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

Why You Should Pay Zero Attention to the GreatSchools Rating System

Why You Should Pay Zero Attention to the GreatSchools Rating System
August 31, 2016
Libby Anne

I wrote yesterday about choosing a school in a segregated world. In response to some of the comments I received on that post, I want to take a moment to look more fully at school rating systems. While some states create their own school ratings (based on various factors), I’ve also seen many parents rely on the ratings available at the GreatSchools website, which bills itself as “the leading national nonprofit empowering parents to unlock educational opportunities for their child.” While I will be looking at the GreatSchools rating system specifically, but much of my criticism likely applies to various state rating systems as well.

What is the GreatSchools rating system based on? I’ll tell you. Test scores. That’s all—test scores. We know that student performance correlates strongly with students’ demographic factors—family income, race, level of parents’ education. This means that the GreatSchools rating system only provides information about the demographics of the students who attend this schools, and literally nothing about the quality of instruction, the school atmosphere, or, well, anything else.

I once spoke with a homeschool mother who had considered putting her children in public school after moving to another area of the country. She told me she had decided against doing so after looking up the GreatSchools rating. And that was it. She didn’t visit the school. She didn’t look at parent or student reviews of the schools. All she looked at was the GreatSchools rating, and all the GreatSchools rating was based on was test scores, and all those test scores tell us about is the demographics of the students, and—what do you know—the schools in that area were heavily Hispanic. What this means—yes—is that whether she realized it or not, she decided not to put her children in the local public schools because those schools weren’t white.

I am beyond appalled at GreatSchools’ rating system. That they can bill themselves as “the leading national nonprofit empowering parents to unlock educational opportunities for their child” while giving parents information that conflates race and class with school quality without telling parents this is what they are doing is utterly abhorent. Parents trust GreatSchools even as the nonprofit tells them which schools are good and which are bad based on the color of students’ skin and the amount of money in their parents’ bank accounts. This is completely and totally despicable. If I had stronger words to use here, I would. That this can go on in this day and age should be universally horrifying.

But wait—can’t test scores tell us at least a little bit? After all, students at a predominantly poor brown school with a vibrant school culture and dedicated teachers and staff will likely score better than students at a predominantly poor brown school with low expectations and a high turnover rate for teachers and staff. Similarly, student performance at non-poor white schools will likely vary depending on the responsiveness of the administration, the turnover rate among the staff, and the school atmosphere that is created. This is true! However, given the strength of demographic factors in shaping student outcomes, student scores are almost certainly still going to be higher at a stagnant non-poor white school than at a vibrant poor brown school, and as a result, the stagnant school will receive a higher GreatSchools rating than the vibrant school.

Let me give you an example. In one metropolitan area I looked at, there is a vibrant maths and sciences magnet high school in the city. This school is attended almost entirely by minorities, mostly black and Hispanic, and has an impeccable reputation with the students, the parents, and the community. But you know what? That school’s math and science scores are still far lower than those in high schools in the white suburbs. Does that mean those white suburban high schools are better schools than the predominantly poor brown magnet high school in the city? Not necessarily! All it tells us is that the students in the white suburban high schools they are whiter and wealthier than those at the innovative STEM magnet high school. And yet, it means that the poor brown magnet high school has a low GreatSchools rating while the white suburban high schools have high ratings.

When my daughter started kindergarten, she attended a elementary school with test scores far lower than those at the “good” schools in town. In fact, I learned right before she started school that 10% of the students were homeless in any given year, and the poverty rate was so high that all students were given access to the free lunch program. My daughter thrived, and I fell in love with the school. I could not have asked for better. When we moved, I used the demographic information the GreatSchools website provides, but I completely ignored test scores and rating system. We visited several elementary schools in person, and chose one that with both diversity and a positive and supportive school atmosphere. We couldn’t be happier with this school! Well guess what? I just checked, and this school has the lowest test scores of any elementary school in the district (and the highest minority population and highest student poverty rate). If I’d made made my decision based on the GreatSchools rating system, our family would have missed out on finding this gem.

What would a better rating system look like? At a minimum, a better rating system would correct for student’s demographic characteristics. In other words, a better rating system—one not based on students’ race and class, as this one is—would ask which schools perform better than would be expected given the students’ family income, race, and level of parent’ education. By this metric, a vibrant poor brown school would receive a higher rating than a stagnant non-poor white school. An even better rating system would find a way to factor in parents’ and students’ satisfaction with the schools. Do the parents feel the atmosphere is supportive? Do the students like to be there? Do parents feel their children are challenged? Do students feel that their teachers care about them? Is the administration responsive?

GreatSchools planning to improve its rating system by incorporating more data (and has done so with a handful of states already). However, the additional data they’re incorporating—college readiness and student growth—leaves much to be desired. A predominantly poor brown high school that prepares a higher proportion of its students for college than expected given its demographic factors is still not going to hit the college readiness marks white suburban high schools hit.

It’s possible that factoring in student growth may add nuance to the picture ratings tell, but student growth may also be a factor of demographic change—as an area becomes more poor and more brown, you would expect to see the school’s scores to fall, and vice versa if an area is gentrifying. This would be a reflection not of school quality but of students’ demographic factors. In addition, because achievement gaps widen over time, we know that white students on average currently achieve more student growth, meaning that student growth, too, correlates with race (and potentially other demographic factors).

Is there a reason GreatSchools is so resistant to factoring in student race and economic factors? It’s not that it doesn’t have that data—it does, and lists it on its website on each school’s profile. All it would have to do is create algorithms that factor that information in—that say, given the students’ race and the number of poor students, are these test scores above or below what we would expect? Factoring in parent and student reviews would be more difficult, of course. The GreatSchools website does have a “community rating” based on reviews left by users, but this system is far from scientific—some schools have only a few reviews while others have far many, and it’s unclear whether an individual need be affiliated with a school at all to leave a review.

In the end, the GreatSchools rating system is worse than worthless. The system lets parents think they’re learning about school quality when all they’re actually being told is the school’s demographic factors, and by doing so misleads parents who simply want the best for their children into contributing to school segregation. I’m not saying that every school is perfect. There are schools that have mismanaged administrations and high teacher turnover, punitive prison-like school atmospheres and a lack of expectations. There are also schools burdened by chronic lack of funding. But you cannot use a school’s demographic factors as a stand-in for this. There are white suburban schools where children feel squeezed or invisible, and poor brown schools that go out of their way to foster individual student success and effort.

What tips would I give if you’re thinking about buying into a neighborhood and want to make sure the schools are good? First, remember that attending a school with both race and class diversity benefits non-poor white children, too. Look at the school’s demographic factors (available on the GreatSchools website). Second, read parent and student reviews (also on the GreatSchools website). See if you can find other parent or student reviews elsewhere online. Third, visit the schools, talk to the staff, learn about how the school is run. Watch the children and the teachers. Do the children seem glad to be there? Do the teachers seem to care? If possible, speak with some of the parents. If you can’t do this, you could still call the office.

Note that none of this involves asking about the school’s reputation from afar. I’ve had numerous individuals, mostly white, express surprise at the school we chose for our daughter. That school? The one with all the poor brown kids? The one with the low test scores? Why yes! That school also happens to be one of the most supportive, innovative, inclusive schools I’ve ever encountered. Doing these things also does not involve paying any attention at all to test scores (or the GreatSchools rating system). Reading parent and student reviews and visiting the school should give you an idea of whether students there are supported, challenged, and inspired.

If you really must look at test scores? Make sure that you compare the scores to other schools with similar racial and economic demographics. That (and that alone) will make your assessment more accurate than that provided at GreatSchools.

Laura Chapman: “GreatSchools” Rating System Is Funded by School Choice Billionaires

Laura Chapman, intrepid researcher, writes here about the billionaire and corporate money supporting the rating system for schools called GreatSchools. It clearly exists to promote school choice, not community cohesion or civic responsibility. GreatSchools recently announced that it would use “growth scores” to measure school quality, not just test scores, but the difference is miniscule, and the outcome is the same: to promote segregation and school choice by linking “school quality” and test scores.

Laura Chapman writes:

Great Schools is supported by income from Scholastic, Zillow and other advertisers, who pay for packages that can push up their page views or allow them to license the school ratings. The whole website functions as a tool to perpetuate redlining, charter schools, and advocates forf school choice.

Here are the largest financial pushers of the dubious ratings:

Walton Family Foundation, Laura and John Arnold Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Einhorn Family Charitable Trust, Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Trust, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

These big funders are offered a display of their logos. Other supporters are: America Achieves, The Charles Hayden Foundation, Charles and Helen Schwab Foundation, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, EdChoice, Heising-Simons Foundation, Innovate Public Schools, The Joyce Foundation, Excellent Schools Detroit, The Kern Family Foundation, The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation, and Startup: Education. These are not supporters of public schools.

This website is designed to market an ideology and a rating scheme. The Terms of use policy says: “Some information contained on the website may represent opinion or judgment… GreatSchools does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of any information on the website. As such, GreatSchools will not be responsible for any errors, inaccuracies, omissions or deficiencies in the information provided on the website. This information is provided “as is,” with no guarantees of completeness, non-infringement, accuracy or timeliness, and without warranties of any kind, express or implied. ”

Great Schools also lists “Partners.” Sad to say, the Great Schools website, designed to steer parents away from most public schools has a partnership with the US Department of Education and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“Community Action Partners” are: Choice Matters Oklahoma, Colorado Succeeds, Community Foundation of Atlanta, Delaware Department of Education, Families Empowered, Innovate Public Schools, The Indianapolis Mayor’s Office, and United Way of Central Indiana.

“Partners for Content” include the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence featuring Yale’s RULER program, a system of direct instruction in: (a) managing emotions by naming them and (b) thinking out loud about degrees of emotional intensity (energy) and pleasantness. Students learn to Recognize, Understand, Label, and Regulate their emotions at about $7,500 per school team.

The second “Content Partner” (believe it or not) is PARCC Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Career. As of the 2019-2020 school year, these tests were only used in Washington DC, Louisiana, Massachusetts, and New Jersey. New Jersey will stop using these tests in 2020-2021.

“Other Partners” are:
–Be a Learning Hero, offers parents a “roadmap” for school readiness and test prep. Key leaders worked for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

–Common Sense Media is a marketing website offering parents reviews and lists of kid-suitable videos, books, other media.

–Education Cities is a network promoting school choice in 24 cities in cooperation with 31 city based organizations. The network is funded by the Broad Foundation, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Walton Family foundation.

–National PTA which claims not “to endorse any commercial product or service.” But also says “Companies making a financial contribution to PTA may be entitled to promotional consideration and, in some cases, may have limited use of PTA’s marks and assets. ” Deals for members are offered by PTA’s 18 Corporate Alliances.” The National PTA also markets Common Core resources with outdated claims about these “being fully implemented.”

–Understood is devoted to serving families and children with disabilities. It is funded by15 non-profits, not counting these recent supporters: The New Teacher Center, Relay Graduate School of Education, the Achievement Network, and New Visions for Public schools,.

Great Schools also lists Bellwether Education Partners, the Center for Reinventing Public Education, Thomas B Fordham Institute, and Public Impact as “Partners. All promote charter schools as if these are “public.”

Great Schools generates and leases data to “leading real estate, technology and media websites.” Great Schools claims to be “the nation’s leading source of school performance information…. with “more than 55 million unique visitors” last year and “over half of American families with school-age children.”

Great Schools is designed to forward three real estate practices associated with parents seeking a school. The first is block busting—a process designed to promote fear among white home owners or prospective buyers that a neighborhood school brings too many low income racial minorities to the community and devalues its real estate. The second is redlining, illegal, but the practice of denying loans or property insurance to applicants based on the racial makeup of a neighborhood, including school demographics. The third and most common is steering, the real estate practice of directing homebuyers to or away from specific neighborhoods and schools based on the prospective homebuyer’s race color, religion, gender (sex), sexual orientation, disability (handicap), familial status, or national origin.

Great Schools rating schemes for “school quality” are a case study in what Cathy O’Neal has called mathematical intimidation. If you are mathematically inclined, see if you can make sense of the rating schemes available here. https://www.greatschools.org/gk/ratings-methodology/

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Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Segregation, Testing

How to make a good school site? Advice from a professional

Elena Veraksa: – The main problem of most school pages is “dead” content and absolutely non-ergonomic design

Ten years ago, school websites were a rarity, today a web page has become something of a must-have. We talked with the administrator of one of the best school resources in the country, Elena Veraksa, and found out why you can’t create empty sections, why publish news every day, and what does it have to do with “breadcrumbs”.

No longer a tribute to fashion

The portal of Minsk Gymnasium No. 7 won the remote contest “The Best Website of an Educational Institution”. The fact that a corporate page is not a tribute to fashion, but a rule of good taste and the face of an educational institution, was understood here three years ago. Then, a software engineer Elena Veraksa was hired for a quarter of the rate, who put things in order in the network:

– When I came to work, I was horrified: the black, mournful graphic design of the page, the complete absence of fresh information and huge banners of national educational portals. Prior to this, the site was run by a teacher of computer science, who did everything on a whim. Due to lack of experience and time, he did not do it very professionally. Although it is not necessary to be a pro in the field of programming to maintain the portal: all the resources of educational institutions work on the edu.by platform, which is administered by the Center for Information Resources and Communications. And some features are connected with this: typical sections, the impossibility of posting a full-length video, the absence of advertising.

Excursion in the future

The first thing Elena did was to radically change the design – styling, navigation, content:

– Removed the list of official banners from the main page (moved them to an ergonomic slider at the bottom of the page), updated the “Library” section ”, added a media library where you can download the electronic version of any textbook. I went through all the sections and filled them with information, and there was a lot of it: the parent committee, the board of trustees, educational work, educational, extracurricular life, career guidance. For ease of use, I introduced a special element, “breadcrumbs”, which allows you to return to the previous section in one click.

Elena tries to work with the site almost every day:

– Who will go to the page where the news is updated every seven days? Our audience reaches 500 visitors a day, it is very important not to lose it, so I try to add news constantly. Sunday is the only day I can afford to relax. Although I try to spend this time on analyzing the experience of my colleagues, making plans to upgrade the platform. In the future, we want to launch a virtual tour of the military glory room, which was created in the gymnasium, and make a 3D panorama of the educational institution.

Of course, not every school has the opportunity to allocate a rate for a professional dealing with the site. This work falls on the shoulders of teachers in the form of a voluntary workload. The main problem of most school pages is “dead” content and completely non-ergonomic design.

Update the schedule

For Znamenka, the specialist analyzed several portals of educational institutions. We found common mistakes and figured out whether they can be avoided.

We open the site of one of the schools in the Vitebsk region. We’re trying to find a timetable. After a five-minute wait for the page to load and wandering through the sections, we find the information we need. It turns out that the schedule is outdated, the 2017-2018 academic year has not yet arrived here. Elena can give about a dozen such examples:

Read also

– In another school, the 12th grade appeared out of nowhere in the “schedule” column. After all, a website is the face of an educational institution. If you make a minor mistake online, you will get negative feedback in reality. Why are group chats in Viber so popular with us? Because there is no information on the sites: even the schedule of parent meetings is not posted, as a rule. Often, web resources are something out of touch with life. There is an active preparation for centralized testing, rehearsal is in full swing. How many school pages does he write about it? Probably only one for 20-30, and those are urban. But the information about the upcoming DT is even more relevant for children from rural areas – they need to look for addresses for testing, make a route.

Another mistake many websites make is trying to intimidate schoolchildren. Articles about drug addiction, AIDS and HIV, alcoholism are filled with sections “For Students”:

– Knowing that edifying advice from teenagers only repels, I do not stick them out on the main page. Since these topics are mandatory for posting, I put them, but I try to let them through myself: instead of dry statistics, I am looking for stories, and always with a happy ending. To make it interesting for the guys to enter the sections of the site, I myself draw banners, come up with infographics, diagrams and tables. No lists and “deaf” materials without a single illustration. It is very important that the text is perceived easily and does not cause difficulties in reading.

Two whales of web design

Opening the next site. It is impossible to read it from a smartphone at all – there is no mobile version:

– For portals that were launched a year or two ago, the mobile version is installed by default. For older pages, it needs to be developed additionally. However, almost no one does this.

The specialist urges not to forget that Internet users rarely read online articles to the end. They prefer to scan them, run through their eyes, highlighting the main thing. To linger on something important, Elena suggests inserting a clue into the text: subtitle, highlight, footnote. The two pillars on which any good website rests are simplicity and clarity.

– Virtual users usually don’t have the patience to spend 30 minutes wandering through sections looking for the information they need. For everyone to find what they came for, do a search. This small window will save visitors time and nerves.

Can robots replace teachers?

Galina Baranok, Sales Specialist, Vitebsk:

– I think a robot will never take the place of a teacher. Regardless of the level of technology development, there will always be a demand for charismatic specialists who can not only teach some specific disciplines, but also become an example to follow. Last year, she sent her son Artem to first grade. We took the issue of choosing a teacher very seriously: we wanted to find “our own” person. It seems we have succeeded. If we talk about the introduction of new technologies in the educational process in general, then I am in favor with both hands. My son is happy to play “razvivayka” on a tablet, watch a presentation prepared by a teacher. Although he does not mind writing by hand: he diligently displays the letters in the workbook.

Nikita Fedorov, student of the Minsk State College of Electronics:

– The introduction of robots into the educational process is closely related to the development of artificial intelligence. If the machine has it, it will probably be able to replace the teacher, but this is a very distant prospect. As for the current day, it is difficult to imagine a school without information technology. Interactive whiteboards, multimedia presentations, electronic diaries, modern educational stands – all this makes the lessons interesting and exciting. In general, global academic success depends primarily on motivation.

Karolina Kulich, student of Minsk State Linguistic University:

– Don’t go to a fortuneteller here – a robot cannot replace a teacher. It is possible that the function of a teacher will transform over the years, for example, he will turn into a moderator who does not just invest knowledge, but only directs, tells where to get it. There will always be a person in the class who broadcasts moral and spiritual values ​​to the audience. If the prospect of introducing robots seems unrealistic, then the use of information technology in the educational process is important and necessary. I graduated from Minsk Gymnasium No. 40. In the 11th grade, we abandoned paper diaries and textbooks – everything is electronic. I am very glad that heavy portfolios are now in the past!

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Sukhov: a good school website encourages teachers to be creative

The monitoring of school websites, prepared jointly by the Higher School of Economics, the Prosveshcheniye publishing house, and the Russian New University (RosNOU), has shown that it is possible to make a good website for a school is a complex and multidimensional task. Most of them do not provide elementary information about school admissions, paid services, teachers, and learning conditions. The first place in the rating was taken by the website of the Physics and Mathematics Lyceum of the city of Sergiev Posad, Moscow Region. Vyacheslav Sukhov, director of the lyceum, tells in an interview with RIA Novosti about what information a good school website should contain.

– Vyacheslav Grigoryevich, who is the target audience of your site?

– The site is needed primarily by those who are directly related to the lyceum – students, their parents and teachers, our colleagues. We focus on them when filling it.

We proceed from the fact that parents, when choosing a school, should receive comprehensive information about our lyceum on the website. These are the admission rules, and options for entrance examinations, and information about our graduates and best students. The site also contains information about the MIPT correspondence school, which operates on the basis of our lyceum – you can find out what they teach there and how they get there.

Parents of our students can see their grades, class schedules, get detailed information about the Unified State Examination and State Academic Exams, download lists of books for extracurricular reading, learn everything about the events that took place at the Lyceum – read news, see photos.

And for our students the site is not only an information resource, but also a means of self-expression. For example, they are happy to make photo reports from extracurricular activities.

All our teachers are required to post information about themselves on the website – what university they graduated from, what lessons they teach, to give parents the opportunity to get acquainted with their methodological materials. The site contains information about the load of each teacher, so that everyone can see who works how much. Remuneration depends, among other things, on the load, and openness in this matter reduces the likelihood of conflicts in the team.

– How are decisions made in your lyceum about what should be posted on the site?

– We regularly ask both parents and children about this, discuss the issue at teachers’ councils. Once, parents said that the site lacked an electronic diary, and we decided to cooperate with the Dnevnik.ru resource, an educational network that creates an electronic environment for teachers, students and parents. It provides a wide variety of services – an electronic diary, a schedule, and so on. Very comfortably.

All information intended for the site is carefully checked and published only after agreement with me.

– Directors often complain that it is difficult to find a person who will manage the site. How do you solve this problem?

– The creators and developers of our site are three of our 2012 graduates: Sergey Rybin, Roman Ragozin and Kirill Fedoseev. They worked “for thanks” and prepared a shift for themselves from the current ninth graders who love their lyceum and are well versed in web design. But, of course, finding someone who can competently work with the site is difficult for the school. Teachers rarely have sufficient knowledge of web technologies, and hiring someone from outside is expensive.

– What do you think an ideal school website should look like?

– The minimum program for any site is to be the hallmark of the school, that is, contain information about admission conditions, entrance examinations (if any), paid services, teachers, number of places and educational services.

But this is not enough for a good site – it should be “live”, regularly updated, be a virtual museum of the school, an exhibition of its achievements.