Greatschools

We conducted a data analysis of their scores.

GreatSchools is an American national nonprofit organization that provides information about PK schools and education. The website provides ratings and comparison tools based on student growth, college readiness, equity, and test scores for public schools in the U. The next four years — , the school ratings expanded statewide in California and expanded nationwide in In , GreatSchools introduced a "Summary Rating" to individual school profiles. The Summary Rating is a score on a scale composed of themed ratings including how well schools serve students from different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds Equity , how much students are improving within a school year Student Progress , performance on state tests Test Score , and how well schools prepare students for college College Readiness. In , GreatSchools further evolved its Equity and Summary Ratings for K schools to emphasize equity and elevate student academic progress as a key measure of school quality. The increased emphasis on equity had the effect of lowering the summary scores for many highly-rated schools and raising ratings for poorly performing schools, as schools with a small population of disadvantaged students do not receive an Equity rating.

Greatschools

With more than 40 million unique visitors each year, the school ratings site GreatSchools. GreatSchools is also licensed by real estate listing sites such as Redfin and Zillow, which allow potential homebuyers to easily see the school zones for houses for sale, or permit users to search for houses for sale that are zoned to a particular school. In addition to the ratings, the site also collects reviews from parents, who can offer their own star ratings. Nationwide, the population of public school students is becoming more diverse, and a growing percentage of schools are predominantly black and Hispanic, with high concentrations of students eligible for free or reduced price lunch. Such schools tend to have fewer experienced and effective teachers, a more challenging school climate, and less rigorous academic offerings than schools with a wealthier student body. One research paper receiving renewed attention suggests an earlier version of the GreatSchools scoring system may have accelerated already existing trends of racial and socioeconomic segregation. To be clear, that segregation existed well before GreatSchools came on the scene, said Sharique Hasan and Anuj Kumar, who examined demographics and housing trends between and , when GreatSchools was expanding its reach. He studies how information technology affects the behavior of organizations and individuals. Hasan and Kumar looked at demographic changes and housing prices during the time that GreatSchools was growing to incorporate ratings of schools throughout the country. At that time, GreatSchools ratings related almost entirely to test scores.

Will you help keep Vox free for all? Other research on different school rating systems have shown similar effects greatschools housing values. A primary one is entrenched residential segregation, greatschools, the product of government policies that have restricted who can live where and who can accumulate wealth, greatschools.

Across the country, states and school districts have devised their own systems of letter grades and color-coded dashboards based on test scores and graduation rates. But arguably the most visible and influential school rating system in America comes from the nonprofit GreatSchools, whose ratings appear in home listings on national real estate websites Zillow, Realtor. But GreatSchools ratings effectively penalize schools that serve largely low-income students and those serving largely black and Hispanic students, generally giving them significantly lower ratings than schools serving more affluent and more white and Asian students, a Chalkbeat analysis found. But those schools still face long odds of getting an above-average rating on GreatSchools — likely because their students are arriving far behind. The result is a ubiquitous, privately run school ratings system that is steering people toward whiter, more affluent schools.

As an independent nonprofit, our mission at GreatSchools is to help all parents get a great education for their children and for communities to ensure that all students receive a quality education. 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. On our profiles, we strive to display a variety of indicators of school quality to provide a well-rounded picture of how effectively each school serves all of its students. Our ratings are intended to provide a better understanding of school quality and to help parents compare schools within the same state. We are constantly working with state and national agencies to acquire more representative school data in every state. This helps us provide a more in-depth picture of school quality nationwide and allows us to improve our school profiles and ratings. In the past, the overall GreatSchools Rating in most states was based on test scores. GreatSchools ratings follow a scale, where 10 is the highest and 1 is the lowest. The ratings we display for each school can vary based on data availability or relevance to a school level for example, high schools will have a College Readiness Rating, but elementary schools will not. We will not produce a Summary Rating for a school if we lack sufficient data to calculate one.

Greatschools

The Summary Rating is a multi-measure school quality metric intended to reflect how well a school is preparing students for postsecondary success. GreatSchools currently produces four themed ratings, all of which are included in the Summary Rating when available. The Student Progress Rating is calculated using state-level student growth data. This rating is replaced with the Academic Progress Rating a proxy growth measure created by GreatSchools when sufficient state-produced student growth data is not available. The Equity Rating incorporates multiple student outcome measures for historically disadvantaged students including state test scores, academic growth, college entrance exam performance, and high school graduation rates.

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The school was rated a 5, whereas many other schools in the area scored only a 1, she said, and her son is doing well after the switch. Join the EdWeek Research Center for a webinar with actionable take-aways for companies who sell to K districts. GreatSchools also partnered with real-estate websites, starting with Zillow in , to embed its ratings, since schools are often crucial in homebuying decisions. Potential changes to enrollment rules and school zone lines that would integrate schools often prompt backlash from more advantaged parents. Some of this came on the advice of Innovate Public Schools, an advocacy group that works with low-income families and has supported the growth of charter schools. But they can also help affluent families cement access to areas other families cannot afford, while bolstering stereotypes that schools in certain neighborhoods are uniformly of poor quality. That likely reflects the fact that low-income students of color arrive to school with lower achievement levels due to numerous factors, including the effects of poverty and racism. The Latest. It increased average school quality by a few tenths on their 1 to 10 rating scale. In America, most children go to school based on where their family lives. SchoolDigger gives the school 2 of 5 stars, while Niche awards it a C. On average, the more black and Hispanic students a school enrolled, and the more low-income students it served, the lower its rating. August 16, Schools in areas with high-priced homes generally have more money to spend on teachers and other educational resources. Christina A.

As an independent nonprofit, our mission at GreatSchools. In , we launched our Summary Rating, which is comprised of themed ratings that each reflect important factors in how students experience school, including how well schools serve students from different racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic backgrounds, how much students are improving within a school year, performance on state tests, and how well schools prepare students for college.

Curious about how Chalkbeat did the data analysis for this story? Retrieved December 21, Thanks for signing up! This preliminary paper , by Sharique Hasan and Anuj Kumar, shows that the GreatSchools score might actually make segregation worse. Administrator Jobs. Open image caption Close image caption Florida Gov. And encouraging more affluent families to go to high-performing schools in low-income neighborhoods could have unintended consequences, such as displacing other students. You can opt out at any time. All Topics. We conducted a data analysis of their scores. September 23, It could put more weight on growth. Goux, the GreatSchools spokesperson, said the organization works to ensure all facets of school performance are visible.