School ratings websites: School Ratings & Reviews for Public & Private Schools: GreatSchools

Are School Ratings Accurate? How the Ratings on Real Estate Search Portals Are Harming America’s Neighborhoods and Cities – SchoolSparrow – Fair School Ratings

View our more equitable ratings for schools across the nation at this link.

Look for a home today on most major real estate portals, including Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com and Homesnap, and you will find the public schools assigned to each home, along with school ratings. The third party ratings website which provides these ratings is the non-profit GreatSchools. But are those school ratings accurate?

Most parents believe these school ratings are an indicator of school quality. But the reality is, these school ratings don’t communicate what parents think they are communicating. These ratings are an indicator of the socio-economic status of the parents whose children attend the school. They are not a very good indicator at how effective the school is at teaching and learning. 

This is because student performance on standardized tests significantly influence GreatSchools ratings. But research has shown that test scores are at least 70% attributable to parent income, not school quality. 

Consequently, the ratings you see on today’s real estate websites give high ratings to schools where parents have high incomes. And schools where parents have diverse or moderate to low incomes get low ratings. Notice that school quality and teacher effectiveness are not even part of the equation.

In fact, the school ratings on today’s popular real estate portals obscure the quality of a school and the effectiveness of its teachers.

Today’s School Ratings Support A Damaging Narrative

The school rating system prominent on real estate portals supports a damaging narrative. A narrative that schools where parents have diverse or moderate to low incomes are low quality schools. The problem is, that’s not always true.

So, are the school ratings accurate? The answer is a resounding “NO”. But there is another rating system out there that more truthfully evaluates how a school is impacting student performance. Unfortunately the major real estate search portals are choosing not to display these ratings.

This story by Chalkbeat explains the situation in more detail. 

We have school ratings for most schools across the country, and you can view our ratings at this link.

The Implications for Schools, Neighborhoods, and Cities

Today’s school ratings ignore the powerful connection between test scores and parent’s socioeconomic status. Consequently, the school rating system you find when searching for a home online misrepresents thousands of urban public schools nationwide

Parents are being steered towards homogenous schools where parents have high incomes. Sadly, parents are also overlooking high-quality schools where parents have diverse or moderate to low incomes.

An entire city can have unfairly underrated schools. This negatively impacts the perceived value proposition of a city, and ultimately the home buying decisions of parents. The economic impact on the city is easy to see.

Ratings that Provide More Truth About School Quality

That’s why we’ve created a school rating system, rooted in data science, that accounts for parent income. If you must consider test scores, our ratings hold more truth about how the school itself is impacting student performance. You can read more about our rating system here.

Our rating system is approximated in the graph below. Here we’ve plotted test scores vs parent income for all public schools in Chicagoland. A trendline is applied that represents the average test score for schools at every parent income level. By measuring the extent to which a school is above or below this trendline, we can measure the extent to which the school impacts student performance on standardized tests.

Our ratings recognize individual schools for their exemplary teachers and student support staff. And they recognize entire neighborhoods and cities as desirable destinations for parents searching for a quality education for their children.

Realtors report that parents want a 7/10 rating or better, particularly if they are moving to a new city. If the schools associated with the home they want to buy have a rating under 7, they often dismiss the school and the neighborhood the school serves.

But if those parents consulted SchoolSparrow school ratings, they might actually make different decisions. For example, let’s take a look at Berwyn, Illinois.

Berwyn, Illinois

Berwyn is a suburb of Chicago located south of the affluent suburb of Oak Park.  During rush hour, the drive to the Chicago CBD is roughly 30 minutes, but Berwyn has transit locations with a short 20 minute train ride to downtown Chicago.

The average single-family home value in Oak Park is $491,000. The average single family home value in Berwyn is $282,000. 

GreatSchools rates five out of 13 public schools in Berwyn a 7/10 or above, with an average school rating of 5.8/10 .

But SchoolSparrow’s rating system, which more truthfully evaluates teacher impact on student performance, rates 11 out of the 13 public schools in Berwyn a 7/10 or above, with an average school rating of 7. 4/10. 

Let’s take a look at this visually by highlighting Berwyn’s 13 schools in our graph:

Student performance on standardized tests is above average in 11 out of 13 public schools in Berwyn.  

Sidenote: you can check how your Chicagoland city is performing at this link. (Hint: check out Chicago for some surprising results).

According to SchoolSparrow’s model, more than half of Berwyn’s public schools are underrated. And six of the seven underrated schools are elementary schools. 

There are nine public elementary schools in Berwyn. The major real estate search platforms unfairly portray Six of those nine elementary schools. Two thirds of Berwyn’s elementary schools are unfairly underrated. What economic impact is this having on Berwyn?

Let’s take a look at these 6 underrated elementary schools. Note: we’ve added additional commentary about two of these schools, both of which are severely underrated by 4 points or more:

Jefferson Elem School, Berwyn North SD 98

Jefferson earns a 10/10 rating on SchoolSparrow, and is operating in the top 4% of schools in the entire State of Illinois. But all the real estate search portals show a 6/10 rating. Parents, don’t believe this biased rating! 

Our algorithm (which takes into account several variables, including parent income) predicts that schools with demographics similar to Jefferson elementary will average a 27.4 score on the R/LA section of the standardized test. But Jefferson students blew this score out of the water with a 48. Folks, that’s 75% above expectations. Incredible.

Jefferson Elementary has a 10/40 diversity score. This means at least two races/cultures have at least 10% representation of the total school population. Students at Jefferson are getting some exposure to other cultures and will gain from the well-documented cognitive benefits that come with a diverse environment.

Consider their vision and mission statement:

We’ve interviewed principals at over performing elementary schools in Chicago, and documented several consistent themes . There were often strong principals at the helm, a culture of inclusivity and excellence throughout the school, high teacher morale, low teacher turnover, and significant relationships with three or more community organizations that provide services for the school.

We can see from their mission statement that Jefferson Elementary aims to embody several of these themes. And one data point that it’s working is in their students’ overperformance on standardized tests as evaluated by our algorithm.

Our hats are off to the students, parents, administrators, and, especially, to the dedicated and talented teachers that are truly educating Jefferson’s students.

Komensky Elem School, Berwyn South SD 100

Komensky Elementary School earns an 8/10 SchoolSparrow rating based on the impact that teachers at Komensky are having on student performance on standardized tests. Somehow the real estate search portals display a 4/10 rating for this high-quality school. Komensky ES operates in the top 21% of schools in the State of Illinois. Parents, Komensky deserves to be on your short list!

Our algorithm calculates the average expected score on the R/LA section of the test for schools with similar demographics at 24.2. But Komensky students out-perform this average by 32% with a 32. This school is doing something right, and deserves recognition as a high-quality learning institution for children from all walks of life. 

And for parents that want their children exposed to a second language, Komensky is a dual language school (Spanish/English). 

Their mission statement:

“The vision of Komensky School, as a dual language school, is to foster a safe community that provides, authentic learning that is inclusive for all students to empower their identities, cultivate curiosity, develop creative solutions, and promote a sense of global responsibility.”

Based on the extent to which Komensky students are exceeding expectations, we think they are succeeding at instilling their vision in Komensky elementary students.

Keep up the good work Komensky Elementary! Clearly good things are happening at your awesome school.

Piper School, Berwyn South SD 100

Piper Elementary is an 8/10 according to SchoolSparrow’s algorithm that takes into account the socio-economic profile of this high-quality school. School’s with similar demographics are predicted to score 29.4 points on average, but Piper student’s scored a 37, which is 26% above expectations! 

To put that in context, imagine you took a test in a class, and it turns out the average score was 75%. If you scored 26% above the average like Piper’s students, then you would have scored 94.5%! 

Piper is in the top 21% of schools in the State of Illinois, and they also have a 10/40 diversity score.

Prairie Oak School, Berwyn North SD 98

Prairie Oak School is underrated with a 5/10 rating as displayed on the major real estate search portals. Our algorithm calculates the average expected test score for schools with similar demographics at 25 points, but Piper students scored 30 points which is 20% above expectations. 

Prairie Oak is in the top 28% of schools in the State of Illinois and they also boast a 10/40 diversity rating. 

Karel Havlicek Elem School, Berwyn North SD 98

Karel Havlicek also beats expectations, scoring 27 points when the average expected test score is 23. 6. They are underrated with a 4/10 rating as displayed on the major real estate search portals, but based on out-performing the average, SchoolSparrow’s algorithm recognizes Karel Havlicek with a 7/10 rating.

Karel Havlicek Elementary operates in the top 32% of schools in the State of Illinois.

Irving Elem School, Berwyn South SD 100

Irving Elementary School earns a 7/10 rating based on exceeding the average expected score for its peers. Unfortunately this great school is underrated with a 5/10 rating as displayed on all the real estate search portals.

Irving Elementary has a 10/40 diversity rating, and operates in the top 39% of schools in the State of Illinois.

How Will the Real Estate Industry Respond?

Real estate search engines now have a choice: to display truthful ratings, or display ratings that steer families away from neighborhoods/cities under the pretense that the schools are “bad” simply because parents have diverse or moderate to low incomes.

We think Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com and Homesnap are all aware that our ratings are out there, and that they could be made available for display on their websites. But apparently there is no interest. Do they not believe the problem exists?

You can help urge the real estate engines to do the right thing by tweeting this message

Please consider displaying more truthful school ratings, so parents can make better informed decisions when considering schools in their home purchase. @zillow @redfin @realtordotcom @homesnap

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Our mission is to bring equitable school rankings to all families in the US, so that a home purchase decision can be made with a more balanced view of school quality. Today school rankings are biased towards privileged neighborhoods, and they unfairly discount schools with the socio-economic diversity. We aim to bring equity to school rankings.

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All-Russian rating of school sites: why is it needed and why is it popular – Tatiana Kozlova

Tatiana Kozlova,
May 15, 2016, 13:34 — REGNUM The acceptance of applications for participation in the All-Russian ranking of school sites – 2016 – the annual review of electronic resources of schools and other educational institutions of the country, is closing. Registration will be closed on the rating portal on May 15. The project is organized by the Russian New University and the Prosveshchenie publishing house.

nine0002 School

Quote from the movie “You never even dreamed of”. Dir. Ilya Fraz. 1980 USSR

Every school in the country is required by law to have its own website. The all-Russian rating is designed to independently evaluate the work of schools with electronic resources, give recommendations and stimulate the active use of information technology by schools.

About the history of the rating, important changes in the new, ninth version of the program and the main secret of a successful school website to the correspondent IA REGNUM was told by the head of the information management department of RosNOU Igor Mytko and project curator Elena Koroleva.

– Tell us the background of the project. How and who came up with the idea of ​​ranking school sites? What were the first steps towards its creation?

Igor: Six years ago, our university came up with the idea to organize a contest called “The Best Schools”. It was such a large complex competition, where there were many categories for which marks were made. Schools participated with great interest, but the problem was that the organization required a lot of resources, and we realized that we would not be able to hold it regularly. And in order to continue such an interesting interaction with schools, we decided to focus exclusively on school sites. It seemed to us a good idea – a local problem with clear conditions. Therefore, the next year, in 2010, we made the first contest of school websites similar to the contest for the best school. 434 schools submitted applications, we saw that there was interest in the project, and therefore the next step was to make the competition an annual event. So we came up with the idea of ​​creating a rating of school sites. nine0005

— Why did you decide to create a ranking of school websites? Not companies, not universities, but schools?

Elena: There are a lot of ratings of universities and their sites, but comparing and evaluating school sites was not, at least seriously: site ratings based solely on voting, of course, were already then. In addition, the project was supported by the Prosveshcheniye publishing house, which publishes school textbooks, which co-founded the rating and continues to support us to this day. nine0005

Igor: Another reason is that education is basically our field of activity. At the same time, our team is focused not so much on praising our university, but rather on creating unique content – something that will be useful to future students, even if they do not enter RosNOU. There are things that have universal value, such as explanatory articles about how to choose a university, what a master’s degree is, and so on. In the same way, the fact that the school where you study participates in the ranking, takes such and such a place is, although more entertaining information, but still unique content. nine0005

— In your opinion, why should a school participate in the rating? Let’s say she has a website, but why the rating?

Igor: It makes sense for a school to take part in the rating for several reasons. The first and most important thing is to get an external assessment, an external examination of what you are doing. This reason is divided into two – official and more lively. The official one is that the results of the school website in the All-Russian rating are included in the reports of schools on the work done to the educational authorities. This is not mandatory, perhaps fortunately, but, nevertheless, such information is taken into account and is an absolute plus. nine0005

A more lively cause is the human factor. School sites are created and filled by people, this work is creative and interesting. They do not always do this simply by fulfilling their duties. Many join of their own free will, invest their soul, and therefore the result is very interesting and important for them, and even more so an external independent assessment, they are interested in competing with neighboring educational institutions. I remember that we had fierce competition between the sites of two kindergartens, which were located opposite each other, there they fought literally for every half a point. nine0005

– State the main objectives of the rating.

Igor: Stimulate progress. The declared goal, which we are quite close to in reality, is to stimulate the use of information technology by schools, the openness of school life. So that any parent who is going to take their child to this school, or whose children are already studying in it, could go to the site and see what the school has, how school life goes.

Elena: In addition, today, for each educational institution, the presence of a website is a mandatory requirement of the Ministry of Education. Some of these requirements, which, in our opinion, are the most useful for people, are taken into account in the rating criteria.

— What do you think is the secret of a successful school site?

Igor: The secret of a successful site, like, probably, of any successful business, is interest in this business, these are people who work with enthusiasm with these sites. It happens that a person who has never done this before takes on a site, and at first he does absolute horror, but he is interested, and then a little time passes, and the site gets better, accordingly rises in terms of criteria and, in the end, occupies ranking already leading position. nine0005

– Over time, the rating has changed, there have been some improvements. Can you tell me what has changed drastically since then?

Elena: First of all, we are changing and improving the evaluation system. Thus, in 2012, together with the Higher School of Economics, we developed completely new criteria and a new ranking methodology.

Igor: For all the time, the assessment system has changed dramatically twice: the first time together with the Higher School of Economics and the second this year. What caused the latest changes: when our rating grew to five thousand participants, the level of communication with the participants approached a critical level. Schools called us and said: we were wrongly assessed, they did not take into account one or the other … The indicator of the school website consists of fifty criteria, and the experts are people. And, checking hundreds of sites, you inevitably begin to make mistakes. With the growth of the number of sites, the percentage of natural marriages grew. This group of sites was checked at the beginning of the working day, this one at the end, they didn’t finish watching something, they simply didn’t find something on the site. It became critical. Therefore, in the spring of 2015, we stopped the rating and decided that we would launch a new one only when we reorganized it. nine0005

Elena: Now we have included in the examination the communication between the ranking expert and the editor of the school website. We created a new platform where participants can conduct a self-examination of the site and, for each criterion, add a link to the desired page, so that later there are no questions that something was not found. The expert goes through all the links and checks if everything is fine and if there are any errors. Then, for each criterion that did not satisfy the requirement, the expert writes a comment: add such and such information, indicate it … The participant receives a preliminary result of the examination and sees the comments. He can correct something, discuss with an expert and submit the site for re-examination, thereby obtaining the final result and a place in the rating. nine0005

— Is the number of rating participants growing every year?

Igor: Yes, the growth in the number of participants is obvious: 400, 600, 800, 1300, 1900, 3200, 4000 and 5200 last year – such an increase is observed in part because the sites that have already participated in the rating, the next year continue participation automatically. At any time, you can leave the rating, someone left, but these were isolated cases, basically everyone stayed. And now we have left all the results of the previous ratings in the archive, and schools need to apply separately for the ninth version of the project. We started from scratch – March 14, 2016 we had 0 members. In two months, by May 14, 3909 sites. On May 15, we complete the recruitment for this version.

— Why do you think the site rating is so popular?

Igor: Perhaps because his idea is simple and clear. There is a site, and there is an external, independent assessment. We are not affiliated with schools in any way. The assessment is honest, justified, and one can argue with it. A simple criterion for the correctness of what you are doing.

Elena: Work on the site is also a reason for pride. Schools exhibit the best they have, what they are proud of, and the results of an independent assessment are a very good reason for pride and an incentive for further development. nine0005

— How do you see the future prospects of the project? Any plans for the future?

Igor: If you had asked about our plans a year ago, we would have said that the main task is to make the system more perfect, to transfer it from expertise to consulting. And now we are going to check whether we have achieved this goal, since the main plan for the future is to make this, the ninth version, qualitatively.

Elena: In the future, we may expand the range of our activities and create a rating not only for school sites. For example, today colleges are asking us a lot. So far they are declared in the school category, but they still have a different specificity. nine0005

Igor: There is one more perspective, it is still on a strategic pending plan, but it is very important. We want to turn the rating site into an information and communication center for the development, creation and content of sites. Add editorial tips, quality content, and more. Right now, there are not enough resources for this, but there are plans.

Read earlier in this story:
Do schools need their own websites and why? nine0121