Here’s yet another national school ranking reported on in this morning’s Star with expected, if a bit eccentric results. A company, niche.com, founded by some Carnegie Mellon University students over a decade ago, has developed a rating system for all the public schools in the country, district and charter. Here’s the national list, and here’s the Arizona top 100 ranking. Some schools are missing, I think because the company didn’t have all the necessary data.
The rankings are approximate at best. Any company that tries to rate all schools across the country has to be using a crude instrument that takes a few variables and crunches them into some kind of formula. Niche.com uses factors like academics, health & safety, student culture & diversity, teachers, extracurriculars and sports to generate a number. High score wins.
But, crude though the rankings may be, they’re pretty predictable. The Arizona top ten tend to be districts in high rent areas and charters with selective student bodies. Chandler Preparatory Academy in number one. It’s part of the Great Hearts charter school chain, with schools parked in affluent areas which have a variety of ways to make sure they have select student bodies—except for one Great Hearts school in a less affluent area which, no surprise, isn’t nearly as highly rated as the others. BASIS Scottsdale is number two, a school that the U.S. News & World Report’s high school rankings left out because its student body was too selective to be included.
Catalina Foothills district comes in fourth. Other Tucson-area districts making the top ten are Amphitheater, Vail and Tanque Verde.
Here we have yet another ranking which reinforces the idea that “successful” schools have students who have been groomed for academic success by their socioeconomic status, and “less successful” schools have students who are lower on the socioeconomic ladder. What that’s saying, basically, is that the students are more or less successful, not the teachers or the administration or the curriculum or the facilities. Unless, of course, you think that the faculty, administration and curricula at schools in high rent areas are vastly superior —emphasis on “vastly” — to those in poorer areas. They would have to be vastly superior to create such consistent disparities without a lot of help from the students who walk through the schoolhouse doors.
TUSD is number 34, just below the top third of ranked districts and charters, above Marana, at 41, and Sahuarita, at 49. Why is TUSD ranked comparatively higher than those other districts? Maybe the district is more successful than the nay sayers believe, or maybe the ranking system is such a blunt instrument that it can’t be taken very seriously. Maybe it’s a combination of the two factors.
Rankings like these are valuable for parents who want to live in districts where the families are affluent and the schools produce lots of students who end up at high-ranked colleges. That’s why the rankings pages are sponsored by a real estate website. But they’re worthless, even harmful, if they’re used by education critics to say something about the quality of the staff and instruction. Anyone who asks, “Why can’t TUSD at 34 or Sunnyside at 93 be as good as Catalina Foothills or Vail?” and blames TUSD and Sunnyside districts for their lower rankings is either misinformed about how education works or a politician with an agenda.
This article appears in Dec 31, 2015 – Jan 6, 2016.
It’s too bad the list didn’t give race along with wealth in best performing schools. You have to be proficient in writing and speaking English before you can get higher grades. Wealth has little to do with education. I know many college grads who came from poor families, but they wanted and education.
Mr. Safier apparently has a mental block against using the term “white” which is the secret mantra of The Weekly, but don’t tell anyone or they’ll stop subscribing.
How odd: the list places the Santa Cruz County Unified School District in Eloy, which is a hundred miles north of its location in Rio Rico.
Not reassuring, to say the least.
They are just statistics. Accuracy is not necessary. They make them up for a reason.
The list also has the city of Nogales in Nogales “Township.” There are only counties, cities, and towns in Arizona. No suchan entity as “townships.”
Correct me if I’m wrong…
I doubt we will ever see a report that does not present a high correlation between the socio-economic status of communities and the academic achievement of their student populations. Affluence does in fact play the most significant role in determining academic success. Discovering that students from zip code 90210 fare better than students from 85705 will not come as a surprise should any researchers undertake that analysis.
The question is how to level the playing field for students from less affluent communities. Sure ways to ensure this question is never answered is to starve the public schools of funding, drive teachers away from their calling with poor wages, disdain unachievable mandates and interference from federal bureaucrats.
Vouchers are the answer. You can not parent the children. Let the parents.
But you must also accept that there are not equal outcomes. Just give them equal opportunity.
It’s proving difficult for the Grijalva’s and their henchman H.T. Sanchez to recruit and retain their army of radical chicano jihadists in TUSD. Thousands have fled the district, many to Catalina Foothills under open enrollment.
Hard to imagine why any legal resident would send their kids to TUSD, and many now do not.
Safier’s ongoing pro-TUSD bias is amusing to observe. He debunks the notion that the rating system he considers has any validity, but when it comes to answering the question of why TUSD has been ranked higher than Sahuarita and Marana, he writes, “Maybe [TUSD] is more successful than the nay sayers believe, or maybe the ranking system is such a blunt instrument that it can’t be taken very seriously. Maybe it’s a combination of the two factors.”
If the system rates TUSD higher than ANY other districts, it has to have SOME validity, right David? Didn’t anyone ever tell you that you can’t have your cake (scoff at the ratings system) and eat it too (suggest that when it comes to ranking TUSD above Marana and Sahuarita, the ranking system may have some validity)?
Since you’re so interested in debunking various rankings and awards systems, I suggest you take on this one:
http://tucson.com/news/local/education/tusd-recognized-for-gains-in-advanced-placement-classes/article_2b4a306c-a720-5d3f-a379-3555f6782048.html
and the critique of the Star’s coverage of the issue provided here:
https://arizonadailyindependent.com/2015/12/17/tusd-ap-scores-show-disparities/
Go ahead, do it.. I double dare you.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but this post Could we have some consistency, please? – would be an excellent replacement for Comrade Safier.
I find myself reading every post he/she makes and follow the links too.
Fair, balanced and Tucson-centric remarks that make me want more.
Successful parents tend to raise better disciplined, more motivated children and they tend to assist and insist with homework. It is not the fact that they have more money that causes this, but rather it is that group of intangible personal characteristics that are such an integral part of becoming successful that they pass on to their children. Many parents in humble circumstances possess these same characteristics and so very often, their children become successful, in spite of decidedly lesser financial security. Income inequality is often a red herring for low standards in the schools.
Good achievers in school are highly English proficient, as without this solid basis, the other subjects are difficult to impossible. In my first-generation American home, only English was allowed to be spoken, even though my parents, both children of legal Mexican immigrants, spoke Spanish. We all completed four or more years of university studies and have done well, if not very well in terms of our chosen careers, as have our many children.
Today, I am totally fluent in Spanish through study and living and working in Latin countries for more than 30 years, but it was the solid English basis that gave me the footing to bring high value to my employers in many foreign countries. My point is that cultural identity issues do more harm to students than income inequality. Become Americans first; both in language and culture and the rest becomes much easier, never easy, but possible.