Confusion about rating schools

I'll answer for enewton- Yes, he is a GreatSchools employee and is part of our Data Team. He doesn't have a badge because, if you look at his profile, this was his first post. I asked him to take a look at this thread and offer some feedback.

enewton, are you a Greatschools employee? (If so, why is your GS encircled logo missing from next to your name?)

Comparing GS Ratings to Newsweek rankings is a bit like comparing apples to oranges. The GS Rating is like a school receiving a grade of 1-10, while ranking lists the “top” schools in order. It is important to understand the difference because the top 50 ranked schools could all receive the same GS rating, so what looks like a big gap between schools on a ranking system my not be a big gap on a rating system.

That being said, every organization that ranks or grades schools does so in a different way and rarely will two match up exactly. This is because there are countless factors that can go into determining what constitutes a quality school. However, regardless what factors are used, rankings and ratings do not provide a complete view of a school and should be used along with other evaluation tools.

At GreatSchools we have worked to develop a Rating system that is as simple and transparent. In a nutshell, we take all the public schools in a state that have test scores reported for them, break them into 10 groups and assign each a rating, ten being the highest and one the lowest. A GS Rating of 10 has better test scores than 90% of the schools in that state. A rating of 9 means better than 80%, a rating of 8 means 70%, etc. Sunny Hills has significantly higher test scores than Marshall across the board, so it makes sense we gave them a rating of 9 versus a rating of 5 for Marshall. The GS Rating each school received is similar to the Statewide API rank CA gave them.

There are of course other factors that can be included, for instance Marshall has a high percentage of low income students and matches up very well, test score wise, with other schools with similar socioeconomic make ups. While the GreatSchools rating does factor in the percentage of each type of student passing tests it does not weight them, therefore a school with a higher percentage of low income students does not receive a higher score because of the number of those students. It appears the Newsweek ranking system does factor in the number of low income students at the school and has ranked them higher despite lower test scores. In addition Marshall is a secondary school and has grades 6-12, while Sunny Hills has grades 9-12 and GS ratings account for all grades when creating ratings. Because Newsweek was ranking high schools they may have ignored the test scores of grades 6-8, which were quite low. Newsweek may have also included other factors in their ranking, but without knowing their exact methodology I cannot say for sure. I hope this clears up some of the differences between the two systems and at very least sheds some light on the GreatSchools Ratings.

Think about how much better shape our entire country would be in today if we all took the time to collect all the information necessary to make a truly informed decision - rather than believing what interest groups want us to with eloquent catch-phrases and fear tactics.