“Civic institutions, such as parks, libraries, city halls and cultural facilities, are the foundations of a civil society and the cornerstones of democracy.” — Cynthia Nikitin, Senior VP at the Project for Public Spaces
Amongst some circles of parents, there’s an obsession with ratings. There’s an obsession with wanting to identify or classify a school as being “bad” or “good”. Very few parents make the effort to understand what a rating really represents or what it even means for a school to be “bad” or “good”.
As with all attempts to represent any organization’s quality with a single number, whether it’s a restaurant and its Yelp rating or a prospective employer and its Glassdoor rating, the number is an imperfect predictor of the quality of any individual’s engagement with that organization. With schools and GreatSchools, the obvious problem is the rating is primarily driven by standardized test scores. There are numerous complex socio-economic factors that impact standardized test scores; the only thing a high GreatSchools rating tells you is how good the students at a school are at taking standardized tests. GreatSchools claims they’ve updated their reporting to represent more than just test scores, but I can guarantee you that most parents aren’t interested in the “Equity Rating”.
My kids attend a public school that is unrated by GreatSchools and I really don’t care what the rating is when it eventually does get rated. I don’t care because it’s impossible to quantify how well my child will get educated at a particular school. A rating doesn’t capture how much my son Matty’s teacher delights in his personality quirks. A rating doesn’t capture how my son Rafael seems to enjoy singing now because they have a new music teacher this year who incorporates a lot more singing in class. A rating doesn’t capture the social skills developed in my two sons when they play soccer with friends on the rooftop playground at their school.
My kids’ school isn’t rated because it’s a new elementary school where a new grade is being added each year. My older son Rafael is in that leading class. It’s been interesting hearing some parents express discomfort in having their kids be a part of a “new” school, but I’ve looked at it as an opportunity to help shape the culture and practices of a school for the future. This is exactly the type of situation I want my kids to learn how to thrive in — embrace the unknown, see it as an opportunity to create and shape the future, and learn to quickly adapt when things don’t go the way you expect. Don’t just do what’s comfortable or established. Challenge the status quo.
Our schools have the potential to be so much more than just factories that churn out kids who mostly follow the same formula of enrolling in X number of Advanced Placement courses, participating in Y number of extra-curricular activities and athletics, and hope and pray they get into a “top” university. That’s just the beginning of the proverbial rat race…
The problem with the way many parents evaluate schools is they think of them as just another service provider; the GreatSchools rating is the same thing a Yelp rating is for a restaurant. Instead of thinking about our public schools as a provider of services we’re entitled to because of our taxes, let’s think of them as the core civic institutions where every member of our community comes together to shape the future generation of engaged citizens. Instead of engaging with our public schools as consumers, let’s engage as creators. How different would the discussions about our schools be in the political arena when they’re in the context of how the community is coming together to serve its schools as opposed to how the schools are serving us? It’s not just our kids’ futures that are at stake; the future of our communities are at stake.
