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I'm going to paste in a post to start this thread --
Quote:
Originally Posted by ssuen
HI all,
We're a family of four likely moving to Chicago area from Boston in summer of 2018. It's such a daunting process to select a rightful place to live and to educate our children. we do have our eyes on Wilmette (haven't done research thoroughly though). I've learned Linconshire holds the reputation of the best school district but it's too far to the medical school area in downtown Chicago where my husband will be working at. My question is why NTHS is not ranked on schooldigger? I may have overlooked other good sources of evaluating the schools. If you can point out some, that'll be really helpful. I do appreciate all the comments and useful info posted here. Will keep reading these. Thanks.
The above message highlights a HUGE problem that exists when trying to use the "automated" type sites to evaluate schools, namely they make assumptions about "data" that literally HIDE excellent schools. Fact is because New Trier is organized so that ALL freshmen attend the campus in Northfield and then 10th, 11th, and 12th graders are at the Winnetka campus. That sort of unique organization apparently "blows up" the simplistic templates that cheap online comparison sites have relied on.
If you live in the north suburbs / work in anywhere that would be convenient to living there it makes sense to consider any of the towns served by New Trier, experience shows it is among the finest public high schools in the US. Any honest staff member of other well regarded public schools in the region would readily agree to that fact. The very reliable data that has been central to tings like the US News Rankings, based heavily on college readiness as demonstrated by things like success on AP tests, also strongly supports that assertion, but as the "arms race" of scores have increased New Trier has actively resisted buying into the nonsense -- https://newtriernews.org/examiner/20...oing-it-wrong/
To be sure, Stevenson is also a very good high school but it is far from perfect -- as one of the largest single campus high schools in Illinois that alone presents some challenges. The fact is former Superintendent Rick DuFour was the rare voice to highlight the inequity that allowed kids in districts to succeed while those from less fortunate circumstances struggled -- https://www.districtadministration.c...d-becky-dufour
I often try to help folks realize that their decisions about "what is the best financial decision for my housing dollar" may or may not overlap with the wisest decisions about the path of their own child's education...
For folks who have the means to find a home in any desirable community odds are good that there are no major negatives associated with the local public schools. However it is NOT the same as saying "every costly home will have good schools" -- there are many areas that lack a tradition of high performing schools; such things are much harder to sniff out via simplistic templates designed more as advertising platforms than any sort of useful info.
What is even more distressing is that disarray at the Illinois State Board of Education has weakend the useful of even their data -- switching from PARCC to ACT to SAT has destroyed any consistency of measurements. One is forced to do LOTS MORE extrapolation / guestimation regasrding test data. That said the demographic and financial info is still first rate (unless they destroy that too...) https://iirc.niu.edu/Classic/Default.aspx one can dig into the meaty info, like how much property per student each district has, which is an almost foolproof proxy for the quality of a district...
I'm going to paste in a post to start this thread --
The above message highlights a HUGE problem that exists when trying to use the "automated" type sites to evaluate schools, namely they make assumptions about "data" that literally HIDE excellent schools. Fact is because New Trier is organized so that ALL freshmen attend the campus in Northfield and then 10th, 11th, and 12th graders are at the Winnetka campus. That sort of unique organization apparently "blows up" the simplistic templates that cheap online comparison sites have relied on.
If you live in the north suburbs / work in anywhere that would be convenient to living there it makes sense to consider any of the towns served by New Trier, experience shows it is among the finest public high schools in the US. Any honest staff member of other well regarded public schools in the region would readily agree to that fact. The very reliable data that has been central to tings like the US News Rankings, based heavily on college readiness as demonstrated by things like success on AP tests, also strongly supports that assertion, but as the "arms race" of scores have increased New Trier has actively resisted buying into the nonsense -- https://newtriernews.org/examiner/20...oing-it-wrong/
To be sure, Stevenson is also a very good high school but it is far from perfect -- as one of the largest single campus high schools in Illinois that alone presents some challenges. The fact is former Superintendent Rick DuFour was the rare voice to highlight the inequity that allowed kids in districts to succeed while those from less fortunate circumstances struggled -- https://www.districtadministration.c...d-becky-dufour
I often try to help folks realize that their decisions about "what is the best financial decision for my housing dollar" may or may not overlap with the wisest decisions about the path of their own child's education...
For folks who have the means to find a home in any desirable community odds are good that there are no major negatives associated with the local public schools. However it is NOT the same as saying "every costly home will have good schools" -- there are many areas that lack a tradition of high performing schools; such things are much harder to sniff out via simplistic templates designed more as advertising platforms than any sort of useful info.
What is even more distressing is that disarray at the Illinois State Board of Education has weakend the useful of even their data -- switching from PARCC to ACT to SAT has destroyed any consistency of measurements. One is forced to do LOTS MORE extrapolation / guestimation regasrding test data. That said the demographic and financial info is still first rate (unless they destroy that too...) https://iirc.niu.edu/Classic/Default.aspx one can dig into the meaty info, like how much property per student each district has, which is an almost foolproof proxy for the quality of a district...
Your last paragraph is significant- a lot more digging is required now.
Chet, as the resident school expert on this board how comparable are Hinsdale schools to La Grange? -> Our kids are still in daycare but in next few years will go to Ogden then ultimately LT...
I'm going to paste in a post to start this thread --
The above message highlights a HUGE problem that exists when trying to use the "automated" type sites to evaluate schools, namely they make assumptions about "data" that literally HIDE excellent schools. Fact is because New Trier is organized so that ALL freshmen attend the campus in Northfield and then 10th, 11th, and 12th graders are at the Winnetka campus. That sort of unique organization apparently "blows up" the simplistic templates that cheap online comparison sites have relied on.
If you live in the north suburbs / work in anywhere that would be convenient to living there it makes sense to consider any of the towns served by New Trier, experience shows it is among the finest public high schools in the US. Any honest staff member of other well regarded public schools in the region would readily agree to that fact. The very reliable data that has been central to tings like the US News Rankings, based heavily on college readiness as demonstrated by things like success on AP tests, also strongly supports that assertion, but as the "arms race" of scores have increased New Trier has actively resisted buying into the nonsense -- https://newtriernews.org/examiner/20...oing-it-wrong/
To be sure, Stevenson is also a very good high school but it is far from perfect -- as one of the largest single campus high schools in Illinois that alone presents some challenges. The fact is former Superintendent Rick DuFour was the rare voice to highlight the inequity that allowed kids in districts to succeed while those from less fortunate circumstances struggled -- https://www.districtadministration.c...d-becky-dufour
I often try to help folks realize that their decisions about "what is the best financial decision for my housing dollar" may or may not overlap with the wisest decisions about the path of their own child's education...
For folks who have the means to find a home in any desirable community odds are good that there are no major negatives associated with the local public schools. However it is NOT the same as saying "every costly home will have good schools" -- there are many areas that lack a tradition of high performing schools; such things are much harder to sniff out via simplistic templates designed more as advertising platforms than any sort of useful info.
What is even more distressing is that disarray at the Illinois State Board of Education has weakend the useful of even their data -- switching from PARCC to ACT to SAT has destroyed any consistency of measurements. One is forced to do LOTS MORE extrapolation / guestimation regasrding test data. That said the demographic and financial info is still first rate (unless they destroy that too...) https://iirc.niu.edu/Classic/Default.aspx one can dig into the meaty info, like how much property per student each district has, which is an almost foolproof proxy for the quality of a district...
Chet, as the resident school expert on this board how comparable are Hinsdale schools to La Grange? -> Our kids are still in daycare but in next few years will go to Ogden then ultimately LT...
As one of a handful of school districts that run one “school” as split grade level campus LT is hard to directly compare to other schools. Complicating the comparison is the very close distance between the fresh-soph campus in Western Springs and the JR-SR campus in LaGrange — a large percentage of students are able to WALK to either campus which helps keep things like busing costs very low. Of course for families living in the fringes of the district, like the far edges of Burr Ridge, that also increaes travel times...
I know several teachers at each campus, some have specifically aspired to work at LT. Several live in district — that says a lot when teachers choose to send their own kids to a school!
The various online rankings probably suffer a bit because it is rarer for kids to rack up quite as many AP classes but the bottom line is there are still plenty of opportunities to take plenty of challenging courses in any year...
Parents do occiasionally express concerns that there are more talented kids than slots on various sports teams and such though I suspect that is a bit of an exaggeration — no coach cuts a motivated student who can contribute in any positive way; kids lacking in skill or attitude are another story.
The relative affluence of towns that LT serves is very high, arguably it may be harder to find even an affordable rental than in towns served by Stevenson, New Trier, or Maine South unless you factor in places that are in industrial corridors or fronting railyards / quarry. That is part of odd consequences that are not so much “segregated” but simply hemmed in by geography. That could change with new high rises that replaced the YMCA, but given the long term commitment to quality education it is unlikely that standards will decline. The good people of LaGrange will certainly want the best not just for their own kids but less affluent classmates.
It seems that since school districts are the main factor in property values, one could just look at median home prices in each district and rank them that way. A flawed methodology, but I bet a lot of buyers would fall for it.
PV, Schools, downtown caliber, safety, train access, town energy/vibrancy/events, historic charm, big city proximity, lots go into it - at least for us it did... We passed up Highland Park because it was too quiet of a town when we went out on a Saturday night during a visit. And Oak Park/River Forest got passed up due to dry pride...
I think all data aggregator sites and rankings of public schools are pretty flawed anyway. You may as well look at the test scores or the median income. They tell pretty much the same story. Even accounting for fluctuations in type of test scores used in the past 3-6 years.
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Lyons Township also is uniquely structured ...
