How engaged are the students in the curriculum, and how supported are they in their individual interests? Is there artwork hanging on the walls? Do the teachers seem happy, or is there a high staff turnover? How diverse is the student body? How caring and compassionate are the student-to-student and teacher-to-student relationships? We can't totally dismiss school ratings—nor should we. They can provide valuable information to state and federal leaders working to improve education for all students.
They can be just as beneficial for families, but parents need to do their own research to understand how the ratings they look at are assembled. Wallin wants all parents to remember: "A single ranking can't tell you everything they need to know about a school.
By Sarah Bradley September 17, Save Pin FB More. And, at the end of the day, don't forget to put on your critical thinking cap.
Be the first to comment! No comments yet. Close this dialog window Add a comment. Add your comment Cancel Submit. Close this dialog window Review for. According to the majority of the respondents of the same RISP survey, rankings affect institutional decision making. In it, 27 percent of respondents report that policies have been revised, 26 percent report that focus has shifted to new features of existing procedures, while 23 percent indicate that changes have taken place in the research areas prioritised and 21 percent that the criteria for recruitment and promotion have been affected.
The vast majority of RISP survey respondents report that they monitor their institutional performance in rankings and that the senior institutional leadership is involved in this process. Some even have dedicated staff or units for this purpose. Many use rankings not only to monitor their own performance, but also that of their partners and competitors for benchmarking purposes. A briefing paper from the Institute of Higher Education Policy states that, in practice, rankings impact discussions about, and collection of, comparative data on both a national and institutional level.
Rankings encourage not only the collection but also the publication of education data — according to the Global university rankings and their impact study. Most research in the field indicates that rankings impact institutional partnering. This applies particularly to international partnering, as knowledge of prospective partner institutions is often not sufficiently available. Having a highly ranked partner can also be used for reputational purposes.
The Trends in Higher Education Marketing, Recruitment, and Technology study shows that university branding requires constant effort and data to support a desired image. Ranking outcomes are often mentioned on institutional websites, on social media and institutional presentations in order to increase institutional visibility and credibility.
The Effects of Rankings on Student Choices and Institutional Selection study outlines how rankings affect the choice of study destination, particularly when studying internationally. Especially as, in such cases, information about institutions and education system in the direct network of prospective students is often limited. And the claim that Attleboro High School, which was not even fully accredited as recently as seven years ago, is now in the top ten percent of America's high schools -- among the most challenging -- seems improbable, at best.
And yet, every year since , Jay Mathews, an education journalist at the Washington Post, has been putting together a ranking of what he calls "America's Most Challenging Schools," or the Challenge Index.
For years, this national list was published by Newsweek , which was owned by the Washington Post Company. When the Post sold off Newsweek in , it kept the Mathews index for itself. Newsweek then produced its own ranking , which has been continued by the Daily Beast. All of these lists have flaws that stem from the inherent absurdity of presuming to rank schools around the country according to how good or challenging they are.
And they all come in for criticism. But it's the Mathews "Challenge Index" that has given rise to the sharpest criticism over time see here , here , and here , for example because of its methodology , which is reductionist in the extreme. Note that the numerator is not even the number of such exams passed, but merely the number taken. So, a given school can rise on the list by increasing the number of its students who take "advanced" classes.
Conversely, schools that are more discerning and thoughtful about which students ought to be taking AP classes end up suffering in the rankings. So, the list produces nonsensical anomalies such as high schools with very low graduation rates ranking much higher on the "Challenge Index" than excellent schools that don't game the ranking system, or that, like Scarsdale High School , have joined the growing list of schools that have eliminated AP courses so that, as Bruce Hammond puts it, "students and teachers could rediscover their passion and creativity" once freed of what is too often a rigid and stultifying AP curriculum.
Despite steady criticism over the years, Mathews has retained and defended the simple formula he uses to calculate his Challenge Index, refusing to factor in other appropriate measures of school quality beyond the number of students taking advanced classes.
His only concession has been to add a separate list of schools, what he calls "The Catching Up Schools," that takes into account how impoverished the student body is, as measured by the percentage of students who quality for federal lunch subsidies. He also now notes that information in a separate column on his main ranking, along with the percentage of graduates who passed at least one "college-level" test during their high school career, but does not factor those data into his rankings.
Because Mathews otherwise insists on only using AP and IB exams as his measure, the Challenge Index typically comes in for the sharpest criticism of all these rankings. The essential criticisms can be summarized as follows:. Quality is a very subjective matter, especially in something as intangible as education.
And using a simple measure to rank thousands of schools certainly cannot capture the relative quality of schools or indicate which are better than others.
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