Which School District Is Best? (Part 2)

A month ago I revealed a plan by educators and parents in Park City, Utah, to rate all of the nation's school districts in 10 ways, and find out which is best. Readers got excited and made many suggestions. I am going to describe the most intriguing among them, taking each item on Park City's Top 10 District Report Card list.

[An unrelated personal note: I appreciate the consternation many of you have expressed about the new picture on the top of this column. I, too, miss that guy in the Hawaiian shirt who used to be up there, but he lost so much hair in the past seven years that people sent to meet him at airports were not recognizing him. He decided it was best to get real, at least photographically.]

Here are the Park City suggestions for grading school districts, and the reactions to each:

1. Grade 3 Reading: Park City wants to give the highest grades to the districts where at least 90 percent of third-graders scored proficient on state reading tests. Readers agreed this was an important measure, but on this and several other benchmarks below, they thought the richest districts would always get the A's.

Stan Horowitz, a Fairfax County parent, said a better measure would be how much better each district's third-graders did than expected, based on demographic data.

"The highest ranking should go to poorer schools with better scores than you'd expect," said Max Elsman of Baltimore.

Jerry Ellig, a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, suggested a value-added approach. Each district would be graded on how much progress their third-graders had made since first grade, or kindergarten, or some other useful starting point.

2. Middle School Algebra: The idea was to give an A to those districts where at least 90 percent of eighth-graders completed at least pre-algebra. (Some Park City folk want to change this to first-year algebra, with a somewhat lower target.)

Ed Coughlin of Culver City, Calif., favored an expectations approach here too. "Let's devise a test or survey that predicts whether students are likely to take early algebra, to be administered in the early elementary grades, and then use that test along with actual algebra participation rates to gauge how effective schools are," he said.

3. Graduation Rate: The Park City goal would be 95 percent of 10th-graders graduating from high school two years later.

Luke Olson, who works in the South St. Paul, Minn., public schools, wanted to stretch the graduation deadline. "It should be either 10th grade plus four years, or ninth grade plus five years," he said. "If we allowed for the fact that sometimes kids move a little more slowly than others, but with the same end result, that would take pressure off both students and schools."

4. Challenge Index: This would award A's to districts that gave 2.5 Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate tests per graduating senior. Most readers (being kind to the Challenge Index inventor -- me) said they like this, but Fred Thayer, a University of Pittsburgh education policy expert, had his doubts about boosting college-level programs in high school. He said he thought "the emphasis on AP courses is a byproduct of declining financial support for colleges, while also adding unneeded expenses in high schools. AP makes a good-looking scorecard but does it subtract from the total college experience?"

5. Achievement Tests: The best grade would go to districts whose students reached the 75th percentile on national standardized reading and math tests like the Iowa Test of Basic Skills. Carol Burris, principal of South Side High School in Long Island, N.Y., said this and other measures that correlated so closely to family income would not work unless "you incorporate into the formula a weighting for the proportion of students who receive free or reduced price lunch. It also makes sense to include the proportion of English as a Second Language students as well."

6. Instructional Staff with Advanced Training: This would reward districts with the highest grade if they had 60 percent of teachers with a bachelor's degree plus 45 credit hours, advanced degrees or a National Board Certificate.

But Mark Trentacoste, who teaches in New Jersey, noted that "especially in the early grades there appears to be no correlation between possession of advanced degrees and teaching effectiveness." He said he would give credit only for the number of high school staffers teaching subjects for which they had advanced degrees.

7. Spending on Instructional Services: Districts that spent at least 65 percent of their operating budget on instruction would get an A, reflecting a campaign in several states to mandate that target. Standard & Poor's School Evaluation Services recently reported no significant link between higher proportional spending on instruction and higher student achievement.

Richard Snyder, a Falls Church parent who knows about numbers, said, "This is all accounting and subject to manipulation -- think Enron."

8. Foreign Language: Perhaps the most unconventional of the Park City measures, this would give an A to districts where at least 70 percent of high school seniors completed at least three years of one foreign language. Many readers liked this, although Richard Snyder said the focus on high schools meant instruction would not start soon enough. "Foreign languages should be taught in elementary school and continued through high school or they should not be taught at all," he said.

9. College Placement: Top grades would go to districts where 90 percent of graduating seniors went to 2-year or 4-year colleges, multi-year professional training or the military.

One creative reader, whom I cannot identify because he works for my newspaper, tried to take this future-oriented measure much further. Why not give credit to districts that produce the most students whose achievements matched that of successful inventors? Or take points off for districts who produced more than their share of brutally litigious attorneys?

Burris suggested a penalty for districts with more than their share of students employing private tutors. Trentacoste said he thought four-year college attendance should get more weight.

10. Student Involvement: The goal would be for districts to have 90 percent of seniors with at least two years of participation in at least one extracurricular activity or internship. This received wide support. "An absolute must," said Olson. "I would not have thought of this, but it is very important."

I will check periodically to see if any district-rating schemes, other than the test-score measures of No Child Left Behind, grow roots. Most readers liked the idea of finding goals for districts, but nearly all expressed some yearning for a measure that would give more credit to districts that welcomed a wide variety of students.

Laura K. McAfee of Baltimore, for instance, said she gets negative comments from relatives about her decision to live in Baltimore County, rather than a more affluent Maryland district like Howard County, because they think the Howard schools would be better for her daughter. But McAfee herself went to Catonsville High in Baltimore County near her home. Its test scores are close to Howard's, and it has "a much more racially and economically diverse student body," she said. "So to me, that says that Catonsville does a better job, because they're starting from a much harder place."