school" below the 90% mark. But it's very interesting to me that a school in Wheaton is outperforming all of these higher-priced school districts that people quibble over and drive up home prices to move in to. Not that Wheaton is an inexpensive place to live either... But there is a higher level of competition in school districts that perennially on the top of these "best of" lists, and this just proves how dumb that is.

These tests were designed to focus attention of the "children left behind" and they've largely FAILED at that as there are still hundreds of thousands of kids in CPS, East St. Louis Elgin, Joliet, Waukegan, and dozens of others true rust belt nightmare cities in Illinois where things have been real bad for the whole existence of NCLB...

The towns that are really nice place to live already have a majority of parents that get kids well prepared for school. there are only a handful of districts that do a bang-up job building on that and that is sort of upsetting that too few districts understand how to replicate this success.

[holl1ngsworth]

Originally Posted by Lookout Kid

I might even put the threshold for "good school" below the 90% mark. But it's very interesting to me that a school in Wheaton is outperforming all of these higher-priced school districts that people quibble over and drive up home prices to move in to. Not that Wheaton is an inexpensive place to live either... But there is a higher level of competition in school districts that perennially on the top of these "best of" lists, and this just proves how dumb that is.

Two other elementary schools in Wheaton's CUSD 200 are probably in the top 1% of schools: Whittier and Madison. They also perform much better than the perennial favorites that people "quibble" over.

Chet: District-wide CUSD 200 has 13 elementary schools with an average score of 86%. For comparison North Shore SD 112 (which includes perennial favorite Braeside) has 8 elementary schools and also has an average score of 86%. North Shore SD 112 spends $6,500 more per student than CUSD 200.

[chet everett]

Making comparisons in expenditures between UNIT school districts, which typically have a whole lot more students and a whole lot less central office staff becuase of the shared resources between high schools and elementary building vs non-unit districts really does not do anything other than show the relative "overhead cost" of running a "smaller" district.

I don't know who's "perenial favorite" Braeside is, it is not on the Honor Roll this year, further more SD112 includes schools in not just Highland Park but also Highwood where a rather startling 72.7% are low income, of course for those that value diversity perhaps one could opt-in for CUSD 200's Clifford Johnson School has a mere 23.9% non-minority students...

[holl1ngsworth]

Originally Posted by chet everett

I don't know who's "perenial favorite" Braeside is

Point taken on the CUSD v SD. Tax dollar efficiency and all that is a whole different argument.

Nonetheless, Braeside had the highest scores of any non-magnet school in the state in 2011 and 2012, and you will find it at the very top of any lists for those years, and many years before.

I actually referenced North Shore SD 112 because of Highwood and the diversity it adds -- which in many ways makes the overall economic diversity of SD 112 very similar to that of CUSD 200. That said, North Shore SD 112 has many schools that parents "quibble" over because the high level of segregation within 112 creates stand-out schools like Braeside and Ravinia. (98% and 97% non-low income, respectively!)

CUSD 200 has much more evenly distributed low-income students at it's schools and therefore falls off the radar of many parents and list-makers -- DESPITE students in CUSD 200 testing better than schools like Braeside and Ravinia.

Lastly, the whole thrust of my argument has been that the "Honor Roll" is total BS. In order to make AYP, all subgroups within a school must meet/exceed 90%. Problem is, a subgroup is only a subgroup if it contains 45 students at the school! For example, Lincoln Elementary (River Forest) made AYP and is on the "Honor Roll" despite black students scoring a 79% and Hispanic students scoring a 75%! Why? Because it doesn't have enough students in either of those subgroups for them to qualify as a subgroup! A school of 390 students like Lincoln could ostensibly be 10% black, Hispanic or low-income and not have any of those students count towards their AYP! Meanwhile, schools like those in Wheaton are punished for their diversity -- (again) DESPITE them producing better test scores among non-low income students than the "Honor Roll" schools!

My point is: If the OP (or anyone) is a non-low income parent, they should educate themselves on where the best non-low income test scores are -- because those are the schools where their children will have the highest probability of success. Inverse is true for low-income, black, Hispanic parents. Know your subgroup and learn where your children will have the best chance to thrive.