Texas education savings accounts. Enrollment is open in Missouri. For American kids, there seems to be a new narrative and more educational possibilities every week.
But families need the whole picture in order to take full advantage of these new options.
What information do they now possess, then? And what other information might be useful to them?
Academic achievement and year-over-year progress in reading and math, as determined by standardized exams, are the most frequently reported data points about public schools, whether they be neighborhood schools, magnet schools, or charters.
Even though this information is important, critics from both sides of the debate point out that it doesn’t cover everything that parents should know about a school’s academic performance. If the children are unable to pass the examinations, then something is seriously wrong.
What about disciplines that are evaluated less regularly than reading and math, like science and history? What about disciplines that aren’t assessed at all, like the arts and foreign languages? And what about all the lessons that quality schools teach that are not measured by exams, such as respect for others, critical thinking, teamwork, and self-discipline?
Education reformers who acknowledge the shortcomings of standardized testing yet maintain that statistics are essential to enhancing American education have long tried to provide answers. This is why a recent analysis that looks at high school readiness—a novel and potentially significant indicator of school quality—is so intriguing.
As the name implies, the main aim is to measure the impact of middle school on high school grades, or more specifically, grade-point averages for the ninth grade, in order to determine how well the school prepares its pupils for the next phase of their education.
According to the survey, pupils’ future grades are significantly impacted by middle schools. Attending a middle school with a high high school readiness score, for instance, increased a student’s ninth-grade GPA by around a tenth of a grade point in North Carolina and Maryland.
Effect of Attending a Middle School with a Higher High School Readiness Score on Ninth-Grade GPA
Although a tenth of a grade point might not seem like much, it is sufficient to preclude a subpar student from enrolling at Texas A&M or the University of California. And given the variety of factors that might influence a student’s GPA, including the quality of their elementary school education, their socioeconomic situation, and their home life, that increase is really remarkable.
Crucially, institutions don’t always have the same impact on test results as they do on GPAs. Actually, there is very little correlation between the two.
Middle Schools That Boost Students Test Scores Don t Necessarily Boost Their High School GPAs
To put it another way, examining how middle schools affect grades offers a fresh perspective on how schools educate their children, which many families who aren’t solely concerned with test results may find useful in their school selection process.
Although it would seem odd to recommend assessing middle schools according to their students’ preparedness for high school, many states already implement a similar system at the high school level, where report cards have long included markers of students’ readiness for college and the workforce.
Additionally, most states currently collect data on students’ high school GPAs and make school report cards publicly available, despite the technological difficulties in separating the influence of middle schools on high school grades. Therefore, a new high school readiness indicator might provide families with the information they seek and start to shift America’s educational system away from its fixation with standardized testing and toward a more comprehensive understanding of student achievement with a little math and straightforward communications.
Families should have access to more information as educational options grow. Test results by themselves can never fully capture the quality of a school or the achievement of its students. However, paint is abundant in the big data era.
