Randolph Township Schools

Jonathan Olsen

Educational Policy Advocate

Technology has transformed the way the public can access and evaluate schools and districts. In New Jersey, our state makes available to anyone with a computer and internet connection, a vast trove of information about how our schools are being run. Called School Performance Reports by the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE), these reports provide the public with important information about schools. The reports include student passing rates on standardized assessments and other important data points such as, chronic absenteeism rates, graduation rates, student demographic information and International Baccalaureate and Advanced Placement enrollment numbers. The reports give the public an important look at schools and how students are performing on state assessments and other important tests like the SAT and ACT.

While providing increased transparency to the public, educators know these reports are missing a great deal of information about what makes schools work for children. If you are interested in sports, the reports do not include any data about sports team enrollment or success. The reports also do not have any information about the quality of buildings and grounds a vital part of a school’s success. Parents looking for information about the types of electives or clubs offered at a school will get an incomplete picture from the reports. Schools invest significant resources to deliver learning opportunities for students that are not core academic subjects. Sadly, the reports fail to provide much usable data about these essential programs like music and art.

Perhaps the biggest failure of the reports is the summative score each school building is assigned. All schools in New Jersey are assigned a numerical score on a scale of 0 to 100 along with a percentile score. The higher the score, the stronger a school’s overall performance is. While the state is required by federal law to measure the performance of schools, states have flexibility in terms of how they determine this number. New Jersey uses an extremely limited set of data to determine a school’s summative score and overall percentile. The most heavily weighted factor for all schools is standardized test results and student growth on standardized test results. This is problematic for many reasons. For high schools, the score generally only captures ninth graders since most tenth graders and all eleventh and twelfth graders do not take the NJSLA assessment used to determine a school’s score. The presence of a summative score and percentile ranking invariably leads to comparisons between schools and districts as parents and the media try to determine winners and losers. If all schools are assigned a score from 0 to 100, it is very easy to rank them from “worst” to “best.”

I call ranking schools based on a limited set of data that ignores variables affecting performance “the comparison trap.” Media websites will show the ranked schools, and parents can see how the schools in their town compare to the ones that may be rated higher. Some will attempt to create their own comparison groupings in efforts to show how successful or unsuccessful a school or district is. It might seem like a logical thing to do. Someone can look at a school and compare it to other schools in the state quite easily. Look, our school is a 75.12 and this school is an 84.23. We are obviously under-performing. While this may be true, the reality is that establishing comparison groupings is notoriously difficult to do. It is not a coincidence that top schools are generally ones with selective admission practices or those located in wealthier communities. Research consistently shows that two of the top predictors of student standardized test scores are parental education and family income.

Comparing schools using scores from standardized tests given one time per year and ignoring the factors that can influence those scores is not a credible way to determine school quality. Data should certainly be an important part of determining methods for understanding how a school is performing. But it must be interpreted properly. Without accounting for student populations, community characteristics and other variables, the top-ranked schools will usually be those with resources others do not have. This narrow focus oversimplifies a complex reality and gives the perception that many schools in states throughout the country that are doing extraordinary things are just not performing well enough.