Re: Our Maplewood/South Orange school district’s 2020 ranking (#84)

https://patch.com/new-jersey/maplewood/s/gsvbx/new-jerseys-best-school-districts-2020-new-rankings-released?utm_source=alert-breakingnews&utm_medium=email&utm_term=schools&utm_campaign=alert


Any thoughts on how to look at this (ie. SOMA’s low ranking?) Interestingly, I just met a family who moved from Millburn’s school system (ranked here #2) to Maplewood’s precisely due to the Milllburn’s relative lack of diversity and what they perceived to be to an overly rigid focus on “getting ahead” at all costs, etc., but I’m nevertheless concerned about how this listing may unfairly propagate a negative impression of  our area (certainly, we find the schools here generally excellent).

- Alex


my thoughts are -- don't look at it at all, particularly if your own experience has been excellent.  In the 24 years we've lived in Maplewood, it seems that every year someone references some ranking or another that shows our district not performing as well as Millburn or Mendham or some other nearby district.  For a multitude of reasons, our district doesn't perform well on aggregate indices of performance.  


Two quick thoughts:

The article mentions that one district fell eight spots in one year. Any ranking of school districts that has that much year-to-year instability built into it seems pretty flawed.

A feature of the district that we’ve always admired is the wide array of clubs and other extracurriculars. Those count a mere 2.5 percent in the rankings, and even at that the yardstick they use is how much families have to pay.


I'm curious how much people have pushed back against the criteria that are used to determine what is considered a "good" school (and whether it's biased in some ways, including - I'm guessing - cultural, etc.?)

- Alex


I should also add that the individual listing for our school district doesn't seem that bad (again for those who care about such rankings, etc.): https://www.niche.com/k12/d/south-orange-maplewood-school-district-nj/


alexj said:
I'm curious how much people have pushed back against the criteria that are used to determine what is considered a "good" school (and whether it's biased in some ways, including - I'm guessing - cultural, etc.?)
- Alex

 School rankings are big business -- one that generates lots of interest and advertising dollars. 

The correlation between wealth of a school and rank are very high, as are correlations between wealth of a school and standardized test scores.

Some work has been proposed in terms of schools serving more economically disadvantaged students providing/promoting an incentive towards college admission. The hope is that families would then look more at school offerings and fit more generally than looking only at highest test scores/rank. (Our area's high school ratings are shown on the "Background" page map in this research work as an illustration of scores increasing with wealth):

https://schoolbonuspoints.org/


alexj said:
I'm curious how much people have pushed back against the criteria that are used to determine what is considered a "good" school (and whether it's biased in some ways, including - I'm guessing - cultural, etc.?)
- Alex

The plus side to those lists is that it keeps people that only care about poorly designed data driven clickbait ranking lists out of towns like ours. So while I was initially going to say there's no value, at least we have that.


These rankings are typically BS.  



You need to take a look at the criteria used to obtain the rankings and determine how important those specific criteria are to you before giving up on the school district based on the numerical ranking assigned.  


A school district located in an upper income area where students have vast access to resources is almost always going to rank better than a school in a lower income district.  SOMSD is a diverse district with a lot of challenges ahead.  With that said, I would not want to send my children to a pressure cooker district like Millburn.  

The school district I work for (very highly regarded and wealthy) dropped quite a bit in the rankings.  


1)  We took our big hits in this particular ranking in Administration (we have had a lot of turnover with the changing of the Superintendent after the failure of the previous one) and facilities, which we just bonded to fix.


2)  How low is the ranking really if we are in the top 15% of districts in the #2 state in the Union?


3)  How seriously do you take a rubric that rates sports, food, and internet gossip equally with academics?


Max: thanks - yes, I like your thinking grin...I have to say that our son (7th grade last year) had a fantastic year at Jefferson and found the teachers to be dedicated, passionate, and very creative in their approach. We originally left a G&T program in Manhattan when we first moved here but find that many of the approaches taken here are precisely what we would hope for if we DID have such a program. So I agree: "screw the rankings" as far as what THEIR focus/emphasis appears to be, and - even if one DOES choose to factor them in, our rankings aren't bad overall at all (and I, too, would never have wanted to send my kids to Millburn, even just due to its lack of diversity - especially given how important diversity should particularly be, I think, in this current climate).

- Alex


the sad part is that the rankings bring out the people who don't really know anything about how the school district operates, but who are willing to pontificate on FB about how we deserve better as "customers" of the district.  People who admit that they don't follow the BOE very closely, but think we deserve answers as to why the ranking isn't higher.

 vampire 


It’s still #79 in my heart.



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