Are School Rankings Fair? The Children At Risk Example
We are a country that loves to rank EVERYTHING! Read any major website or USA Today and you will often find stories that rank the ten best cities, states, countries, travel spots, etc. We also love to rank schools. States rank them and various organizations rank them. I have even ranked them myself.
I don’t particularly like to rank schools for three major reasons: First, because there is only so much that data can tell you about a school. To truly know what a school is about, you have to be INSIDE the school and talk to teachers, students, parents, and administrators.
Second, rankings use only the readily available data about schools, thus tends to focus on test scores to the exclusion of other important measures. Most knowledgeable people would agree test score data don’t tell you anywhere near the whole picture about a school. Importantly, test score data such as TAKS does not tell you
