Doug Johnson

Schools Are More than the Sum of their Scores
April/May 2004

In an earlier “Head for the Edge” column, I suggested that the No Child Left Behind Act might indeed help keep some students from failing to become literate. At its heart, NCLB’s goal of making sure all students are well-educated is right on target. The down-side, of course, is the act’s over-reliance on test scores as the measurement of student achievement. It simply ignores many of the other qualities that are more difficult to measure that make a school, well, a school.

To help parents here in Minnesota determine if their local schools are any good, our Department of Education has followed the lead of other states and created a report card for each school with a “star” rating system of one to five. These stars are based on good, hard, no nonsense data, harumpff. Right now, this simplistic system relies on state test scores – period.

I suspect our DOE got the idea from reading movie reviews. The number of thumbs or bags of popcorn gives a potential moviegoer a quick indication if he should even read the review, let alone see the movie. Rating schools, however, is tad more serious. It’s one thing to blow a couple hours and a few dollars on a crummy film. It’s quite another to entrust your child to a truly bad school.

I hope our parents look at the stars (they do tell something), but continue looking beyond them as well. As a parent, I’d also rate my schools based on these “stars”:

Star One: School climate. Funny how a person can sense the safety, friendliness, and sense of caring within minutes of walking into a school. Little things like cleanliness, displays of student work, open doors to classrooms, laughter, respectful talk, presence of volunteers, and genuine smiles from both adults and kids are the barometers of school climate. If a school doesn’t earn this star, a parent doesn’t need to bother looking at the other criteria. Get your kids out quickly. (How can our library and technology programs contribute to climate?)

Star Two: Libraries and technology. The quality of the library is the clearest sign of how much a school values reading, teaching for independent thinking, and life-long learning. A trained library media specialist and a welcoming environment with a well-used collection of current books, magazines and computers with Internet access tell a parent that the teachers and principal value more than the memorization of facts from a text book, that a diversity of ideas and opinions is important, and that reading is not just necessary, but pleasurable and important. (How can we help the public understand this?)

Star Three: Individual teacher quality. This is why total school rating systems aren’t very helpful. Five-star teachers are found in one-star schools and one-star teachers are found in five-star schools. I always listened to what other parents said about the teachers my children might have, and insisted that my kids got the teachers with good reviews. (How can library media specialists and technology people help improve teacher skills?)

Star Four: Elective and extracurricular offerings. What happens in class is important. But so is what happens during the other 18 hours of the day. Elementary schools need to offer after-school clubs and activities that develop social skills and interests. Secondary schools must be rich with art, sports, tech ed., music and community service choices that develop individual talents, leadership, and pride in accomplishment. (Are our media centers and computer resources used at times outside the school day?)

Star Five: Commitment to staff development. The amount of exciting scientifically-based research on effective teaching practices and schools is overwhelming. Brain-based research, reflective practice, systematic examination of student work, strategies for working with disadvantaged students are some of the latest findings that can have a positive impact on how to best teach children. But research doesn’t do a lick of good if it never gets out of the universities or journals. Good schools give financial priority to teaching teachers how to improve their practice. (Are we spending our media budgets, time and efforts in offering staff development activities for teachers, not just on technology, but on current best practices in education?)

School reports are a part of ratcheting up competition among schools. Schools with high test scores wave them like a banner to attract parent-consumers. But schools’ public relations efforts need to go beyond bragging about just stars that are test-based and need to include other quality criteria as well. Does your school use the quality of your library program as part of its marketing efforts?

I hope stars and state report cards put some schools on notice that improvement is necessary. But I hope we can help parents look beyond the stars.