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Tuesday, July 17, 2007
School Reputations: In The Eye Of The Beholder?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
School reputations are a funny thing. According to past polls I’ve seen and read about, parents tend to rate their own schools more highly than others — even when their campus has not met federally mandated academic standards.
In last year’s annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup poll on attitudes toward public schools, nearly half of those surveyed gave their community schools an “A” or “B” grade — pretty high marks for a nation that’s constantly wringing its hands over the state of public schools.
I started thinking about this after reading Diane Stepp’s story about how East Cobb Middle School last week shed the dreaded “needs improvement” label, given under the No Child Left Behind Act.
Principal David Chiprany seemed downright giddy that his campus had met the “adequate yearly progress” standards for two years in a row to shake off the designation. “This is a very huge step,” he told Diane. “…This will bolster the school’s reputation. Yes, it definitely will.”
Will it really? According to that PDK/Gallup poll, the closer people are to schools in the community, the higher the grades they give them. So, while 49 percent of residents rate their local schools favorably, parents are even more enthusiastic, with 64 percent giving their children’s campuses high marks.
They say beauty’s in the eye of the beholder. Is it possible a school’s reputation is, too, and that test scores and AYP ratings really have little bearing on community perceptions?
