Two decades ago, New Jersey and other states started issuing “report cards” to comply with federal rules for sharing information with the public. That once-a-year compilation of statistics was not enough to drive revenue for businesses that sold advertising all year round. Paid website space created the need for other ranking tools.
Niche not only sells advertising space to schools, it also sells them strategies to prompt families to submit positive reviews. (Ramsey School District has never done this.) Great Schools targets the Realtor market. NJ Monthly drives consumers to its magazine and website, and sells ads placed alongside that high-traffic content. US News & World Report lost market share and reinvented its product to stay profitable in the industry of school rankings, as recounted in this Revisionist History podcast.
Here are some primary problems with how school rankings are developed.
- They are based on simple, easy-to-collect statistics, which keeps the “raw material” costs in check so net revenue can be higher. That approach can’t really capture the complexities of learning. Rankings don’t consider a school’s culture (students involved in activities), its broad range of electives (beyond AP courses), or student growth (from pre-K to graduation). They don’t consider the competencies that are needed for the modern world and workplace. Rankings are more like a cheap scan-tron test than a rigorous, teacher-scored essay.
- They make learning a competitive sport, when it should be about individual progress and achievement. Ramsey schools base curricula and experiences on competencies necessary for lifelong success. This includes a strong emphasis not just on content, but what students can do with that content when they enter the workforce, and when they continue evolving as the workforce does. Look back on the scores you turned in during high school standardized tests and ask yourself, “Were those an early indicator of the person I am today?”
- They focus almost entirely on high schools while ignoring the 9-year foundation for accomplishments prior to the “home stretch” of a K-12 experience. Ramsey has some of the best K-8 schools in the state and beyond.
To learn more about Ramsey test scores and other data to measure success, watch our social media for our “Did You Know” series that dives much deeper than commercial rankings. The public is also welcomed at the Oct. 26 Board of Education meeting where residents can hear a presentation of test scores.
Being curious about the how and why of rankings can help us assign them the appropriate weight in our own personal grading system. Does a third-party, for-profit ranker count the same as our observations of a student who struggled but succeeded in geometry? What part of the ranking assures us that a child will be accepted, welcomed nurtured to thrive? Would a numeric score assigned to an entire district matter as much as one student’s realization through exploration that he loved science enough to make it a career?
