The Impact of GreatSchools
First of all, I need to be very transparent. I don’t like GreatSchools. I appreciate the fact that they are a non-profit organization that wants to empower parents to make the best decision regarding their child’s schooling. I believe they want to give parents reliable information and create a simple way for them to understand more about schools. I believe they have great intentions. The problem is that you cannot define a school by a single score or rating. Education is too complicated for an algorithm and the way they are presenting data is hurting our public school system. So when you start to look up a school on GreatSchools to check their rating, please know these things first:
Private schools are not rated. It makes sense that if you use standardized test data to rate schools and there are schools without that data, you can’t rate them. What this means though is that all private schools are exempt from a rating. It’s easy to look up your child’s public school and if they have a score of a 5 or below, you start looking elsewhere. Some private schools aren’t any more appropriate for your child but you don’t dismiss them because they have a low score. You give them a shot because they have no score at all.
The information is outdated. Information and data about a school can change significantly from year to year. Staff turnover may change; the community might change; a school’s 6th-grade group could have higher test scores than its 8th-grade group. It’s challenging for a non-profit to ensure data is up-to-date for each school in the country. And, according to them, basically impossible. While I was principal of an elementary school, our school was being rated using data that were 3 years old. To have a school full of dedicated and talented educators who worked tirelessly every day so their kids could succeed, showing old data negated the hard work and progress they made with their students. As the leader, I wanted to correct the inaccurate information being posted but was told it was not possible by GreatSchools.
There is more to a school than a score. There are students of diverse races and ethnic groups; there are students learning the English language; there are students who have been reading fluently since Kindergarten; there are students who come from a single-parent family and students who are learning manners and respect. There is no way to tell if your child will flourish in a school unless you go there and take a tour. You have to ask questions that pertain to YOUR child so you can see if the school is the right fit for your child and if your child is the right fit for the school. There is so much more to a school than test scores and demographics, which is what GreatSchools uses to determine each school’s rating/score. You can’t use an algorithm to capture everything about a school and export it into a score. Can you imagine if your job gave you a rating and published it for everyone to see? Would that one score accurately communicate your knowledge, passion, care, and effort or would you want to be defined by more?
The reviews are not accurate. I will use my previous school as an example. When I left my school in 2020, our school had increased our state score by 18 points, we earned the Title I Distinguished School award for increasing the achievement of our lower socio-economic students, our ACCESS scores increased for our ESOL population, and we became an International Baccalaureate School offering Spanish as a second language. However, on GreatSchools, we earned a score of a “3” and their Equity Review stated that “underserved students may be falling behind.” How does a school earn a 3 out of a 10 for supporting at-risk students yet earn a national award for closing the achievement gap?
Parents are using GreatSchools to define schools as “Good or Bad”. Most parents who are moving to a new area or have a child who hasn’t started Kindergarten are going onto GreatSchools to find out more information about their child’s potential new school. When a parent looks up their neighborhood school and it has a 4 rating out of 10, they automatically (and rightfully so) assume it’s a “bad” school. It’s not even average for crying out loud! And I don’t know one parent who is going to look at the 4 rating and send their child there without questioning it. I do, however, know a lot of parents who look at the 4 rating, assume the school is bad, and don’t consider touring the school or talking to someone who sends their child there. This is my main problem with GreatSchools. It can give a false and negative representation of a school while making parents feel like the rating is 100% accurate. This rating is what ultimately persuades a parent to send or not to send their child to a school. There has been and will always be more to a school than a score. And they can never be defined as only good or bad.