Parents of kids in a Poudre R-1 school recently received their “School Accountability Report,” which purports to illuminate how well the school is educating our kids. I was eager to see the latest assessment of my kids’ school, hoping for a sign of improvement. There it was, on the front page: “School Performance Summary,” with the ominous score “Average.” My heart sank. Even worse, “average” wasn’t that average after all; of the ten schools listed, seven scored higher than my kids’ school.
Gad, my wife and I are lousy parents after all. By keeping our kids in this school, we’ve doomed them to a life of academic mediocrity. What to do? Should we take advantage of “school of choice” and yank our kids from their favorite pals and teachers? Maybe we can get them into a “high” or even “excellent” school! Are we worthy? We furrow our brows and wring our hands. The problem with school of choice is that you have to choose! Things were easier when I was a kid. You simply went to your neighborhood school. No options to evaluate. No scores damning the well-intentioned decisions parents made for their kids.
Now back to reality. That’s not how my wife and I reacted at all. We have no doubts about sending our kids to this school. We believe in the quality of their education. Our confidence comes from understanding the inherent limitations of the simple scores assigned to schools.
I know parents who read no further than the one-word score, erroneously assuming it somehow predicts their child’s academic achievement.
Understand these scores for what they are: an aggregation of student results on standardized tests in reading, writing and math. As with most statistics, they don’t give complete answers. These scores can be affected by the demographic makeup of the population, socioeconomic differences, test-taking familiarity of the student population, education prior to arriving at this school, and far more.
Plus, many elements of your child’s education simply cannot be captured in such scores: the effectiveness of the administrators, the experience, passion and skills of your child’s teacher, opportunities for your child to develop socially and morally, and performance in science, art, social studies, music, and so on.
But even that misses a broader point. What counts is your own child, and how a particular school might challenge him and help him grow. After all, he might do best surrounded by students who scored lower than he on standardized tests. Conversely, he might rise to the challenge presented by higher-scoring classmates. Or he may come to view himself as lagging and, to avoid the sting of failure, give up trying to achieve academically.
More likely, the average test scores of other kids won’t matter as much as other factors. Your child might meet a teacher who is particularly supportive and inspiring. He may make a friend who teaches a lifelong lesson about loyalty. He may become a better human being by learning the importance of acceptance from culturally diverse classmates.
Turn the pages on the report for a more balanced perspective. The fine print explains why it’s dangerous to read too much into a one-word performance summary. My favorite part of the report is a section called “Questions Parents Should Ask.” Its message is clear: each school, administrator and teacher is unique. Therefore, meaningful answers about your child’s education can only come by speaking to the people involved and evaluating their answers with your one-of-a-kind child in mind. As my most inspiring teacher, Mr. Keene, helped me understand: meaningful answers to complex questions are seldom captured in a single word.
