Great schools score: School Ratings & Reviews for Public & Private Schools: GreatSchools

Study: Common school ratings biased, often inaccurate

A first-grade teacher leads a lesson about bee colonies with her students.

Allison Shelley / The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages

There is a powerful, intuitive idea that has long shaped perceptions of American education: the schools with the highest test scores are the best schools. It seeps into everything from conversations among parents to real estate websites.

But this thinking is profoundly misleading, according to new research. Schools with the top scores aren’t necessarily the ones that actually help students learn more. On top of that, rating schools based on overall scores unfairly penalizes those serving more students of color, potentially exacerbating racial segregation.

“If you just go by published accountability ratings, you will be guided to the schools that have the most white and Asian students,” said Josh Angrist, a professor at MIT who recently won the Nobel Prize in economics. “You’re not actually being guided to the best schools.”

This conclusion isn’t new in education research, but the paper, by Angrist and three other economists, is among the first to rigorously examine the validity of the measures used by the popular third-party rating site GreatSchools. The study comes after reporting by Chalkbeat in 2019 showed that GreatSchools ratings effectively steer families towards schools serving more affluent, white, and Asian students.

Using data from middle schools in Denver and New York City, the researchers compare the  components of GreatSchools’ ratings to their own statistically sophisticated measurements of school performance. (The researchers look only at test scores, mirroring how GreatSchools rates middle schools.) 

They find that the part of a school’s 1-10 rating that is based on students’ proficiency on state exams is particularly off base, and is strongly skewed in ways that hurt schools with more students of color. 

Another part of the rating, the academic “growth” score, is much less biased and a strong gauge of how much a school contributes to student learning, the researchers conclude.

Angrist says their point is not to pick on GreatSchools but to show that the test score metrics widely used by states, media outlets, and other third-party sites are fraught with bias. U.S. News and World Report faced similar criticism last year after rolling out its own rankings of elementary and middle schools across the country.

“We think of [GreatSchools] as emblematic of what’s going on in the domain of school ratings,” Angrist said.

The new research was partially funded by the Walton Family Foundation, which is also a funder of both Chalkbeat and GreatSchools.

Jon Deane, the CEO of GreatSchools, said the organization welcomes this type of study. “This is the work we do: to consistently try to provide the best information to families,” he said. “When we see a signal that there may be better information, we get excited about that.” Deane also noted that the research is limited by its focus on middle schools in just two cities.

Still, he said the work validated GreatSchools’ recent shift to place more weight on academic growth, which — when available — is now the biggest factor in the site’s ratings of elementary and middle schools.  

Asked why GreatSchools continues to use proficiency as a significant component of their school ratings, in light of this and other research, Deane said, “We believe combining multiple measures is really important to share a richer picture of what matters most.” 

The researchers say that some of the differences in proficiency rates across schools reflect factors outside of schools’ control that affect students’ test scores. Those include poverty, food insecurity, and environmental hazards, like lead poisoning, that students of color are more likely to experience.

Of course, school ratings are only one factor in how parents choose schools. Another recent study suggests that school demographics themselves make a big difference. 

In a survey-based experiment, White, Asian, and Hispanic parents in New York City were all much less likely to say they would send their children to a high school with mostly Black students compared to one with fewer Black students. White and Asian parents were also less likely to select a predominantly Hispanic school than a racially mixed or mostly white school.

This was true even when parents were provided with information showing that the school’s graduation rate and safety were similar to other schools with a different racial makeup. These survey results closely mirror families’ actual decisions in New York City’s high school application process.

“People often use these ratings as a way to justify the preferences they already have coming into making school choices,” said Chantal Hailey, a University of Texas at Austin professor who conducted the study. “They already have preconceived notions of which schools are quality schools based upon the demographics.”

Still, a third recent study offers some reason to believe that putting more emphasis on progress would encourage less racially segregated schools. Presented with growth data on nearby schools, white and high-income families were more likely to say they would choose one with more students of color and low-income students.  

“One of the chief virtues of measuring and reporting growth is that it upends the conventional wisdom that the most effective schools are almost always the Whitest and most affluent,” wrote researchers David Houston of George Mason University and Jeffrey Henig of Teachers College, Columbia University.

Any effort to use growth scores to point families to high-quality schools is going to face a major roadblock in the years to come, though. State testing was canceled in 2020, and many fewer students took the tests than usual in 2021. That means it will be challenging — although some say not impossible — to calculate accurate school growth scores.

Currently, GreatSchools ratings are largely based on tests taken in spring 2019. Deane says the organization is still figuring out how to use data from state tests taken last year.

GreatSchools to Omit Pandemic School Testing Data From Its Ratings – The 74

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Parents and educators are asking: when is GreatSchools going to have new school data? 

The answer is two-fold. First, it’s important to know we are not going to give parents information that doesn’t help them, or only helps some of them. Second, we have been consistently adding new data, but its type and source may surprise you.

Omitting new assessment data — for now 

The cancellation of standardized testing in 2020 and the partial resumption in 2021 has produced two years of nonexistent or, at best, incomplete data. In collecting data from all 51 state education agencies, we’ve found that student participation levels differ widely, ranging from 97% in Mississippi to just 23% in California. 

Importantly, even in states with “high” participation rates, we do not know which student groups are represented. History tells us the highest-need students often disappear from these data first — and they are also the ones who have suffered the most from pandemic learning disruptions.

Without disaggregation, it is impossible to discern which student groups are under- or unrepresented in a given data set, challenging our ability to present an accurate view on how schools are serving all students. Using incomplete data sets to update our school quality ratings would be like trying to make a recipe with only a partial ingredient list.

This, combined with the concerns we’ve heard from many of our research partners, is why we are excluding 2020 and 2021 assessment data from our GreatSchools ratings. In most states, this means that parents will continue to see test data from 2019 on their school profiles until we can obtain and display 2022 assessment data. Each state’s timeline and data publication process is unique, but we hope to receive this data and make it available to parents nationwide on our profiles by the end of this year.  

Although we are working to collect and display this 2022 assessment data as soon as we can get it from states, we also know that parents can’t wait. They need recent, relevant school information now. For families, parsing through years of school data isn’t an academic exercise — it’s a matter of their child’s education and well-being. According to the National Parents Union, more than a third of K-12 parents are concerned about how schools are supporting students’ learning and their social-emotional and mental health needs amid the ongoing pandemic. 

Parents need timely, robust school information now more than ever, and we have committed to finding and sharing it from several new sources.

Advancing a broader view of school quality 

Data acquisition challenges aside, we know that school quality is defined by more than just test scores. Painting a rich picture of school quality includes sharing information on the resources schools have to offer, the practices they employ to support all students, as well as the outcomes the school is achieving and whether all of these things are equitably distributed. 

Even before the pandemic struck, GreatSchools has been collecting and sharing new, relevant school information with parents that goes beyond test scores. We remain committed to presenting families with a more holistic view of school quality by:

• Sharing new data types. School quality is reflected by more than just assessment data. Components of a school’s culture, such as trust and commitment, also contribute to student success. We’ve already added this “school climate” data to GreatSchools profiles in Illinois and New York City. Building upon what we’ve learned, we are now preparing to display climate data in five more states in the coming months. By connecting more parents with this valuable, new type of school quality information, we hope more states will see the benefit of making this data accessible for families.

• Leveraging partnerships to improve data access. High schools with strong college outcomes often attribute their success to advanced course offerings. To help parents discover schools that offer such classes, we’re partnering with national organizations that share our commitment to ensuring parents have equitable access to this information. Starting this week, parents will be able to browse high schools’ advanced course offerings on GreatSchools profiles and explore why they matter for their child’s success.

• Spotlighting best practices for college success. In 2021, we recognized 1,838 public high schools with our annual College Success Award, which offers parents a snapshot of whether high schools prepare students to enroll in college, succeed with college-level coursework, and persist into their second year. In 2022, we launched our bilingual Transforming High School collection to highlight for educators and parents how College Success Award-winners are innovating to create more equitable and effective experiences for their students. The two-year project began with a thorough landscape analysis; consultation with school design experts; interviews with experts, parents, and educators; and a data analysis on schools with outsized success among low-income students. 

Related:

Exclusive — 39 States Can’t Say How Well High Schools Are Preparing Teens for College; New GreatSchools Report IDs Best Schools in 9 States at Getting Grads Into Higher Ed

• Improving opportunities for school leaders to share information. Who better to share what makes a school great than the dedicated leaders that walk its halls each day? School leaders can register as a representative of their school, then add information about practices, policies and courses to their GreatSchools profile. This newly revamped feature allows leaders to connect directly with current and prospective parents and provide additional context beyond quantitative data, from band to world languages to extracurriculars and more.

• Elevating the voices of historically marginalized families. The Community Reviews section of our school profiles allows parents, students, faculty and community members to share their school experiences with others. We’ve recently improved our review tool to better support parents of diverse backgrounds in sharing their story. In the past three months alone, nearly 10,000 parents and community members added new reviews to school profiles, reflecting upon school safety, learning, social-emotional well-being and more so families of similar identities can understand how the school will support their child.

A call to action for state education agencies

As noted, we are actively working with states to collect 2022 assessment data and look forward to displaying that on our profiles when it becomes available. In the meantime, we urge states to join our efforts to connect parents with the rich school quality information they want and deserve. To do this, state education agencies must:

• Disaggregate data sets. Giving families access to rich, disaggregated data builds knowledge, expands thinking and strengthens positive communication among families, educators and schools. A recent Data Quality Campaign report shows that only 28 states disaggregate data by student groups in their state report cards (and six states that previously did have now removed it). The effects of disrupted learning were not evenly distributed and parents deserve to know who is being left behind.
• Calculate growth. Even without consistent assessment data from 2020 and 2021, states can — and should — still calculate growth. There is no reason why 2019 and 2022 data cannot be used to quantify how well schools have supported students the past few years. If we only look at students’ current achievement levels, we will not get a clear understanding of how schools are truly serving their students, particularly children of color. This is why growth is now key to our GreatSchools ratings, and why we continue to advocate for states to gather (and disaggregate) this data to provide a more nuanced lens on school quality.

Related:

Deane: To Help Parents Better Understand Their Children’s Schools, Student Growth Is Now Key in Our GreatSchools Ratings

• Prioritize school climate data. School climate data helps parents understand important aspects of their child’s learning environment, such as leadership, collaboration among teachers, instructional rigor, family engagement and student social-emotional support. Although the pandemic disrupted the collection of this information, it’s coming back much quicker than assessment data. However, many states still don’t collect or report climate data, others do so voluntarily by districts, and some share it only at the district or state level. Every school in the country should have a climate survey and parents should be able to see the results. States can make this happen. 

Combining reliable and valid outcomes data — particularly data rooted in equity — and new information about climate, school practices and parent perspectives will give parents more of what they need to obtain a better picture of school quality today. As the ancient proverb goes, “necessity is the mother of invention.” Though the pandemic complicated our usual ways of assessing school quality, it has also created opportunities to find new ways of understanding how well schools are serving their students. 

Parents need accurate and equitable school information now. With a bit of creativity and dedication, together we can find it. 

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GreatSchools Wanted to Disrupt Online School Ratings. But Did It Make Neighborhood Segregation Worse? – Mother Jones

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Thalia Tringo, a real estate agent in the Boston area, faces a dilemma whenever a homebuyer asks her if the local schools are any good. This can be a dicey topic because buyers’ perceptions of schools are often closely associated with the racial makeup of their student bodies, which usually matches the racial makeup of their surrounding neighborhoods. Tringo avoids answering specific questions about schools because of professional rules designed to prevent racial discrimination in housing. So like many real estate agents, she plays it safe, telling clients to look up the information on their own, even though she is wary of what they’re likely to find.

Among the first results on a cursory Google search is usually GreatSchools, a nonprofit site that ranks public schools nationwide and feeds that information to real estate sites such as Redfin, Zillow, and Realtor. com. GreatSchools is easy to find, but its ratings correlate closely with students’ racial or economic backgrounds. “The schools that get high marks and diverse schools tend to not be the same ones,” Tringo says of the exams GreatSchools uses to produce its score. She recalls going to an eighth grade graduation for a client’s kid at Winter Hill Community Innovation School in Somerville, just outside of Boston, and marveling at the friendly atmosphere among the middle schoolers and the diversity of the graduating class. “[It] was just amazing,” she says. “But you wouldn’t get that from looking at rankings.”

Winter Hill has one of the most diverse student bodies in Somerville: Half of its students are Latino and 13 percent are Black. Yet with a rating of 4 on a scale of 1 to 10, GreatSchools deems Winter Hill “below average.” Its students’ poor test scores drag its rating down, despite evidence that they’re making as much academic progress as most students in Massachusetts. Buyers looking for homes near highly rated schools might skip right over the Winter Hill neighborhood and look closer to one of Somerville’s other schools or in another town altogether.

There’s evidence that GreatSchools’ ratings are exacerbating racial segregation, not just within school systems but in the communities around them. “What makes GreatSchools popular is partly that they’re linked to real estate sites, which is partly what makes them dangerous,” says Sean Reardon, an education professor at Stanford University who studies poverty and inequality. “They start to overtly link people’s residential choices to what seems to be a measure of school quality. While that makes lots of sense if it’s a high-quality metric of school quality, if it’s more of a measure of socio­economic composition of schools, then it runs the risk of creating incentives for more socioeconomic segregation.”

While residential segregation can lead to school segregation, the inverse is also true.

If you don’t have kids or haven’t been looking for a house recently, you may not have heard of GreatSchools, but its influence is profound. Its ratings are incorporated into popular real estate websites, which pay GreatSchools to use its data. It is supported by deep-pocketed philanthropies, especially ones with ties to the charter school movement. GreatSchools says its site attracts 45 million people a year; by comparison, there are about 40 million households with children in the United States.

Due to the pandemic and the reenergized movement to fight for racial justice, the inequities between school districts have been thrown into sharp relief: Some can easily afford to implement distance learning while others lack the resources to effectively teach online. Institutions of all sorts are being pushed to reexamine their roles in reinforcing systemic racial divides, and GreatSchools, which had already been reevaluating aspects of its school-rating metrics, appears to be doing the same. “Racial segregation and racist policies are woven into our education system and everyone involved has to do better to create more equitable outcomes for all students, GreatSchools included,” CEO Jon Deane told me in an email. But Deane added that he still believed GreatSchools can be an important tool for parents. “We feel strongly that it’s a parent’s civil right to have access to information about their schools.”

Bill Jackson got the idea for Great­Schools in the early 1990s, when San Francisco’s school superintendent wanted to know if a new restructuring program was working. He dispatched the twentysomething Jackson, who had a few years of teaching experience and a public affairs fellowship, to investigate. Jackson concluded that the rosy reports that principals were feeding back to the superintendent were mostly untrue. “This experience led me to believe that parents and the public—not to mention school administrators—needed more and better information about school quality,” Jackson later recalled.

In 1998, after working for a tech startup and a voter information website, Jackson launched GreatSchools. The nonprofit expanded rapidly after President George W. Bush signed No Child Left Behind four years later, requiring states to implement standardized testing and publish the results. GreatSchools quickly went from evaluating schools in two Bay Area counties to becoming a de facto grading system for all public schools. In 2011, as it added an unprecedented number of schools to its database, it brought in $10.8 million. (In 2018, the most recent year for which data is available, its revenues were $7.3 million.)

GreatSchools now maintains more than 100,000 school profiles, one for nearly every public school in the country. Its data, pulled from states and the federal government, includes test scores, teacher-to-­student ratios, discipline rates, and students’ racial backgrounds. The site also includes user reviews from parents and community members, though their input doesn’t affect a school’s overall rating. GreatSchools lets schools add information to their profiles, including schedules, uniform policies, and what kinds of classes and extracurricular activities they offer.

But any nuance is overwhelmed by the single score featured prominently at the top of every profile. A rating of 1 to 4 indicates a school is “below average”; 5 or 6 signals it is “average”; and 7 to 10 means it is “above average.” Those scores are generated using complex formulas that rely heavily on standardized tests. Yet education researchers and advocates worry about evaluating schools based on their test scores. The tests, they say, measure surprisingly little of what students learn; have debatable abilities to predict kids’ future success; and produce results so highly correlated to students’ racial and economic backgrounds that they are, essentially, demography in disguise.

“Schools are not commodities that can be shopped for like cereal.”

Since 2017, GreatSchools has tried to make its scores take into account whether students across demographic groups are falling behind their peers both within the same school and in the rest of their state. In August, GreatSchools rolled out a major overhaul of its system in California and Michigan, which produced new ratings that give less weight to raw test scores and more importance to equity and year-to-year improvements on test scores. GreatSchools plans to expand that approach nationwide. (Three days after this story was published online, GreatSchools announced that it was implementing the new ratings across the country.)*

But any radical changes to Great­Schools’ ratings would require states and the federal government to provide additional data for all schools in a consistent fashion. The appeal of Great­Schools ratings, after all, is that they provide a uniform way to compare schools across the country.

For now, GreatSchools’ heavy reliance on test scores—and other measures that are highly correlated with race, like graduation rates and Advanced Placement test performance—means homebuyers looking at its ratings don’t have to harbor any racial animus to steer clear of neighborhoods with sizable Black or Latino populations. They just have to use GreatSchools’ filters on real estate websites to skip over listings in areas with poorly rated schools. Since homebuyers who can afford to move into areas with highly rated schools are largely white and Asian, the scores could reinforce the separation of neighborhoods along racial lines.

In 2018, two business professors, Sharique Hasan of Duke University and Anuj Kumar of the University of Florida, published a study that examined what happened to neighborhoods in 19 states and Washington, DC, after GreatSchools ratings were introduced. Their analysis took into account local real estate trends and recognized that homes near schools with better test scores were already priced higher before GreatSchools rated them. When the researchers updated their findings this spring by adding seven more states, they found that the gap between average home prices near schools with better ratings increased by more than $16,300 after three years compared to those near average-rated schools. And those areas close to highly rated schools attracted more white and Asian residents. Near lower-rated schools, the gap in property values also decreased by roughly $16,000 over three years, and white and Asian residents left. “Broader access to information increased segregation because high-income families could more readily leverage school ratings to move to neighborhoods with better schools,” Hasan and Kumar wrote. “In this case, knowledge was indeed power, but only for the powerful.”

While residential segregation can lead to school segregation, the inverse is also true. A major reason for that is a 1974 Supreme Court ruling that school desegregation efforts cannot stretch across district lines, except in the most egregious cases. But even within districts, boundary lines that dictate which schools kids attend can skew neighborhood demographics. For decades, parents have used the racial breakdown of schools as a proxy for assessing their quality. Ann Owens, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California, found that households with children live in more segregated areas than those without children. “As long as neighborhoods are demarcated by school district boundaries limiting enrollment options, parents will take these boundaries into account when making residential choices, which may contribute to segregation,” she wrote.

Last year, journalists Matt Barnum and Gabrielle LaMarr LeMee of the education news site Chalkbeat concluded that GreatSchools’ ratings “effectively penalize” schools serving higher proportions of low-income, Black, and Latino students. The Chalkbeat writers noted that GreatSchools’ own data showed that many of these schools were doing a good job helping students learn math and English. Yet they still had a tough time getting above-average ratings on GreatSchools. “The result,” the reporters wrote, “is a ubiquitous, privately run school ratings system that is steering people toward whiter, more affluent schools.”

Explore Oakland’s GreatSchools Ratings in This Interactive Map

In Oakland, where GreatSchools is headquartered, most of the highest-rated schools (scores 7–9) are situated in the northern part of the city lining up with white neighborhoods, whereas most of the lowest-rated schools (scores 1–3) are concentrated in the neighborhoods of West Oakland, Fruitvale, and Eastern Oakland, parts of the city where Latino and Black people predominantly live.

GreatSchools says its ratings are not the final word on schools’ quality, but a starting point for parents to investigate further. But despite requests from Kumar, it won’t provide data on how many users scroll past the top number to read more nuanced information. Kumar says his study’s results fly in the face of hopes that equal access to information will promote equality, a premise that remains at the heart of GreatSchools’ mission. “I personally feel their intentions are noble,” he says. “But what we are seeing is, there are often unintended consequences.” Even if all parents had the same access to information, he says, they do not all have the same ability to put that information to use.

Deane, GreatSchools’ CEO, told me that the conclusions reached by Chalkbeat and Hasan and Kumar “overlook, or at best minimize,” the systemic racism that has “steered our society for decades.” “It’s very important to look at underlying issues and policies that segregate communities and create opportunity gaps, including school boundary designations, property taxes and the relationship to school funding, discipline and safety policies, among others,” Deane wrote in an email. “If we are to address the fundamental inequalities that still exist in America’s schools, we must respect the right of all parents to access critical information about their schools. This is GreatSchools’ mission.”

GreatSchools management has been aware of these issues for years. Jackson, who left the organization in 2016, says that as early as the mid-2000s, he and others at GreatSchools had worried that assigning school ratings could exacerbate residential segregation. “People are absolutely using [GreatSchools ratings] to find other people like them and to sort economically and sometimes racially,” he says. But he recalls that GreatSchools’ management concluded that self-sorting wouldn’t go away even if GreatSchools did. People would find the same information elsewhere, either from competitors or government websites.

No students in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Mattapan lived within 1.5 miles of any of the district’s best-rated schools. Not a single one.

It appears that internal conversations about these issues were limited. The group’s board never formally discussed them, Jackson says. Education writer Leanna Landsmann, who was on the board for 14 years and also served as the board chair, told me flatly, “I don’t remember any discussions ever about GreatSchools resegregating neighborhoods. Ever. I would have remembered that. I came out of the civil rights era.” Eric Hanushek, a prominent education researcher at Stanford University and former GreatSchools board member, says he remembers conversations about what kinds of families would use the site, but not about how ratings could affect residential segregation. (Several board members declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.)

The way GreatSchools hopes people will use its rankings has shifted over the years. In 2011, the organization stated that “informed school choice” was one of its top missions. At the time, Jackson told me, charter schools and school choice had bipartisan support, and President Barack Obama’s administration promoted them as well. Now that charter schools have lost favor among Democratic leaders—largely because of concerns that they siphon resources from traditional schools and undermine teachers’ unions—GreatSchools has shied away from explicitly endorsing them.

Nevertheless, GreatSchools’ biggest donors read like a Who’s Who of the school choice movement: the Walton Family Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, and Arnold Ventures. When I asked representatives of these organizations whether they thought GreatSchools helped boost the case for charter schools, they did not answer directly. “We are longtime supporters of the organization,” says Marc Sternberg, the Walton Family Foundation’s K–12 education program director, “because of our belief that knowledge is power, and the more clear, accessible information parents have about school options, the better.”

The Walton foundation has given GreatSchools more than $23 million since 2009. In 2011, the foundation’s $4.8 million grant made up almost half of GreatSchools’ revenue. The Gates Foundation, which has given $9.7 million to GreatSchools (most of it more than a decade ago), pointed out that its most recent grant supported an effort to track how high school graduates fare once they get to college. “Our investments in GreatSchools’ rating systems,” senior adviser Bill Tucker says, “are grounded in our belief that parents deserve and value information about how their schools are performing. ”

Along with representatives from tech and finance firms, people with private and charter school backgrounds still feature prominently on GreatSchools’ board of directors. Deane, who became CEO in early 2019, has a long background in charter schools. He briefly worked on school issues at the Gates Foundation and spent three years as the director of education for the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, which has funded charter school programs. Earlier in his career, Deane worked as a math teacher and administrator in Bay Area charter schools. But he says he sends his children to a public school in San Francisco (it gets an 8 on GreatSchools). The organization, Deane says, is “agnostic” about what kind of school parents send their children to.

“Schools are not commodities that can be shopped for like cereal,” says Jack Schneider, an assistant professor of education at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, who has become one of Great­Schools’ fiercest critics. (The Chan Zuckerberg Initiative has funded some of his research, too. ) In 2017, he wrote a piece for the Washington Post castigating GreatSchools and the real estate websites that use its ratings. His daughter’s school in Somerville, he noted, received a 6 from Great­Schools while schools in nearby towns scored much better. “These towns, no doubt, have excellent schools,” he wrote. “But are they better than ours? There’s little evidence of that. The main difference, it seems, is that they are whiter and more affluent.”

The Boston area is a great illustration of how an overreliance on test-based evaluations can profoundly disrupt communities, whether it results in the state shutting down “underperforming” schools that serve Black and Latino students, or wealthy residents driving up suburban real estate prices as they look for the “right” school attendance zone.

Boston City Councilor Louise Day Hicks, center, along with teachers from the William M. Trotter School, leads an anti-busing march on April 2, 1974.

Ted Dully/The Boston Globe/Getty

Two young men hold protest signs outside South Boston High School in Boston, on Sept. 12, 1974, the first day of school under the new busing system.

Dan Sheehan/The Boston Globe/Getty

School ratings are only one factor behind segregation in the Boston region. White racial animosity is so ingrained in the area that Stony Brook University professor of Africana Studies Zebulon Miletsky calls it “the Deep North.” That hostility exploded in the mid-1970s, after federal Judge W. Arthur Garrity ordered about 17,000 Boston students to change schools in an effort to desegregate them. White parents clashed with police in front of TV cameras as the integration plan was carried out. The “anti-busing” protests had long-­lasting effects: They weakened the resolve of Northern politicians to carry out the types of desegregation efforts Southern cities had gone through decades earlier, and they led to white flight from Boston to its suburbs.

The desegregation efforts ultimately did improve race relations in Boston, Miletsky says, but disputes about racial integration have flared up again. In 2014, Boston replaced the desegregation-era plan with one that prioritizes allowing children to go to nearby schools. Because of these changes, researchers have found that students in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods south of downtown now have fewer top-tier schools to choose from, face more competition to get into those schools, are less likely to attend them, and have to travel farther to get to them. The researchers pointed out that no students in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Mattapan lived within 1.5 miles of any of the district’s best-rated schools. Not a single one.

“Test scores go down and it becomes a ‘bad school,’ and nobody wants to send their kids to bad schools.”

Ruby Reyes, the director of the Boston Education Justice Alliance, says test scores, which GreatSchools relies on for its assessments, set off a chain reaction that schools struggle to recover from. The cycle is exacerbated by gentrification that has pushed lower-income residents out of their neighborhoods or the city completely. At the same time, charter schools have poached students, particularly in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods, further draining public schools short of funds. The result is a “culture of fear and scarcity” in schools with low test scores. “It’s this vicious cycle of [schools] losing kids in enrollment and then their budgets get cut, and so services are lost,” Reyes says. “Then test scores go down and it becomes a ‘bad school,’ and nobody wants to send their kids to bad schools.”

Residents’ fears of sending kids to “bad” schools appear to be fueling “a growing mismatch between the demographics of kids who attend Boston’s K–12 public schools and the city overall,” the Boston Foundation reported in January. “The families who leave Boston when their kids approach kindergarten are predominantly middle and high income. Today, almost 8 in 10 students remaining in Boston’s public schools are low income…and almost 9 in 10 are students of color.”

Fights between white and Black students broke out outside Hyde Park High School in Boston in February 1975.

AP Photo/DPG

Ultimately, Schneider says, families just want an easy way to assess the true quality of schools, and the simplified score GreatSchools offers doesn’t give much insight. “It’s not GreatSchools’ fault that the data wouldn’t answer that question for this family,” he says. “But if their theory of change is we should provide good information to people so that they can make decisions about where to send their kids, then you ought to ensure that you have the information that people need.” “Schools are not uniformly good or bad. Schools have different strengths and weaknesses.”

To find a better answer, Schneider partnered with eight school districts in the state to create an alternative. The Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment (MCIEA), which started in Somerville in 2016, now includes a range of districts, including Boston, wealthy suburbs, and outlying towns. It is developing its own evaluation system, for both schools and individual students, that is meant to replace standardized testing.

Most school rating systems don’t ask people what they actually want out of their schools, Schneider says. So that’s where he started. When he and other researchers talked to teachers, parents, administrators, local leaders, and students, they heard a list of concerns that aren’t reflected in GreatSchools’ ratings or the data that governments collect. For example, people said they wanted qualified teachers who connect with students and stick around long enough to be part of the community. They wanted rigorous curricula. They expected kids to feel safe so they can concentrate on learning. And they wanted a place where students could be well-rounded and engaged citizens.

One striking difference between Schneider’s school profiles and those of GreatSchools is that there’s no overall score for each school. “The fact that most states present [an overall] rating of schools is just absolutely evidence of malpractice,” he says.

“Schools are not uniformly good or bad. Schools have different strengths and weaknesses. ”

But how do you gauge that without relying on standardized tests? I saw the alternative in action in an eighth grade science classroom in Milford early this year before schools were closed. The teacher broke her class into teams to assess the contents of four beakers containing clear liquid. The students had all sorts of ideas for how to do the test, or the “performance evaluation,” as MCIEA calls it. Some weighed the beakers to calculate the liquids’ density and compared their results to values they found on the internet. Several smelled the contents and noticed an odor suspiciously like vinegar. Two teams were at the back of the room, boiling the liquids over a burner. If there was any salt residue once the liquid evaporated, one of the students explained, that would probably mean it was salt water. Another kid asked for baking soda, presumably to see if it would foam up when poured in.

The students were devising their own experiments—and seemed to be thoroughly engaged even as they were being evaluated for their problem-solving and teamwork. Teachers in several MCIEA districts told me about the projects they’d been able to create thanks to the freedom they were given. A high school social studies teacher in Attleboro described a project that explored the controversy over whether Harriet Tubman should replace Andrew Jackson on the $20 bill. “I can remember a kid ranting about the Specie Circular,” the teacher told me excitedly. Sally Eosefow, a former engineer who now teaches math, rattled off several challenges she presented to her students. In one, precalculus students had to find a plane wreck on a map given just two angle measurements, which requires them to use sines and cosines. In another, kids chart their own pulse and blood pressure readings based on sinusoidal functions.

Students enter a school in South Boston on the first day of a court-ordered school desegregation program in September 1974.

Joe Dennehy/The Boston Globe/Getty

MCIEA’s long-term goal is to show that these methods produce more valuable results than the existing state exams, so that school districts could replace the tests completely. Yet first both the state and federal education departments would have to agree that MCIEA’s methods could produce the same results as standardized tests. Schneider says that would defeat the purpose, since he sees standardized tests as flawed to begin with. The consortium is “waiting for the political winds to turn” so it can replace standardized tests with its evaluation tools in the districts it works with.

If it succeeds, it could offer parents and educators a very different way of looking at school performance. “If we built better data systems that aligned with the things that people care about and that treated schools and communities fairly,” Schneider says, “maybe we would be able to unravel and unstitch this national narrative we have that good schools are a rare commodity that parents need to compete over and that you can’t just send your kid to the neighborhood public school.”

Explore Boston’s GreatSchools Ratings in This Interactive Map

In 2014, Boston replaced its desegregation plan with one that prioritizes allowing children to go to nearby schools. Since then, researchers have found that students in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods south of downtown have fewer high-performing schools to choose from, which is reflected in GreatSchools’ scores. For example, the Lilla G. Frederick Middle School in Dorchester gets a 1. Its student body is 1 percent white and the surrounding neighborhood is less than 3 percent white.

GreatSchools’ partners are showing signs of taking the problem of racial segregation and school ratings more seriously. Redfin recently changed how it displays Great­Schools ratings. Glenn Kelman, Redfin’s CEO, tells me that putting the ratings on home profiles has been a “real point of contention here at the company.”

Kelman says his employees worry about the potential to encourage white flight and exacerbate residential segregation. Plus, as a company that employs real estate agents, it has to worry about their running afoul of fair housing laws. “The challenge that GreatSchools and Redfin have is that the consumer does want a really simple answer, and we want to provide context,” Kelman says. “People want to know which one is good and which one is bad. When you try to say it’s more complicated than that, you sometimes lose your grip on their attention.”

Kelman says an intern confronted him two years ago about how reductive the GreatSchools ratings could be, so he contacted GreatSchools about providing more details on Redfin’s website. GreatSchools, Kelman says, jumped at the opportunity. Now users can click on a school listed on a house profile and see the different components of GreatSchools’ ratings as well as residents’ reviews of the school. In its first year, the new feature didn’t lead to any changes in consumer behavior, according to Redfin. (Only 10 to 15 percent of people who click on a home profile scroll down far enough to see school ratings in the first place, the company says. It could not provide data on how many users filtered their search results by school ratings, but said few people use the feature.)

Still, Kelman says he’s glad his site included the new information. “I think tech, more broadly than Redfin, is just waking up to the idea that websites matter, mobile applications matter. We have to be careful about the information that we provide,” he says.

“Being in this seat a long time and trying to influence where people ought to want to live, what kind of home they ought to want for environmental reasons or for reasons of social justice, I just feel like I’ve come up against the most deep-seated desires people have,” Kelman tells me. “They call us when they just had their first baby and their world has narrowed to those two or three people—one or two parents and the child. Trying to get them to think about the rest of an American city is hard.”

This story was published with the support of a fellowship from Columbia University’s Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights.

This story has been updated to reflect GreatSchools change to its rating system.

Are GreatSchools’ Ratings Accurate? All You Need to Know

Not every school is the same, and it’s not always easy to find a good school to enroll your child(ren) in. Some schools have a great reputation and you can learn a lot about them by word of mouth, but parents often go online to find out more before enrolling their kids. GreatSchools is a popular website to use to find out more about a school, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best place to go. That being said, are GreatSchools ratings accurate?

Fortunately, DoNotPay can help figure out the answer to that question, and even provide a better alternative. Don’t worry about trying to figure out the legitimacy of reviews or a website on your own anymore. You can access DoNotPay reviews on various companies like Experian Boost, Equifax, Formswift, Lifelock, and Fastweb.

What Is GreatSchools?

GreatSchools is a nonprofit organization designed to help parents find out more information about the schools in their area. The organization hopes to educate parents to help them make the best decision on where to send their kids.

GreatSchools rates a school based on:

• Diversity
• Test Scores
• Graduation Rate
• Student-to-Teacher Ratio
• ACT Scores
• College Readiness
• Advanced Classes Opportunities
• Equity

What Should You Look for in a School?

What you need to look for in a school depends on your child(ren). Some children have different needs than others, so there’s more to research about a school than test scores or available AP classes. 

Questions to ask when looking for a school:

• What opportunities are given to all children attending the school?
• Is bullying an issue at the school?
• Are certain students prioritized over others?
• What type of school is it?
• Is the curriculum at the school any good?
• Does the school have a special education program? If so, is it actually beneficial to the disabled students?
• What do the attending students think of the school?

There are other questions you can ask too. The questions on this list won’t apply to everyone, and every child has different needs that should be addressed.

Is GreatSchools a Good Place to Find Information About a School?

At first glance, GreatSchools seems to be an amazing place for finding information about schools in your area. It provides information regarding test scores and demographics, but that seems to be the only thing the website cares to give out. There is hardly information that isn’t based on race or income, and most of the ratings are broken down by demographics.

For example, when college readiness is broken down by race, two races may have a 10/10 score for college readiness, but every other race of people attending the school have a 3/10 score for college readiness, despite the overall college readiness rating for the school being 10/10. This makes the organization seem racially biased, which could make the school ratings inaccurate or void altogether. 

Based on the parent, student, and teacher reviews of the school located on the website, the initial ratings are accurate. However, when you look for reviews of the organization from another source, an entirely different picture is painted by people who have experienced time at the schools.

On SiteJabber, GreatSchools has an overall rating of 1. 8 out of 5 stars. With that in mind, it can be said that GreatSchools is not a good place to find information on schools in your area. 

What Are People Saying About GreatSchools?

Reviews on SiteJabber paint a horrible picture for GreatSchools. Parents, teachers, and students claim the organization actually removes negative reviews about schools from the site. Searching for reviews of the website brings up several articles on the negative effects the website has on people, as well as articles claiming

GreatSchools is inaccurate and primarily focuses on test scores, ignoring other important aspects of a school. The most prominent issue people have with GreatSchools is that it promotes racial segregation. Whether these claims are true is very controversial, but it’s safe to say people are not fond of GreatSchools. 

How to Find Accurate School Ratings on Your Own

To find accurate school ratings, it’s essential you look up reviews of the website you’re using too. Positive reviews located on the website are not the best source to use for information. It’s better to compare and contrast what different websites say about a school, and to find reviews from other sources. However, this process can take a lot of time and effort.

To find accurate school ratings, you need to:

1. Look up ratings and reviews websites have on the schools in your area.
2. Search for reviews about the websites used.
3. Compare and contrast the information provided.

Find the Best Schools in Your Area with the Help of DoNotPay

It’s not easy to find accurate information on schools in your area. Organizations can remove negative views and have biased opinions on how good a school is and so can parents, teachers, and students. Fortunately, DoNotPay is an amazing and unbiased source to find accurate information on any school.

If you want to find the best schools in your area but don’t know where to start, DoNotPay has you covered in 4 easy steps:

1. Go to the Best Schools Search product on DoNotPay.  
2. Let us guide you through the different priorities you can filter by, including whether you’re looking for a private school vs. public school, your ideal student to teacher ratio, and what grade level you are looking for. 
3. Tell us how you want us to rank the results (by what’s most important to you!) Some examples include, best schools overall, most diverse, best teachers, etc. 
4. Enter the search area you want to search in for. The wider the area, the more schools we can match you with. 

What Else Can DoNotPay Do?

Almost anything! Finding the best school in your area is only one of the many amazing products DoNotPay has to offer. DoNotPay can also help you take someone to small claims court, get airline flight compensation, and help you find lost items! Whenever you’ve got a problem, DoNotPay is there to save the day.

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Are you only researching on GreatSchools when choosing a school?

Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater

Have you ever heard the saying “throwing the baby out with the bathwater”? Legend says that in the past, families only bathed once in a while – and every member of the family got to do it inside the same tub of water.

Dad had the first turn, then Mom, then the kids, and lastly – the baby. By then, the water was not exactly clear and it was easy for whomever was throwing the water out not to see the baby in it.

When you are choosing a school, if you aren’t looking at the important points, you might very well be missing them; and throwing out the opportunity to have your kids attend a good school – and buying the dream home for your family.

Some of the mistakes you could make when choosing a school relate to exclusively using one source of information to assess how “good” a school is.

For example, many people rely only on the information provided by GreatSchools* to compare schools

GreatSchools is an independent website which aims to give parents the tools to be able to compare schools side by side and make an informed decision of whether a school is good for their needs. GreatSchools mainly offers two kinds of information about schools to parents:

1. GreatSchools Ratings
2. GreatSchools Reviews

1. Greatschools Ratings

One digit

When looking through GreatSchools, you can find a big, red graphic with a single digit next to the name of each school. These single-digit numbers go from 1 to 10, with 10 signifying a better school than the one with a grade of 1. By digging a little deeper, you can find that these single-digit numbers have been calculated by GreatSchools based on the State’s Standard of Learning Scores.

In this case, we are talking about the Virginia Standard of Learning Scores (SOL). The SOLs are standardized tests that all children must take every year and the result of these tests is a number from 0 to 100 representing the percentage of children who passed the test.

This way, the Virginia Department of Education is able to average out these passing percentages to identify the overall passing percentage of a grade (e.g. 5th grade), a demographic (e.g. hispanic students), a school, a division (e.g. Fairfax County Public Schools), and the State.

In Virginia, the overall SOL pass rate is 88, and the “division” of Fairfax County Public Schools is 92.

So, what is the problem with using Greatschools single-digit rating?

SOL scores Passed vs Tested

The first problem that I found is that I couldn’t correlate the single-digit to the actual SOL score. I first compared the single digit, say “8” to the last digit of the SOL average for a school. In some cases, it matched (i.e. The school’s average SOL score was “98”). But it was inconsistent. Some schools which had a single digit rating of, for example: “4” did not have an SOL average score of “94”. I averaged the passing rates across the 3 school-years of scores reported on the spreadsheet, but that didn’t match. Next, I averaged only the “Math” scores, only the “Reading” scores, and a combination of all the scores that I could find on the sheet and I still couldn’t make them match.

What I found is that GreatSchools’s ratings are more art than science
The issue with the ratings being more art than science is that this makes it difficult to make an informed decision. How can you know which school is better than another one when you don’t understand how they’re being rated?

So how can you find reliable ratings?
To make a decision based on a reliable rating, you can go directly to the official source of SOL scores – the Virginia Department of Education, where you can find detailed spreadsheets on pass/fail rates for every school, every grade, every subject, and every demographic.

But looking only at test scores can tell you whether a school is good -on paper-, so how do you know what the real-life environment is like? For this, many people rely on reviews. GreatSchools offers reviews which can be written by anybody – parent, teacher, student, and even someone without any ties to the school. However, relying exclusively on GreatSchools’s Reviews can be another mistake.

2. GreatSchools Reviews

Thousands of product reviews is better than just a few

We are so used to relying on reviews for purchasing stuff on the Internet that it’s easy to translate that trust to other reviews. The difference is that, on Amazon, for example, the most popular products have hundreds – if not thousands of reviews. And on top of that, there is a system for voting for the “most helpful” reviews so that they rise at the top (not that these reviews are perfect either, but you can see a trend).

The difference between Amazon and GreatSchools is that most schools only have a handful of reviews (at least in Fairfax County). With hundreds of children attending a school each year, and the ability for students, parents, and everyone else to provide a review – a handful is hardly a representative sample of what the school environment is like. Further, in some cases, one disgruntled person can post as many reviews as s/he wants, therefore biasing the few reviews available.

All this to say that I think GreatSchools is, indeed, a good site
GreatSchools is a valuable website with good information. It’s just that choosing a school based only on the GreatSchools ratings and reviews, causing you to disregard some great homes to purchase, could be like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. This almost happened to some recent clients of mine –

Charlie and Jackie almost missed out on a great home

Let’s look at the example of some recent clients of mine (let’s call them Charlie and Jackie) who were home-shopping from out of town. They had done their homework and had selected several elementary schools and a few homes within their boundaries to visit. So, we were out looking at homes and I mentioned to them another area which could meet their needs. We found a house on the MLS which met all their criteria – and the only thing left to do was to check if the assigned school met their criteria as well.

The results from GreatSchools weren’t promising
Jackie checked GreatSchools and came back sad because the GreatSchools single-digit rating for that school was a “4”. She thought that this meant that it was a 4 out of 10 (and that doesn’t look very good as it points to a below-average rating). Then, she looked at the reviews and there were 13 of them. Several reviews were negative and revolved around a specific theme.

I asked Jackie to check the official School Report Cards
I asked Jackie if she had looked at the Virginia Department of Education “School Report Cards”, and I pointed her to the State government website where she could download the specific spreadsheet. After looking at the official spreadsheet, she found that the school had scored a 94 out of 100. And the average SOL pass rate for the entire Fairfax County is 92 (Virginia’s is 88). Certainly, 94 is above average and is not the poor “4 out of 10” that she came to believe at first.

Jackie also evaluated the validity of the reviews
After she looked at the SOL scores, I asked Jackie to evaluate whether the reviews were valid or if they were perhaps written by a few disgruntled people. And even if there were several disgruntled people, we wondered if 13 total reviews (8 negative ones) were enough to give her the big picture of the school environment with over 800 kids enrolled in the 2011-2012 school year. To get a better understanding of the school environment, Jackie also got information from neighbors with kids in the school who gave her a different view from what the GreatSchools’s negative reviews said.

Charlie and Jackie made a decision armed with enough information
Happily, Charlie and Jackie were satisfied with the new info they had found and decided to make an offer on the home they really liked – because the school did meet their criteria after all.

Are these the only two ways to choose a school?

SOL School Report Cards are one way to compare schools

You may think that choosing a school based only on reviews and SOL scores doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the right school for your children. And you are right. Reviews are very subjective. You would have to have enough of them to see a trend.

And SOL scores are only one way to compare a school with another. There are several reasons why a school might be better over another for your specific needs. Some of the reasons could be the size of it (by enrollment), the special programs offered, and even the grades offered. All of this information is publicly available on the official Fairfax County Public Schools website.

Here are a few public sources of information that you can access to make an informed decision

Now you know of other sources of information that you can access to get a better picture of any school that you are considering for your children:

1. The Virginia Department of Education “School Report Cards” – for detailed SOL pass/fail rates

2. The Fairfax County Public Schools website– for information on special programs, enrollment, grades offered, etc.

And yes,

3. The GreatSchools website– where you can find other juicy bits of info to help you make an informed decision.

Next Step

Do you have any other sources of information that you have used to help you decide which school is the right one for you? Please, do share them below. Other home-buyers will thank you.

*The GreatSchools name is a registered trademark of its owner.

The Problem with “Great Schools”

by Ali McKay

If you have young kids or use online realtor sites, you’ve probably seen the school ratings from GreatSchools. Our school is rated a “4”. That’s out of 10. When I was in school, forty percent is not a grade that I or my parents would have been happy with. In fact, there would have been a fair amount of freaking out about a 4 out of 10. And yet, my children, and all of the other 330 kids in that school, are learning, having fun, and occasionally misbehaving or letting off steam. They are being kids. The more I think about it, the more I wonder how a building full of people – actual kids, teachers, parents, staff – can be described by one number.

I am very happy with our school, even though it has some pretty significant challenges. It isn’t a “4” to me, or to most other parents I’ve talked to. I have friends at other nearby elementary schools with ratings of “3”, “4”, even “2” – they also love their schools.

So why is our school’s Greatschool.org rating not fitting my experience, and so many other people’s experience? And why do ratings in general, and Greatschool.org’s ratings in particular, perpetuate segregation and resource hoarding?    

First, a little bit more about my experience. I knew our school was a remarkable place when we toured. I saw a young girl put her arm around the shoulders of her classmate (who appeared to have significant special needs) and guide her carefully across the library. This act of care stuck with me, but mostly, I just saw lots of cute kids. Many were students of color, some girls wore headscarves, and there were a wide range of disabilities and special needs. This was, and is, a community that was a better reflection of the world than a school that is white, privileged and segregated. We believed this would be the kind of education my kids needed. So, we left our more white, privileged and segregated school and moved our children to this school.

And it has been the kind of education they need. Truthfully, it’s also been the kind of education I also need as a white, privileged parent. My older son, an “Advanced Learner”, is thriving, especially socially. I won’t say the academics are as rigorous (or stressful) as before, but he is a reading fiend and I have seen his anxiety drop and his social life develop in a very healthy and positive way – in ways I don’t think it could have at the whiter, much richer school he attended before. In our previous school, there was a clear majority (white, wealthy, high achieving) from whose norms he desperately did not want to deviate. With such a clear norm, his drive to conform was strong. He cried in class often. And, our platitudes to him about diversity held little weight or relevance to him there. Now, he is one among many – different races, different economic classes, different religions. It seems his need to conform can’t find root.

Importantly, from that also flows an active dialogue and conversations between us and our kids, and between my husband and I as their parents, about race, class and difference. Why does a classmate wear a head scarf? What is her experience fasting for Ramadan? What is a Christian? What is an Atheist? These are all conversations we’ve had. We’ve had to engage with these issues as parents much more deeply than when we could float lazily on the river of sameness at our old school. We are now “riding the rapids” of difference, which is sometimes scary, but also empowering. Empowering because we learn and develop critical thinking skills rather than float along doing what everyone else does.

As for my younger son, who is in Kindergarten, he just told me the other day that he actually likes school. He’s enjoying himself, and he’s learning to read, write, and interact with peers who look and act differently and have different abilities than he does. He gets a social education as much as an academic one. Most importantly, there are loving, dedicated and hard-working teachers and staff at school every day telling all the students that they matter and that they can learn. These things are very important to me, and a number rating will never be able to tell me about them.

Now, let’s talk about the problem with GreatSchools. Our previous school is a “good” school, rated 7 out of 10 on GreatSchools. Search on GreatSchools and you’ll see these ratings right away. The “good” schools are marked with big green tear drops (let’s call them “GoHere! Drops”). The schools who rate 7 or less are depicted by tiny little orange, red or gray circles (let’s call them “Stay Away! Circles”). Here is Seattle, where I live:

Parents who see those little orange and red dots (Stay Away! Circles) are, understandably, worried. The ever-present narrative is that you MUST send your kids to the good schools. And you must do whatever it takes to send them to those schools. Or you go to private school (and many do in Seattle).  Why is this the narrative? Because that’s what everyone else says and does. Because we are asking and answering other people’s questions. But we need to be asking other (or at least more) questions. Questions of the schools, questions of ourselves, and questions of GreatSchools.

So what, exactly, is GreatSchools measuring? Mostly socioeconomic status, it turns out. In fact, Jack Schneider, an historian and researcher who studies schools, has written that factors the schools can control usually explain only about 20% of test scores.  That means at least sixty percent of test scores is determined by socioeconomic status. Low income students will tend to score lower and high income students will score higher – and this is regardless of where they go to school. Much has been written about why, but, as just one example, researchers have found that poverty affects kids’ language environments. And, middle and upper class parents are, from day one, cultivating their kids’ language and other skills, setting them up to stay in the middle or upper class.

Certainly, the more words you know and the more your parents and your upbringing have cultivated you for tests, the better your test scores will be.   It is these scores that account for 47% of GreatSchool’s school rating for elementary schools (and a whopping 72% if you add in their ‘Student Progress’ on tests factor). This means that the GoHere! Drops and the StayAway! Circles are mostly telling you to find high socioeconomic students and avoid lower socioeconomic students (and English language learners, kids who qualify for special education services, and so on . . .).

I can attest that the testing situation I’ve just described is true for my kids. Ours is a Title I school where 65% of students qualify for Free and Reduced Lunch, and, significantly, upwards of 30% are homeless and 48% turn over (i.e. leave) every year. While many students at our school do not meet the standards for their grades, my kids test fine (as mentioned above, the older one is even an “Advanced Learner”).

GreatSchools seems to be aware that there may be a problem, and changed their ratings late in 2017 to include an equity component. This component accounts for 28% of a school’s rating (i.e. whether it is a GoHere! Drop or a StayAway! Circle). Their website says: “We believe that every parent — regardless of where they live or how much money they make — needs reliable information in order to ensure their child is being served by their school.” They have many pictures of Black and Brown families on their site.

They may be sincere and wish to effect positive change. But they are an organization that relies heavily on test scores. And importantly, appears to be funded by revenue from ads for private schools and funders, like the Walton Foundation (a conservative foundation created by the Walmart family), that have often been hostile to public schools – hostile to the very idea that public schools are a common good that supports a robust, flexible and tolerant democracy. We also need to ask how useful these school ratings are to the Black and Brown families they picture on their website. The GoHere! Drops show up almost exclusively in mostly white neighborhoods where, in Seattle and cities like it, a small single family home costs at least a million dollars and where there is little or no affordable housing. (That school with the 10 in the map above is in a neighborhood where, as of this writing, there was nothing for sale below about $1 million, and I happen to know many desirable houses go for 30-40% over asking.) Similarly, how much revenue does GreatSchools generate licensing their ratings to online realtor sites and other real estate sites targeting people who have the wealth to purchase a home in the first place? Those who have enough income and wealth to purchase a home in zone with a “good” school (GoHere! Drops) are not low income or low net worth families. Even GreatSchools’ president Mathew Nelson says that the best way to know if a school is right for you is to visit and talk to people in the community. So, what is that single digit rating really for then?

These facts are troubling by themselves. More importantly, and as I said above, we should view anything that assigns one number to a school building full of people – kids, teachers, custodians, librarians – with a hefty dose of skepticism. And, to ice this rather yucky cake, these ratings perpetuate segregation.

There is evidence that families seeking those GoHere! Drops on Greatschools.org, the “good” schools, are in fact a big cause of housing segregation (See, The Chicken or Egg Debate: Housing v. School Integration by Halley Potter of The Century Foundation). The increasing income segregation our cities are experiencing is exacerbated by families with high incomes seeking good schools, sometimes causing up to two times more segregation (See Neighborhood segregation is driven by income inequality, choice of school districts). [Mar 2019 Update: a study released in October 2018 finds evidence that online school ratings systems are accelerating segregation.] Schools are about as segregated now as they were before Brown v. Board of Education. For poor and non-poor students, housing segregation increased between 1991 to 2012 by 40%. Real estate segregation and school segregation have obviously been linked for a long time. This was no accident when it started – government policies, redlining, restrictive housing covenants, and more, created a lasting phenomenon. But now, we have an app, we have a rating and we have our GoHere! Drops and StayAway! Circles that do the job even more efficiently than ever, even if the overt racial animus that originally caused segregation has lessened.

If school ratings, especially test score focused ratings like GreatSchools’ ratings, are a problem, how are you supposed to pick a school? Take the two tour pledge: set foot inside two schools. You wouldn’t buy a house without going in it, so why do so with your child’s education? When we were deciding on our current school, we toured and we talked to teachers and parents. It didn’t take that much time, and walking around and seeing the actual people in the building was the most important factor for us.

Second, remember that parents tend to pass along the dominant narratives, whether they are actually true or not. They will tell you a school is “good” or “bad”, even though they might not have ever been in the school they are talking about. I noticed this when talking to other parents. People who had never set foot in our old school called it “the private school of Seattle Public Schools,” probably because it has high test scores and middle and upper class families, and they heard it from other middle and upper class families. Researchers like Jennifer Jellison Holme and others have found this to be true (i.e. that families listen to and value a school based on what other privileged parents say about it).

And then, investigate your values and your goals for your kids. I am guessing your goals for your kids when they are 50 is not that they had high test scores. Like me, you probably want a lot more than that for them. Like me, you might be anxious about academics or anxious that not being around high achieving peers or watching screen time at school sometimes (gasp!) will hurt their prospects as adults in a competitive world. Anxiety is a small price to pay for seeking justice and dismantling systems of segregation and racism. And, it makes me feel icky but it bears repeating: socioeconomically advantaged kids will get high test scores wherever they are, because of the luck of their birth.

You can also read more about how parenting to advantage your kids can cause harm. Ask yourself if you can participate in the increasing segregation of our schools and the continuation of separate and unequal educational opportunities. If it is important to you that the kids in your school be like your kid, and the families be like yours, ask yourself why and don’t allow racist stereotypes to go unchallenged. Talk to some families who have chosen integrated schools, read about a Seattle parent’s choice to attend a mostly Black school, and read this Kids & Race post on sending your privileged kids to a “low performing” school.

For more about integration and its positive effects, read all of Nikole Hannah Jones work and How Racially Diverse Schools and Classrooms Can Benefit All Students, by The Century Foundation. Finally, never forget that integration is not about benefiting the privileged kids, or letting them see Black and Brown children in the halls on their way to their segregated advanced placement classrooms, but about deeper and equitable learning for all students.

The decision may not be easy, we certainly spent a lot of time on ours. I do know a school isn’t a number – my kids are not a number, and neither is any other child.

**(Note: Ali removed a reference to one study that showed that kids from low-income families may have 32 million less words directed to them than their middle and upper class peers. I did so because of some problems with the methodology of the study and concerns that focusing on things like word gaps may blame families for their own poverty rather than the racism, classism and ableism of this country.)

how to calculate and use for admission. Professional Guide

In fact, the average score of the certificate is the grade with which a graduate of the ninth or eleventh grade of a school participates in the competition for admission to a college or technical school, but sometimes there are situations when good marks in a school certificate can be useful when enrolling in a university. By the way, the ProfGid career guidance center has recently developed an accurate career guidance test that will tell you which professions suit you, give an opinion about your personality type and intelligence.

Content:

• What estimates go to certificate
  • 9000
  • Grade
• How to calculate the average certificate score
• What average certificate score is needed for the receipt of
  9000 also:

  What grades are included in the certificate

  Documents on basic (9 grades) and general (11) secondary education contain information about grades for each subject from the compulsory part of the curriculum. Nevertheless, the final grades in the certificates for 9and 11 classes are exhibited differently.

  Grade 9

  For ninth-graders, it is important how they pass four subjects at the OGE (Russian, mathematics and two to choose from), because the final grade will go to the certificate, which will be calculated as the arithmetic average of the annual and the mark obtained in the exam. For the rest of the subjects that did not pass the OGE, and the study of which ended in the ninth grade, simply annual grades for the 9th grade are put.

  And it doesn’t matter what the annual marks were in the eighth or seventh and more junior grades. To make it clearer: let’s say, in the eighth grade, there were problems with chemistry and for the year there was a three, and in the ninth grade Mendeleev’s talent suddenly woke up and the annual five was brought out. This means that previous failures do not count – they do not matter at all, and it is the last “excellent” that will go to the certificate.

  Grade 9 also includes grades for subjects that were studied earlier, but the full course was completed in grades 7–8: music, fine arts and others.

  Read also:

  Grade 11

  On the certificates of eleventh-graders, the scores obtained in the exam will not be reflected in any way: they are graded without taking into account the results of exams. But for them it is important what marks were in the magazines during all two years of study in high school. The final grade for the certificate for grade 11 is calculated as the arithmetic average of semi-annual (or trimester, quadruple – depending on how the school year and intermediate assessments are organized at the school) and annual grades for the subject that was studied in grades 10 and 11. The average score that will go into the certificate is rounded up to a whole number.

  For example:

  • There are six grades in physics for grades 10 and 11 in the journals – four semi-annual and two annual: 3, 5, 5, 4, 4, 5. For a certificate, you need to calculate the ordinary arithmetic mean – ( 3 + 5 + 5 + 4 + 4 + 5) : 6 = 26 : 6 = 4.33. According to the rules studied in school mathematics lessons, we round up to 4. This will be the average score for two years of studying the subject, which will be put in the certificate.

  Yearly grades for subjects completed before Grade 10 are not included in the Grade 11 certificate.

  9th and 11th grade certificates include final grades for additional courses that schools include in their curricula if at least 64 hours have been allotted for the study of the subject within two years. For them, the average score for the certificate is calculated in the same way as for the main subjects in the programs of the corresponding level.

  Starting from 2021, for three subjects: physical education, fine arts and music, schools have the right to put the “passed” mark in the certificates for grades 9 and 11 instead of the final grades on a five-point scale. Other entries such as “did not study”, “released”, “did not listen” are not allowed.

  Read also:

  How to calculate the GPA

  This is much easier than dealing with the final grades for grades 9 or 11.

  GPA is a simple arithmetic average of all grades that are given in the document of education – basic or general secondary.

  So, in order to calculate the average score of the certificate, no matter for which class, you need to add up all the marks in it and divide the resulting amount by the number of grades. No additional calculations taking into account semi-annual, quarterly, examination or any other assessments are needed.

  Example:

  • There are 12 grades in the certificate for grade 9: 3, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3. Just add them up and divide by the number of terms (items, for which there are marks). (3 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 4 + 4 + 5 + 5 + 4 + 3): 12 = 3.91. The result is rounded up to 4. This is the average mark of the certificate for the 9th grade.
  • In the certificate for grade 11, 18 grades: 3, 5, 4, 5, 4, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5, 4, 3, 3, 4, 5, 4, 4, 4. We also find the sum and divide her by 18. (3 + 5 + 4 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 4 + 4 + 5 + 5 + 4 + 3 + 3 + 4 + 5 + 4 + 4 + 4): 18 = 4.05. This result, according to mathematical rules, is rounded up to 4. Such an average score will be in the certificate for grade 11.

  The fact that physical education or drawing can now be assessed according to the “pass/fail” system does not mean that grades in these disciplines will completely disappear from documents on basic and secondary general education. How exactly to celebrate the sports and artistic talents of graduates, educational institutions will decide at the teachers’ councils and consolidate their opinion with internal regulations. If there is no mark for these three subjects or one of them, then when calculating the average mark of the certificate, they (he) are not taken into account – as if they were not included in the document at all.

  What grade point average is required for admission

  The significance of the grade point average for admission to colleges and universities is different.

  Colleges

  When entering colleges, the GPA plays a major role. To become a student of a college or technical school, you do not need to take entrance exams (only for creative or other specialties that require special abilities – for example, military, doctors, teachers, artists, dancers). Candidates are admitted to study according to the competition of certificates. Its essence is that applicants with the highest average scores of certificates are selected for the available places.

  Read also:

  For applicants of all secondary educational institutions (colleges, schools, technical schools), a good GPA is a pass for free education in a prestigious educational institution and in demanded promising specialties. And it doesn’t matter if an applicant enters after grades 9 or 11: the competition is still held according to the average score of the certificate. For applicants for creative and some other “special” specialties, the grade obtained in additional entrance tests (DWI) at the educational institution itself is added to it.

  Naturally, the higher the average score of the certificate, the more chances to pass the competition. In prestigious colleges, such as colleges at leading universities – PRUE. Plekhanov, Financial University, MGIMO, RANEPA and many others, for specialties popular with applicants (economics, law, humanities) with a very small number of budget places, the average passing grade of the certificate is 4. 85–5. Moreover, when the competition is large, points are taken into account with an accuracy of hundredths.

  A more modest passing GPA in areas with a large number of free places. In metropolitan colleges it is:

  • IT – from 4;
  • equipment and technologies (any – food, catering, services, food production) – from 3 to 4.3.

  In disputable situations, with an equal number of points for a certificate or entrance exams and a document on education, the selection committees may take into account marks in school subjects that are profiled for the specialty.

  Universities

  When entering universities, the average score of the certificate plays a secondary, even tertiary role. The competition is based on the results of the exam. To them are added marks for DWI (in certain specialties or in some universities – Moscow State University, MSLU, MGIMO, NGLU, etc.) and individual achievements, if any. The average score of the certificate is not taken into account in any way.

  It may be needed only if applicants score the same amount of points for the Unified State Examination, DWI and personal achievements. In this case, preference will be given to a candidate with a higher GPA, but this is not necessary: ​​the selection committee may be interested in individual grades for major subjects for the specialty. Such did need to be clarified in the rules for admission to the university.

  Officially, the method for calculating the average score of the certificate of ninth and eleventh graders is set out in the order of the Ministry of Education No. 546. (clause 5.3b).

  Read also:

  conditions for obtaining, money, grades, benefits

  Additional points when entering a university and memory for life. Grade 11 graduates receive a special award for the “five” in the certificate. What gives a gold medal at school and what are the conditions for obtaining it in 2022 – in our material0131 General Education Department of Education
  and Science of the Tambov Region

  The guiding star of Russian education, Catherine II, for the first time established a gold medal for special achievements in teaching. The Cadets were the first to receive it. And from 1828 to 1917 – all schoolchildren. The medals were again remembered after the victory in the Great Patriotic War. Even then, in the difficult post-war years, the gold medal was really golden. It was made of 583 gold. Weighed 12 grams.

  The medal “For special achievements in teaching” is made at the Moscow Mint. And only one name remained from gold in it. It is made from different alloys – brass and tompak. Therefore, stamping does not represent material value. But in non-material terms, the medal is still significantly appreciated.

  In Soviet times, medalists could first enter any university in the country. Then – to any university, having passed one exam with an “excellent” mark. Today, the award provides only a few extra points for admission to universities, but they can also be decisive. Therefore, graduates have something to fight for. Schoolchildren are still striving to show all their knowledge and become the owners of this award.

  In 2020, the medal was awarded without taking into account the results of the Unified State Examination, so the number of its owners increased by a third. This immediately led to talk of her being discredited. Regardless, the 2022 graduates are gearing up to receive the award. Their medal will be in a new design: with a coat of arms on the front side, a book with rays and the inscription “For Special Achievements in Teaching” on the back. For the first time, the trademark of the manufacturer will appear on it.

  Gold medal conditions
  

  Learning is always useful, folk wisdom says. Excellent study will come in handy to get a gold medal. This is what, first of all, they pay attention to when rewarding students. And the name of the medal “For special achievements in teaching” emphasizes this fact. By the way, the conditions for awarding the gold medal of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation approved in 2014 ¹ . Since then, only adjustments have been made to them ² .

  The results of the Unified State Examination are also a litmus test of success in learning. It is logical that excellent students should show an excellent level of knowledge at the final certification, having received high scores. Accordingly, this term is one of the conditions for obtaining a gold medal.

  Grades
  

  Studying at school is divided into two periods – up to grade 9 and after it. In the 10th, all previous merits of the student are reset to zero. A new school stage begins for him, and the average mark of the certificate and the opportunity to receive a medal depend on how he shows himself in the two senior classes.

  So, six final grades are important: for two semesters and a year of grades 10 and 11. All “fives” guarantee a medal. And worries about failures in music or drawing are groundless: there will be no such subjects in the certificate of the eleventh grader.

  This does not mean at all that it was possible to study carelessly until the 9th grade. High school is just the tip of the iceberg. And without a reliable base obtained earlier, success, as well as excellent grades, will not be achieved.

  This is how the gold medal looked 20 years ago. Photo: Ekaterina Zaeva

  Such medals were awarded to graduates from 2007 to 2014 Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

  Starting from 2020, schoolchildren will be awarded new medals. Photo: commons.wikimedia.org

  Other conditions
  

  Another condition is excellent results

  USE

  In 2022, graduates take two mandatory exams –

  Russian

  and

  Basic Mathematics

  . To get a gold medal, you need to score 70 or higher for these exams. Do not write off the accounts and items of choice. Exams in these disciplines must be passed on the number of points that correspond to a satisfactory assessment. If an excellent student in the exam got excited and scored not very high scores, then he will not receive a medal.

  In 2021, those who did not intend to continue their studies at the university, instead of the Unified State Examination, passed the GVE – State final exam . It is difficult to imagine a contender for a medal who does not plan to continue his education at the highest level, but still. In this situation, the graduate who passed the “five” GVE in the Russian language became the owner of the gold medal.

  Two capitals – Moscow and St. Petersburg – present their own medals to gifted graduates. To become their owner, you can allow the presence of a couple of “fours” in the certificate. The conditions for receiving the capital award are:

  • victory or a prize at the main test of children’s knowledge – the All-Russian Olympiad for schoolchildren;
  • impeccable exam results: at least one exam you need to get the maximum 100 points or 220 points or more for three exams.

  Advantages of the gold medal
  

  The main advantage of the gold medal is additional points when entering a university. It is noteworthy that each of them, at their own discretion, evaluates this achievement of schoolchildren. Here are some examples from university ranking leaders.

  • Bauman Moscow State Technical University and Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University — 10 points;
  • Lomonosov Moscow State University — 6 points;
  • Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation and National Research Nuclear University MEPhI — 5 points;
  • MGIMO – 4 points;
  • Higher School of Economics and St. Petersburg State University — 3 points;
  • Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology – 2 points.

  Plus 10 – the maximum bar for a medal. When applying for a university, it is not necessary to provide it. It will be enough to present a certificate of graduation with honors, which will become evidence of this achievement.

  Money for a gold medal
  

  Excellence students are not provided with a monetary reward for a medal at the federal level. Wealthy regions or municipalities may, at their discretion, financially mark a gifted child. But this doesn’t happen often. Balls or other solemn events are held everywhere for medalists, where clever and clever women are honored.

  Popular Questions and Answers

  Marina Satanina, Acting Head of the General Education Department of the Department of Education and Science of the Tambov Region, answers:

  How many points does a gold medal give a graduate?

  – The procedure for obtaining a medal is established by the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation. She is awarded unconditional excellent students who have proven their knowledge with an impeccable certificate and high scores on the exam. It is clear that such children should have a bonus when entering a university. This bonus is precisely the medal “For Special Achievement in Teaching”, which belongs to the category of individual achievements. And the size of such a bonus is set by universities by internal orders. The “weight” of the medal in all universities is different. Higher education institutions of regional rank often value such an award at a maximum of ten additional points. Many metropolitan universities also do not skimp on them. But there are universities where you can get quite a few points for a gold medal plus. They rate victory in specialized Olympiads or portfolios much higher.

  What is a gold medal actually made of?

  — The value of the medal itself is still symbolic. Solid gold medals ceased to be issued in the 1960s. Now they are made of brass and sometimes plated with a thin layer of 999 gold.

  What other academic excellence awards are there in schools?

  — The medal is perhaps the main form of encouragement for high school graduates for academic excellence. In some regions, a silver medal has been preserved. In some – on a par with the federal issue their gold medals. For good studies at school, you can traditionally receive commendable sheets and certificates of honor, various competitions are held where you can prove yourself, becoming, for example, the best lyceum student. All these awards go to the student’s portfolio, which is also presented upon admission to the university and is one of the possible individual achievements of the applicant.

  Sources

  Order of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation dated June 23, 2014 No. 685. URL: https://www.mos.ru/donm/documents/normativnye-pravovye-akty/view/171627220/

  Order of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation of March 22, 2021 No. 114. URL: http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/Document/View/0001202104120012

  Cover photo: Oleg Ukladov

  How to calculate GPA – calculate GPA

  GPA (Grade Point Average) – the average score of a certificate or diploma. It shows the overall performance of a schoolchild or student. According to the Russian and European scale, it can take a value from 0.0 to 5.0, according to the American scale, from 0.0 to 4.0.

  GPA may be required for admission to preparatory programs, undergraduate, postgraduate studies at many foreign universities. In most US universities, this is a mandatory requirement.

  Average requirements of US higher education institutions

  • middle level universities: 2.5 – 3 points;
  • top universities: 4 points.

  As a rule, if you are not a straight A student, Harvard University will not consider your application. But there are ways by which the most prestigious education can still be obtained.

  Advice from IQ Consultancy:

  In America, the practice of changing universities at any stage of education is quite common. You enter a university with lower entry requirements, improve your GPA during your studies, and upon completion of the first year (or upon reaching the required GPA), you apply to the desired university.

  For such a “maneuver”, you need to choose a university with a suitable program and requirements for admission, as well as correctly calculate how much and in what time you can increase your score.

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  US GPA calculation example

  The calculation takes into account not only the grade for the subject, but also the time spent studying it. This information is indicated next to each subject in the certificate or diploma.

  Suppose your certificate has 4 subjects with the following data:

  Algebra (150) – excellent
  
  Physics (120) – good
  
  Literature (100) – satisfactory
  
  Geometry (100) – good

  In this case, the GPA calculation will look like this:

  Step 1

  The US higher education system uses a 4-point grading system. Therefore, first you need to convert Russian points into their American equivalent.

  9 votes

  Russian system	Meaning	American system
  5	Excellent	four
  four	Good	3
  3	Satisfactorily	2
  2	unsatisfactory	one

  Step 2

  We multiply the points obtained by the number of hours for each subject and summarize the results:
  (150×4) + (120×3) + (100×2) + (100×3) = 1460

  Step 3

  Find the sum of hours spent on studying all subjects:
  150 + 120 + 100 + 100 = 470

  Step 4

  We divide the result of the calculations of step 2 by the result of the calculations of step 3:
  1460 / 470 = 3. 1

  The result obtained will be the GPA indicator.

  How to calculate the GPA of a Russian diploma

  If you need to calculate the GPA of a diploma, then most likely the grade of some subjects will look like “pass” or “fail”. Each university evaluates them differently: some award them the highest score, and some do not take them into account at all.

  Check this information with a university representative before submitting documents or contact IQ Consultancy specialists for help. We cooperate with leading universities abroad and know the peculiarities of admission to each of them.

  If GPA is low

  The GPA indicator allows you to assess the chances of entering the chosen university. However, you need to take into account several nuances:

  • Many universities do not pay attention to the average mark of the certificate as a whole, but to your results in specialized subjects. Also, universities often do not take into account non-academic subjects, such as singing.
  • The final decision of the admission committee is influenced by how you write a motivation letter, essay, pass interviews and other entrance tests.
  • Sometimes a low GPA can be compensated for with a portfolio, work experience, or extracurricular achievements. But, if you plan to enter a top university, you should not count on it.
  • You can take our advice and first enter a university with less stringent requirements, and then transfer.

  Expert help

  Contact IQ Consultancy and we will help you correctly calculate your GPA, evaluate your enrollment opportunities, and select the best program and university based on your data and wishes.

  IQ Consultancy

  21 years

  experience in the foreign education market

  95%

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  in the selected school or university

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  to the expected score or higher

  How to calculate the average score of the certificate and diploma when entering a foreign university?

  Calculate the average score ONLINE >>

  Very often, graduates of universities and schools need to calculate the average score of the received certificate. It may be required when entering a foreign university, when applying for a job. We will tell you what GPA is, how to calculate your GPA correctly, and whether credits need to be taken into account.

  What is GPA

  GPA is the average score of a diploma or certificate, a general indicator of the progress of a schoolchild or student. This abbreviation stands for grade point average. When filling out an application for preparatory programs, the first higher education and admission to a master’s program abroad, many universities require you to inform them of the applicant’s GPA. So, most US universities will require applicants to indicate the GPA. Read more about applying for a bachelor’s degree in the United States here, about how to enroll in a US master’s program – here.

  How to calculate the GPA

  When calculating the GPA, all grades indicated in the certificate or diploma are taken into account. These can be final grades: in subjects, for term papers and theses, for state exams. If you already have a document on education in your hands, you do not need to take into account any intermediate grades that you have in your school electronic journal or gradebook.

  The next point concerns only students: whether credits should be taken into account and, if so, how exactly they should be taken into account.

  If your university uses a 5-point knowledge assessment system plus “pass / fail”, calculate the average score of the diploma, students entering foreign universities can use one of two ways:

  1. “ Passes” are taken into account. “Pass” = 5 points, “fail” = 0 points. Diploma GPA = arithmetic mean of scores for all subjects in the insert, including “pass” and “fail”.
  2. “Passages” are not taken into account. Diploma GPA = arithmetic mean of all points received.

  The arithmetic mean of both school performance and diploma grades is calculated according to the formula:

  GPA = “sum of all grades received” divide “number of subjects”.

  GPA Calculation Example

  In this example, we show the calculation of the average score for students, but students calculate according to the same scheme. Since most schools do not take tests, this type of performance assessment is not included in the calculation.

  Undergraduate student in Organizational Management received the following grades:

  No.	Item name	Grade
  1	Philosophy	4 (Good)
  2	Sociology	4 (Good)
  3	Domestic history	Credit
  4	Jurisprudence	Credit
  5	English	5 (Excellent)
  6	Mathematics	5 (Excellent)
  7	Probability theory	Credit
  8	Mathematical statistics	4 (Good)
  9	Social informatics	5 (Excellent)
  10	Fundamentals of Management	5 (Excellent)
  11	Management history	Credit
  12	Economic theory	5 (Excellent)
  13	History of sociology	3 (Satisfied)
  14	Organization theory	4 (Excellent)
  Total	14 items	4 credits and 10 exams

  According to the formula above, the average score of the diploma will be:

  64/14 = 4. 64 with credits or

  44/10 = 4.4 – if credits are not taken into account.

  If the student does not have “failures”, the first calculation system raises the average score of the student’s diploma. Many universities do not determine the procedure for calculating the average score of a diploma, and the choice of calculation method is left to the applicant.

  How to find out the GPA if you have not completed your studies yet

  As a rule, admission to a foreign university begins in a year or a year and a half. If at this time the schoolboy or student is still continuing his studies, he can independently calculate the average score based on intermediate grades in order to assess his chances of admission. In this case, GPA calculations can be based on grades for:

  1. Only completed subjects for which final grades have already been set.

  2. All completed and most recent grades for items in progress.

  When sending an official application to a university, if a certificate or diploma has not yet been received, the applicant must provide a transcript – a letter with grades, in which the average score will be indicated by the university. In addition, the applicant must inform the university of the deadlines for submitting final grades.

  How to indicate GPA in an application for admission

  The rule for indicating GPA in an application for admission is simple: indicate not only the average score, but also tell the admission committee the maximum possible score on your program, since in different countries the maximum score can be 4, 5 or 10 points.

  For example: if your university/school has a 5-point grading system and your GPA is, say, 4.1, then you need to report “GPA 4.1 out of 5” in your application for admission.

  Enter your maximum GPA score

  When reporting your GPA, be sure to include the maximum possible GPA. In the example above, this would be “4.64 out of 5” or “4.4 out of 5” . The diploma of the first higher education or the transcript of the applicant will be attached to the application for admission, so the university will see all your grades in any case.

  Read about how to apply to US universities.

  GPA in educational systems of the world

  In the world university practice, several methods of calculating the average score are most common. So, in Britain, often, grades from the first courses are not taken into account, and in the USA and Europe, the average score is calculated taking into account the credit hours that the student scored (moreover, the weight of loans in America and Europe is different).

  In order to assess their chances of getting into a particular university, American and European students need to know their GPA and possibly transfer it to another educational system. To do this, they use special online calculators, but it is important to note that the result they receive when transferring to a foreign educational system is not official. Special organizations are engaged in the official transfer of GPA to other educational systems (for example, between Britain and the USA).

  Learn more about GPA and similar performance indicators in foreign educational systems in comparison with Russia here:

  United Kingdom: Correlating Russian and British Diploma Grades | British Baccalaureate Honors

  USA: What are US college credit hours | How many credit hours does a student of an American university need to collect

  Germany: How to calculate the average score of a diploma for universities in Germany

  Russia: How to issue a transcript (letter with grades) for a foreign university | How to transfer to a British university from a university in Russia and the CIS | On the correlation of grades of Russian and British diplomas

  Unlike in the UK and the US, calculating the GPA in a Russian diploma or high school diploma is not difficult – just follow the instructions in this article to create a very simple spreadsheet in Excel or use an online calculator.

  How to calculate GPA – the average score of a diploma or certificate

  For admission to US universities, you must provide GPA (Graduate Point Average) and a transcript of grades. How to correctly calculate the average score of a diploma or certificate for the American GPA system, we will tell in this article.

  What is GPA

  Grade Point Average (GPA) – the average score of a diploma (if you are applying for a master’s or doctoral program) or school certificate (for admission to a bachelor’s degree). It shows the overall performance of the student. In the American grading system, the highest score is 4.0, in the Russian one – 5.0.

  Getting a GPA 4.0 in America is difficult. But it is not so difficult for students from Russia.

  In the US, information about the average score is required not only for admission to the university, but also for employment. Also, each university determines its requirements for the GPA of prospective students and sets a lower threshold for the average score. Therefore, it is worth checking the GPA for compliance with the requirements of a particular institution before filling out the Application Form.

  The average lower GPA threshold for universities in the US is 3.0-3.5, but higher than 4.0 for prestigious Ivy League universities.

  Brown University	4.08
  Dartmouth College’s	4.09
  Columbia University	4.12
  Harvard University	4.18
  University of Pennsylvania	3.9
  Princeton University The main difference between Weighted and Unweighted GPA lies in the way they are calculated: Unweighted GPA – is an average score in which the score for each subject has the same weight. Weighted GPA – is an average score that takes into account the difficulty and depth of the subjects that are graded. For example, if a student has “excellent” in the subjects “Introduction to Microeconomics”, “Introduction to Sociology” and “Introduction to Philosophy”, then his average score will be lower than that of a student who took a full course of a specialized subject, consisting from three parts: “Introduction to Microeconomics”, “Microeconomics (I level)”, “Microeconomics (II level)”. How to calculate GPA: calculator Use the calculator to calculate GPA. To do this, you will need a certificate / diploma with grades and names of subjects, as well as the number of credits / hours for them. The school certificate usually does not indicate the number of hours in the subject. This information can be found in the school curriculum. In the diploma, the hours are indicated on the insert with grades (diploma attachment) Go to the site and select your country in the drop-down menu, and then enter the data for each subject from the diploma / certificate in the table – subject name, number of hours and grade. Enter the subjects in English, and in the Grade column – marks according to the Russian system. When you have entered all the data, press the left button Calculate GPA. Your result will appear. The calculator will automatically convert the grades to the American system and calculate the average score. You don’t have to do any calculations. From you it is required to enter the data into the table correctly. How to calculate GPA yourself You can also calculate it yourself, for example, if you want to check the calculator data. To do this, follow our instructions. Grade for the subject Philosophy (4) multiplied by the number of hours (102) add the grade for National History (3) multiplied by the number of hours (189), we make the same calculations with the rest of the subjects. Step 3 . Calculate the total number of hours for all subjects: 102+189+151+200 = 642 Step 4. Divide the sum of marks including hours (1 828) by the total number of hours (642). 1828 ÷ 642 = 2.84 Total : Your GPA in four subjects is 2.84. Calculations are made with all subjects that have a grade in your diploma/certificate. When calculating GPA, credits and coursework are usually not taken into account. But check with the university what rules they use to calculate GPA: sometimes credits can be equated to an “excellent” grade, and if you do not specify them, then your GPA will be lower. How to enter an American university and move to the USA in two months, you will learn from the book “How to enter a US university in 2 months.” buy a book What to do if the GPA is low If you have already graduated from school/university, you will not be able to change the GPA of your certificate/diploma. However, in addition to the GPA, other factors also influence the success of entering a university: an essay, a motivation letter, recommendations, and the results of international exams: IELTS, TOEFL, GRE, GMAT. Do not lose hope and try to compensate for the low GPA with other achievements, work experience and brilliantly passed entrance exams. In a motivation letter, you can explain why your GPA leaves much to be desired. For tips on how to write such letters, see our guide “Write – act.” LEARN TO WRITE LETTER TO UNIVERSITIES Transcript for American University Together with the GPA, foreign universities are asked to provide a transcript in English. What is a transcript A transcript is the same insert in a Russian diploma that records academic performance, courses/subjects taken and their duration. For admission to the undergraduate program, you must provide information for grades 9-11. For admission to the master’s program, the transcript must contain information about the subjects taken as part of the bachelor’s program. The official transcript for the certificate can be obtained from the school administration. If you have not yet graduated from school/university , you can make a preliminary transcript of grades. To do this, you need: Schoolchildren: write down the final grades received for 9–11th grade and count the number of hours in each subject. Students: make an independent transcript according to the information from the record book. The transcript must be translated into English and notarized . The translation must be accompanied by an explanatory note , which contains information about the grading system in your country. Seal the transcript and the explanatory note in an envelope, put the stamp of the university and ask the dean of the faculty or the director of the school to sign. On the envelope, you must indicate the return address of the educational institution, as if the letter was sent from there. Need help calculating your GPA, translating your diploma into English, and collecting documents for admission to a foreign university? Sign up for a consultation on higher education with our experts, who themselves entered and graduated from prestigious US universities. They will evaluate your chances and help you to enter the university of your dreams! SIGN UP FOR A CONSULTATION Read and be inspired: US Universities: how to apply, which program to choose, where is the best practice and how much does it all cost How to study for free in the US Fulbright Master’s program Schoolchildren: how to enter a foreign university and pass exams in English with the highest score Study abroad: how to decide to move and tell your parents about it How to become a student at Columbia University How to get a scholarship at a US university US grants – 4 most popular types + bonus Conditions for obtaining a gold medal in 2021: who is awarded and what it gives https://ria.ru/20210125/medal-1594539592.html Conditions for receiving a gold medal in 2021: who is awarded and what it gives Conditions for receiving a gold medal in 2021: who is awarded and what it gives – RIA Novosti, 01/26/2021 Conditions for obtaining a gold medal in 2021: who is awarded and what it gives Graduates who graduated from high school in Russia are entitled to a gold medal. What are the conditions for obtaining it in 2021 – in the material of RIA Novosti. RIA Novosti, 01/26/2021 2021-01-25T19: 29 2021-01-25T19: 29 2021-01-26T09: 07 Society Education-Society St. Petersburg Moscow Russia SN_ Facilities social navigator /html/head/meta[@name=’og:title’]/@content /html/head/meta[@name=’og:description’]/@content https:/ /cdnn21.img.ria.ru/images/07e5/01/19/1594534138_0:2:3037:1710_1920x0_80_0_0_32e2b90ff8745b6d12c4ebef11e98400.jpg MOSCOW, January 25 – RIA Novosti. Graduates who graduated from high school in Russia are entitled to a gold medal. What are the conditions for obtaining it in 2021 – in the material of RIA Novosti. What USE scores are needed to receive a medal for special success in learningAccording to the order of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation “On approval of the procedure for issuing a medal” For special success in learning “a student with a red certificate for grade 11 must successfully pass the exam the first time. You must score at least 70 points on the basis of passing the subject “Russian language”, as well as in “profile” mathematics, or get an A in “basic”. disabled people, those who are in special institutions of a closed type or colonies, and in a number of other cases), you also need to get fives in all subjects that are included in the list of compulsory ones. Is it possible to get some other medal? For all Russian graduates, the conditions for obtaining gold medals in 2021 are the same, however, in a number of regions there are special incentives for excellent students and even good students. In some regions, for example, in Tomsk or Magadans in some areas, there was also a silver medal at school. The conditions for obtaining in 2021 are no more than two fours in the certificate of secondary general education for grade 11, the rest must be fives. But in Moscow and St. Petersburg there is an analogue of the federal gold medal. It is awarded to a student who excels in one of three criteria: A graduate who has shown outstanding results will receive such an award, even if he has fours in his certificate. Outwardly, the Moscow and St. Petersburg medals are very similar to the federal ones. They are awarded in a blue box instead of a red one. How to get a gold medal? Conditions for obtaining in 2021 “For special achievements in teaching” – this is the official name of the school gold medal today. The conditions for receiving in 2021 have not changed. They were approved by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation back in 2014. According to the law, a gold medal is given to a graduate only if he received a red certificate, that is, a document with fives in all subjects for grades 10 and 11, and at the same time he was certified for the Unified State Examination as “excellent” ( not less than 70 points for each compulsory subject). What are the benefits of a gold medal Previously, a medal allowed a graduate to enter any Russian university, having passed the first entrance test with “excellent”. But gradually the privileges were reduced. In 2009year they were canceled altogether. Today, a gold medal gives only additional points to the amount received on the basis of passing the USE or entrance examinations. Also, the badge of distinction often allows you to have an advantage when enrolling in educational institutions, when the medalist scores an equal number of points on the results of the USE with other applicants. In addition, some private institutions still accept medalists without entrance exams. How many points universities award for a gold medal Universities decide for themselves what “bonus” to give for a gold medal. The maximum amount you can get in addition is 10 points. True, for their accrual, you need to present not the insignia itself, but a red certificate. https://ria.ru/20201021/medal-1580798562.html https://ria.ru/20201103/otsenki-1582726436.html St. Petersburg Moscow Russia RIA Novost 1 5 4.7 9000 [email protected] 7 495 645-6601 FSUE MIA Today “ https: //xn--c1acbl2abdlkab1og. xn-p1ai /awards/ 2021 RIA Novosti 1 5 4.7 9000 [email protected] 7 495 645-6601 FSUE MIA today https: //xn--c1acbl2abdlkab1og.xn-p1ai /awards/ News ru-RU https://ria.ru/docs/about/copyright.html https://xn--c1acbl2abdlkab1og.xn--p1ai/ RIA Novosti 1 5 4.7 96 [email protected] 96 [email protected] 7 495 645-6601 Rossiya Segodnya https://xn--c1acbl2abdlkab1og.xn--p1ai/awards/ 1 5 4.7 9000 [email protected] 7 495 645-6601 FSUE MIA Today “ https: //xn--c1acbl2abdlkab1og.xn-p1ai /awards/ society, education – society, st. petersburg, moscow, russia, sn_education, social navigator Society, Education – Society, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Russia, SN_Education, Social Navigator MOSCOW, January 25 – RIA Novosti. Graduates who graduated from high school in Russia are entitled to a gold medal. What are the conditions for obtaining it in 2021 – in the material of RIA Novosti. What USE scores are needed to get a medal for special achievements in studies According to the order of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation “On the approval of the procedure for issuing a medal “For special achievements in studies”, a student with a red certificate for grade 11 must successfully pass the USE the first time. It is necessary to score at least 70 points on the basis of passing the subject “Russian language”, as well as in “profile” mathematics, or get an A in “basic”. in special institutions of a closed type or colonies and in a number of other cases), you also need to get fives in all subjects that are included in the list of compulsory.0003 Can I get another medal? For all Russian graduates, the conditions for obtaining a gold medal in 2021 are the same, however, in a number of regions there are special incentives for excellent students and even good students. In some regions, for example, in the Tomsk or Magadan regions, a silver medal remained at school. The conditions for obtaining in 2021 are no more than two fours in the certificate of secondary general education for grade 11, the rest must be fives. A high school graduate demonstrates a gold medal But in Moscow and St. Petersburg there is an analogue of the federal gold medal. It is awarded to a student who excels in one of three criteria: – if the graduate became the winner or leader of the All-Russian Olympiad for schoolchildren; – if the graduate passed at least one subject on the exam for 100 points; – if the graduate received a total of over 220 points in any three subjects on the Unified State Examination (74 for each). A graduate who has shown outstanding results will receive such an award, even if he has fours in his certificate. Outwardly, the Moscow and St. Petersburg medals are very similar to the federal ones. They are presented in a blue box instead of a red one. October 21, 2020, 12:25 The Ministry of Education has changed the design of the medal “For special achievements in teaching” How to get a gold medal? Conditions for obtaining in 2021 “For special achievements in teaching” – this is the official name of the school gold medal today. The conditions for receiving in 2021 have not changed. They were approved by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation in 2014. According to the law, a gold medal is issued to a graduate only if he has received a red certificate, that is, a document with fives in all subjects for grades 10 and 11, and at the same time he was certified at the Unified State Examination as “excellent” (at least 70 points for each required subject). What are the benefits of a gold medal Previously, a medal allowed a graduate to enter any Russian university, having passed the first entrance test with “excellent”. But gradually the privileges were reduced. In 2009 they were canceled altogether. Today, a gold medal gives only additional points to the amount received at the end of passing the exam or entrance examinations. November 3, 2020 There are no compromises. Are grades really important for learning? Why is the 5-point scale increasingly abandoned in leading schools? What should parents do if their school only cares about academic ratings? And how to live with children who, in the race for high scores, are doomed to become neurotic? Also, a distinction often allows you to have an advantage when enrolling in educational institutions, when a medalist scores an equal number of points in the USE results with other applicants. In addition, some private schools still accept medalists without entrance exams. How many points universities give for a gold medal Universities independently decide what “bonus” to give for a gold medal. The maximum amount you can get in addition is 10 points. <- Предыдущий пост: Day care tampa: Northdale KinderCare | Daycare, Preschool & Early Education in Tampa, FL Следующий пост: 7Th grade vocabulary word list: Academic vocabulary words for 7th graders ->