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NJ Spotlight - Op-Ed: What School Rankings Can't Tell You About School Quality…Rankings sell glossy magazines and help clinch real estate deals, they don't focus on the whole child or the whole school. (By Patrick Fletcher and Daniel Fishbein)
NJ Spotlight - All-Girls Academy Opening in Newark in September has High Hopes, Lofty Goals...Single-gender school features advanced studies, approach geared toward producing female leaders of the future
NJ Spotlight - Op-Ed: What School Rankings Can't Tell You About School Quality…Rankings sell glossy magazines and help clinch real estate deals, they don't focus on the whole child or the whole school.
By Patrick Fletcher and Daniel Fishbein | August 1, 2013
Every Bergen County school administrator we spoke with cringes at every school ranking that is presented to the public. There are many publications that provide school rankings. None of them are really about education. The ranking never focuses on the big educational picture.
School rankings have become an important measurement used by the public. Real estate firms use them. Community members use them to evaluate their investment in property taxes. School rankings sell magazines. People depend on them. They are very likely here to stay.
Teachers and school leaders are committed to the whole child. Beyond academic proficiency there are factors and needs unique to every student that cannot be ranked. In the context of the individual needs of children, ranking schools is meaningless. Education is about creative and critical thinking. It is often about individual solutions to individual educational needs and situations. This can’t be fit into a one-size-fits-all evaluation. The public should not use school rankings data as a definitive measure for comparison of quality between schools.
Newsweek bases its rankings on how well a district prepares students for college. We know that college isn’t for everybody. A really good school prepares students for whatever life course they choose to take. U.S. News & World Report says it recognizes that not all students are college bound. However, if a school is to receive a gold or silver medal, or even a numerical ranking, the district must score at a certain level in their “College Readiness Index.” We know that workplace readiness is critical as an indicator.
Some question the reliability of the data. One New Jersey district saw that from one year to the next its high school had gone from a gold medal listing to no listing at all. When someone inquired, he was told “U.S. News is currently experiencing some problems with the site, which is causing the discrepancy in the rankings.” He checked the site regularly. There was no change in the rankings.
There are issues with questionable criteria. Does a school day that is 10 minutes longer mean a school is better serving its students? There are many other concerns regarding magazines' school rankings. They don’t tell the true story.
It is important that we offer constructive alternatives to support the challenge we make. There is an existing system, if done accurately, which would meet the need. Building on the existing work of others makes change an accomplishable goal.
The New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) has released School Performance Reports. This is the “new and improved” New Jersey School Report Card. The solution we offer utilizes these reports.
The intent of the Performance Reports is to inform parents about how well the public schools are educating their children. Parents and schools must be able to understand what’s being presented, and they must have confidence in the accuracy of the report. This wasn’t accomplished with the first release of these reports. Concern was expressed regarding the results and the metrics used. The Report was difficult to interpret and there were difficulties with communication when errors were first noted.
Many school administrators continue to have concerns about accuracy. Some found the forms didn’t allow for the full reporting of a district’s programs. NJDOE purchased testing information from the College Board. The one-year statistics (10th grade) they received didn’t account for students who took the PSAT exam in 9th grade.
Traditional “District Factor Groups” (DFG) are no more. In their place are “Peer Groups.” Group members can come from other counties. At one Bergen County district, the high school peer group includes schools from twelve different counties. The middle school also has twelve different counties. They are different from those at the high school. This has caused confusion. Most parents and taxpayers want to compare their schools to neighboring towns.
The School Performance Reports offer a lot of information. Each includes elementary and middle schools, as well as high schools. Peer Groups do provide a school-by-school comparison rather than the district-by-district comparison of the DFG. A very broad framework, developed by very able people, is already in place. The investment has already been made. To maximize this, the shortcomings of the first release must be addressed. Communication between districts and the NJDOE has to be regular and reliable.
When statistical reporting became digital, we traded off individuality, flexibility, and the reliability of information in return for small cost savings. It’s time to reconsider. In the not-too-distant past, people did information gathering. The U.S. Census Bureau comes to mind. Interviewers made the phone calls and went into towns armed with preset questions and a section called comments. We suggest the NJDOE take a similar approach. This would allow for the verification of data. Information used in a School Performance Report would be approved by the district’s administration. Special circumstances and the necessary variations that exist in every school and district would be explained in an understandable way. Confidence can be built in the reliability of the report.
This accomplishes a ranking system we can all live with. NJDOE can minimize the negative impact of rankings provided by magazines. Parents will know how their schools measure up, home buyers will know where to buy homes, and industries will know where the most educated workforce resides.
Patrick Fletcher is superintendent of River Dell Regional High School and president of the Bergen County Association of School Administrators. Daniel Fishbein is superintendent Ridgewood Schools, and the immediate past president of BCASA.
NJ Spotlight - All-Girls Academy Opening in Newark in September has High Hopes, Lofty Goals..Single-gender school features advanced studies, approach geared toward producing female leaders of the future…
John Mooney | August 2, 2013
After 17 years as a principal and teacher in Newark schools, it was too good an opportunity for Kim Wright-White to pass up: Lead the district’s new Girls Academy of Newark, the state’s first all-girls public school in almost 40 years.
But it also meant that Wright-White had to challenge her own assumptions about public schools, a process she continues to go through as she gears up for a September opening.
“It has changed my own perceptions, and now I need to change the perceptions of others,” Wright-White said.
”We’re looking at this changing the whole trajectory of our girls, and being a beacon for other places where women and girls are as well recognized as they should be,” she said.
The school is the second half of the district’s venture into single-gender institutions under Superintendent Cami Anderson, following the opening of Eagle Academy for Young Men last year.
Both will be located in the Louise A. Spencer School in the city’s Central Ward, now home to four distinct schools, all in different parts of the sprawling building.
The academy will start with a sixth grade of at least 75 students and will ultimately grow through 12th grade.
The "college preparatory school" will present an especially rigorous curriculum that will include a Latin requirement, an extended school day, and eventually the International Baccalaureate (IB) program. IB is an intensive, project-based curriculum that private schools in particular have used as an alternative to the Advanced Placement track.
Wright-White said the school will also have a strong technology and international focus, hopefully connecting the students with their peers in places like Singapore and England. She cited how a preponderance of homes in her native Newark are led by women.
“If we don’t change how we prepare women in our city to assume different roles and nontraditional jobs, then we are doing an entire community a disservice,” she said.
In addition, the academy will be set up differently for social and counseling support, recognizing that the needs of girls may differ than those of boys.
“We wanted to create supports that are geared to the needs of girls as they develop into young women,” said Tiffany Hardrick, the district’s assistant superintendent who helped design the program. “We really want to merge the academic and the social supports, because we know how interconnected they are.”
The students will be getting their first sense of the new school next week, when they attend a 10-day orientation session. During that time they will also be at Rutgers University.
The summer program will be led by Sadie Nash Leadership Project, a Brooklyn-based program that aims to empower young women.
The new school has also worked with the Young Women’s Leadership Network, another program out of New York City that has more than a dozen partner schools in New York, Texas, Illinois and Maryland.
All-girls schools are not new, but they have fallen out of favor in public education in New Jersey. The last public school based on this model in New Jersey was Battin High School in Elizabeth, which in 1977 merged with the all-boys Thomas Jefferson High School into the current Elizabeth High School.
There are more than 100 single-gender public schools in the country, both for boys and girls. Another 300 provide some single-gender programs within co-ed schools.
Some of these programs have come under legal challenge as being potentially discriminatory; 2006 federal guidelines mandate that the same opportunities be offered boys and girls. New Jersey also has statute prohibiting certain limited enrollments, including by gender.
One of the values of all-girls schools is that they give students a chance to step out a little, which is sometimes a challenge in co-ed schools. And there is a wealth of research indicating that women remain under-represented in science, technology, engineering and math -- the so-called STEM concentrations.
“It’s a safe space where they can be secure, where they can be vocal,” Wright-White said.
“Very few think of girls in terms of technology, in terms of mathematics, even the international piece,” she said. “That kind of thinking is what we are trying to change.”
The girls and boys schools will be entirely separate, even down to having two entrances at opposite ends of the block-long building. But officials said there is some discussion about having the students interact socially or in other programs.
Once they were aware of the options, families reacted enthusiastically.
“There was a great deal of interest in the school,” said Hardrick. “There was no difficulty recruiting, it was just more a matter of awareness. But people did know about Eagle, and a lot of parents were looking for the female version.”
The new principal said she is proud to be part of it.
“Being a product of Newark and being here as this is created, I am very proud to be part of it,” said Wright-White. “I want to do justice for these girls.”
