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I did admissions when I was teaching years ago, and I found standardized test scores helpful in ensuring a minimum baseline level of proficiency. I think the dr

I did admissions when I was teaching years ago, and I found standardized test scores helpful in ensuring a minimum baseline level of proficiency. I think the drive to ignore them entirely is misguided and will result in admitting students who lack the prerequisites necessary to succeed in the magnet schools. Having said that, I'm glad to see schools moving away from using tests as the primary metric. I think balancing standardized scores with things like a student's ranking in their school gives a higher-resolution image. For example, take two students with similar test scores -- one at the top of their class in a struggling school and another in the middle of the pack at an elite school. The former is likely a more capable student given that they were able to earn a similar test score with fewer resources. The other advantage with metrics like zip code or school ranking is that one way to game that kind of metric is to intentionally send your kids to a struggling school or merging school districts to incorporate struggling schools, and it seems like that might have some positive impacts.

Dracophoenix 5y ago
>>The other advantage with metrics like zip code or school ranking is that one way to game that kind of metric is to intentionally send your kids to a struggling school or merging school districts to incorporate struggling schools, and it seems like that might have some positive impacts. That was a similar argument for indiscriminate school bussing, and if anything those formerly big-fish-in-a-small-pond students , past a certain age like 7 or 8, were more likely to fail in their more rigorous environment. This "reverse bussing" solution you've suggested could just result in the educational equivalent of gentrification or could push people to invent their way out public schooling entirely. And with the pandemic, the public school system had further undermined itself. As edutech and homeschooling platforms are become the next evolution in learning. Students won't be required to participate in struggling schools as that's not the only option left to them anymore. They can have their education a la carte. In addition to this, merging school districts isn't usually a move made for educational advancement. It's a move made for federal dollars or latent cost-cutting. And where there's one form of cost-cutting, there are bound to be others that slowly compromise student education starting with the education of the brightest. Parents who can afford charters or private school rarely deal with the shenanigans of politics or the sociological experiments that come with public education.

Dracophoenix 5y ago

>>The other advantage with metrics like zip code or school ranking is that one way to game that kind of metric is to intentionally send your kids to a struggling school or merging school districts to incorporate struggling schools, and it seems like that might have some positive impacts. That was a similar argument for indiscriminate school bussing, and if anything those formerly big-fish-in-a-small-pond students , past a certain age like 7 or 8, were more likely to fail in their more rigorous environment. This "reverse bussing" solution you've suggested could just result in the educational equivalent of gentrification or could push people to invent their way out public schooling entirely. And with the pandemic, the public school system had further undermined itself. As edutech and homeschooling platforms are become the next evolution in learning. Students won't be required to participate in struggling schools as that's not the only option left to them anymore. They can have their education a la carte. In addition to this, merging school districts isn't usually a move made for educational advancement. It's a move made for federal dollars or latent cost-cutting. And where there's one form of cost-cutting, there are bound to be others that slowly compromise student education starting with the education of the brightest. Parents who can afford charters or private school rarely deal with the shenanigans of politics or the sociological experiments that come with public education.