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Location: In a city within a state where politicians come to get their PHDs in Corruption
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Originally Posted by Hiruko
I am far from 'woke left,' but if we are going to rely on many of these metrics, there needs to be some accounting for the varied demographics of students from school district to school district. There also needs to be some way to measure how effective a school or district is at serving all of its students. As someone who went to New Trier, I can assure you that New Trier's test scores would look very different if the student body were more diverse and less homogeneously upper-middle-class.
I agree. I do, however, think that's priced in. The draw is "less diverse and more homogeneously upper middle class".
Obviously, equity matters. Hinsdale Central sucks at equity. Deerfield sucks at equity. New Trier sucks at equity. Stevenson sucks at equity.
That said, the average ACT of 21 being enough to earn a 10/10 on academics is distributing to me. And before Hiruko comments something like “public schools” aren’t supposed to have the same resources as schools like Lake Forest Academy, Francis Parker, or the U of C Lab School.
Many of the non-elite private schools in our area also seem to suffer from equity issues. Many parochial schools, along with some charter “Math and Science Academies,” don’t have great statistics either. PMSA’s average ACT is 21 - the state average. However, because of selective enrollment, it’s a lot more likely that the lower performing or less motivated students are siphoned off to Proviso East, so this artificially boosts PMSA’s test scores and equity without making it a better school. It’s probably a better learning environment, but one comparable to the more desirable suburban public high schools.
I guess my whole gripe is how PATHETIC the GreatSchools metrics are, at least in Illinois. In some states like California, New York, and Texas, GreatSchools seems to be more holistic, adding multiple factors into account. And Hiruko, schools like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science in NYC, TJHSST in Virginia, and Bergen County Academies and High Technology HS in New Jersey are comparable to some of Chicagoland’s best private schools, as is IMSA. But in those states, there are multiple other factors added in.
Also, in IL, the public schools seem to have a greater pull on home values. And the first thing buyers see on schools is the GreatSchools rating. If a naive parent sees 7/10 next to Stevenson, GBS, or Hinsdale Central, but an 8/10 next to the less desirable Hinsdale South, which will they prefer? My general take is that we need to edit and oversee how school rankings are viewed greatly. I’d even challenge sites like Redfin and Zillow to import other metrics for schools besides GreatSchools rankings (and make them stop viewing schools like Stevenson as non-high performing because their score isn’t higher than 7/10).
IMO the places like Zillow, Redfin, etc, should just list the school ranking metrics (or at least in addition to GreatSchools) as provided by the State School Testing agency for that particular state. I personally always use Schooldigger.com as my preferred way to compare schools instead of GreatSchools, as I think GreatSchools places way to much emphasis and weighting on the "Improvement" and "Equity" metrics.
What did people do before GreatSchools? They largely did their own legwork and asked people they trusted. Living and dying by these statistics and arbitrary ratings about public schools is one of the dumbest things that I see on this forum.
It's really not.
Go look at real estate listings. These rankings are touted via the websites themselves and the listing agents. This is what is widely available to those searching.
When people from out of town/state look at potential locations for a move, they often start with school districts and rankings on websites. Because if you talk to a realtor based in Elmhurst, they really don't have a clue about the inner workings of the Barrington or Evanston districts. And vice versa. And nearly every realtor has a bias based on where they live or the communities they focus on.
So, while I agree with you that solely relying on these websites for validation of a schools performance is silly, it doesn't mean it's not a part of the process for most.
As for GreatSchools, Niche, US News, etc. They all have their own recipe. Hard for me to sit here and say "equitability" should not be a major consideration when judging performance. But, objectively, any ranking that says Stevenson is a 7/10 probably needs a tweak in the algorithm.
Seems to me that Niche, regardless of the State I've lived in, is the most accurate when compared to local reputation and desirability. It rates A+ - F in most critical criteria, including Academics, Clubs, Facilities, Diversity, College Prep (AP), etc. And for the OPs sanity, it ranks Stevenson as an A+, and the top rated High School in Lake County.
Go look at real estate listings. These rankings are touted via the websites themselves and the listing agents. This is what is widely available to those searching.
When people from out of town/state look at potential locations for a move, they often start with school districts and rankings on websites. Because if you talk to a realtor based in Elmhurst, they really don't have a clue about the inner workings of the Barrington or Evanston districts. And vice versa. And nearly every realtor has a bias based on where they live or the communities they focus on.
So, while I agree with you that solely relying on these websites for validation of a schools performance is silly, it doesn't mean it's not a part of the process for most.
As for GreatSchools, Niche, US News, etc. They all have their own recipe. Hard for me to sit here and say "equitability" should not be a major consideration when judging performance. But, objectively, any ranking that says Stevenson is a 7/10 probably needs a tweak in the algorithm.
Seems to me that Niche, regardless of the State I've lived in, is the most accurate when compared to local reputation and desirability. It rates A+ - F in most critical criteria, including Academics, Clubs, Facilities, Diversity, College Prep (AP), etc. And for the OPs sanity, it ranks Stevenson as an A+, and the top rated High School in Lake County.
Good post. FWIW, US News has Stevenson as the 7th best HS in Illinois, only behind 5 magnet CPS schools and PMSA.
I came across the link by googling "high school rankings Illinois". The US News link was 1st and Niche was 2nd. School digger 3rd, Polaris 4th, and public school review 5th in the Google search results. All those websites have Stevenson top 8 in the state and either the top or within the top 3 of suburban high schools.
Then way down the page is great schools, and its rankings are so inconsistent compared to the others that it's blatantly obvious their metrics are screwed up.
Good post. FWIW, US News has Stevenson as the 7th best HS in Illinois, only behind 5 magnet CPS schools and PMSA.
I came across the link by googling "high school rankings Illinois". The US News link was 1st and Niche was 2nd. School digger 3rd, Polaris 4th, and public school review 5th in the Google search results. All those websites have Stevenson top 8 in the state and either the top or within the top 3 of suburban high schools.
Then way down the page is great schools, and its rankings are so inconsistent compared to the others that it's blatantly obvious their metrics are screwed up.
I always pull this up, but it's my favorite visual representation. It shows the relationship between race, income levels, and educational attainment, for most districts across the Nation.
If 0 is the National Average... Meaning, what the mean reading/writing/math levels are in middle school. This data shows how far ahead, or behind, different districts are and how it correlates directly with income levels and the racial makeup of the district. It then provides some important considerations on why the race and income gaps exist.
To some degree, you can ascertain which districts do the best job of "leveling the playing field" between lower income and minority groups. Or, minimally, where certain groups do better or worse.
This data shows that Stevenson (alongside Carlisle) have the second highest attainment levels, behind only one other District Nationally. It also suggests that affluent and diverse districts like Evanston, have amongst the largest disparities in academic performance by race. To put that in perspective, White Students in the Evanston District are +3.9 over the National Average, while Black students are -.6 against the National Average.
Anyways...... This is the type of data I like to see, rather than flawed weighted scoring systems.
As someone who bought a house in the burbs within the last year, I will say that the school rankings presented on redfin and zillow had literally zero impact on where I bought. In terms of researching the quality of the schools in various suburbs, I simply looked at average ACT/SAT scores and the list of colleges where recent classes went to. For example, if the average ACT was at least somewhere in the mid 20s, with a decent number of students going to schools like UIUC, Michigan, Indiana and at least 1 or a couple students going to any of Ivy League, my perception was that the school district wouldn't be a limiting factor for my kids and it would be up to them on how to make the most of their education. I'm not saying this is the right approach to take, but just what I did. I will also say that most of the public schools have pretty established reputations at this point, regardless of how a ranking organization assigns them a score.
As someone who bought a house in the burbs within the last year, I will say that the school rankings presented on redfin and zillow had literally zero impact on where I bought. In terms of researching the quality of the schools in various suburbs, I simply looked at average ACT/SAT scores and the list of colleges where recent classes went to. For example, if the average ACT was at least somewhere in the mid 20s, with a decent number of students going to schools like UIUC, Michigan, Indiana and at least 1 or a couple students going to any of Ivy League, my perception was that the school district wouldn't be a limiting factor for my kids and it would be up to them on how to make the most of their education. I'm not saying this is the right approach to take, but just what I did. I will also say that most of the public schools have pretty established reputations at this point, regardless of how a ranking organization assigns them a score.
Now we’re getting into anecdotes.
The rankings wouldn’t be presented and sponsored on realtor sites, if they weren’t leveraged. Period. Zillow and Redfin know more than your anecdotal experience. And these ranking sites wouldn’t have real estate website and realtor marketing present on their unless there was a mutual benefit.
Now for the average test scores and which universities were well represented, where do you source that data? Online, or through individuals within the district?
With Ivies becoming more competitive each year, it requires more from the students’ end now to get in - it’s less on the school than it used to be. But from my experience, schools like Naperville North and Stevenson still do phenomenal at getting kids to the Ivy League. And this year at IMSA, 5 kids were accepted to Yale in the Single Choice Early Action round alone.
But what that means is schools that were historically considered a notch below Ivies, like USC, Northwestern, and Rice are becoming just as hard to get into now as Ivies. So I think we also need to start considering schools’ ability to prepare their students for the workforce, not just to get accepted to a top-tier university. New Trier seems to have many legacy students (kids whose parents attended schools like Harvard and Princeton) but I’m not sure if these legacy kids are as set up for success as kids from IMSA or Stevenson or Naperville schools that earned their way to Ivies.
I am far from 'woke left,' but if we are going to rely on many of these metrics, there needs to be some accounting for the varied demographics of students from school district to school district. There also needs to be some way to measure how effective a school or district is at serving all of its students. As someone who went to New Trier, I can assure you that New Trier's test scores would look very different if the student body were more diverse and less homogeneously upper-middle-class.
I think that point is that if 'equity rating' can negatively impact a school then we have to question the extent to which the ratings can be relied upon.
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