Last week, Schooldigger released its nationwide rankings of school districts and schools. Each is ranked according to where it stands in its own state according to raw data, in the case of the Mountain State, what is released by the West Virginia Department of Education.
Pendleton County advanced during the course of last year from 15th to 10th in the state. Pocahontas County, another “1,400 floor” school system, placed ninth, showing the utility of the policy used to support counties with large geographical areas and small populations.
Schooldigger called Brandywine Elementary School “the clear standout, ranking 12th in the state (97th percentile) with a 5-star rating. Its math proficiency (78.2 percent) is nearly double the district average, and its fifth-grade math proficiency is an extraordinary 90.9 percent.”
Praise came in for North Fork Elementary as well for “remarkable improvement, jumping from the 29th to the 75th percentile in one year.” Middle school grades at Pendleton County Middle/High School saw a dramatic leap from 97th in the state to 29th, compared to other middle schools in West Virginia.
The site shared, however, that mathematics posed challenges throughout the school system. Part of the high school’s decline from 35 to 85 last year came from a drop in mathematics performance between middle and high school grades.
It should be noted that many students study mostly arithmetic until high school years, at which point they often face higher level math classes.
Schooldigger concluded that “the district’s strength clearly lies at the elementary level, and replicating Brandywine’s success across other schools while addressing the high school decline represents the district’s greatest opportunity.”
According to the Schooldigger website, information includes not only rankings, but also 20 years of historical data on them. Rankings come based upon “test scores and other performance metrics . . . hours after it is made available.” A number of national education analysis entities also rely on Schooldigger information.
Jon Valant at the Brookings Institution writes that “there is considerable demand for ratings as families make judgments about schools.” He points out, however, that information from Schooldigger, or other sites, relies on numbers, but does not provide context to those numbers or flesh out the different kinds of individual programs that each school system and school might offer.
For example, examining the rankings for Hardy County relative to other West Virginia systems, one would find them at 42nd out of 55. That said, Schooldigger does not inform those examining the rankings that test scores suffer in Hardy County because of the large foreign-born student population, some of whom have little familiarity with English.
Additionally, North Fork Elementary School offers a slate of unique programs connected to local nonprofits. This includes hands-on education in real maple production and marketing, as well as environmental science.
Its ranking also does not reflect the unique opportunities that students enjoy at NFES, as well as the different creative programs and projects at FES and BES for students there.
Such rankings provide a valuable look at outcomes, but parents and others should use them as a foundation for more in-depth research rather than the end point of analysis.
