Elmhurst schools and rankings

[Hiruko]

Originally Posted by Caglee

GreatSchools is used by Realtor.com which is a major resource people use when looking for homes.

Agree to disagree on "Equity".

Realtor.com...as a member of NAR myself...yuck! An association with NAR should not grant any additional credibility.

[ShampooBanana]

I myself always prefer to look at schooldigger.com rankings. I think they give a less biased assesment of the schools. Just have to overlook the fact that their website format is about 10-15 years outdated.

[ElmhurstNESide]

Originally Posted by Caglee

The problem with "School ratings" is that you have to learn how to read between the lines. A primary reason why an otherwise good school can be rated lower is the introduction of a category called "equity". This rating looks at the academic performance of minority students or the achievement gap between racial or income groups. There is a universal breakdown of achievement between racial groups that is fairly uniform and standard across the entire country, and that's Asian students performing the best, followed by White students, Hispanic students, and then Black students. A school with a small minority population that performs below the white students (the majority population in Elmhurst) will suffer in the ratings due to this lower "equity" score.

While I'm not familiar with Elmhurst schools, I looked at the lowest ranked Elmhurst schools and can identify right away why they are rated the way they are.

Conrad Fisher Elementary (Rated 3/10): [url]https://www.greatschools.org/illinois/elmhurst/2011-Conrad-Fischer-Elementary-School/[/url]
- This is a majority hispanic (56%) /low-income (63%) school, two categories that often coincide with lower academic achievement.

Lincoln Elementary (Rated 4/10): [url]https://www.greatschools.org/illinois/elmhurst/2018-Lincoln-Elementary-School/[/url]
- An equity score of 1/10 is the likely culprit for bringing down the overall rating. Looking into the numbers, I see that hispanic students are only 7% of the student population but have significantly lower academic achievement and triple the amount of chronic absence and attendance issues as the white students. As for test scores overall, the school performs far above Illinois state averages. The school has almost uniform 5 star ratings from user reviews. I would consider this to be a very good school regardless of what the ratings say, even if you are a non-white student.

I would think just based on what I know about the towns you mentioned, it makes sense to me that Elmhurst would be the least desirable of school districts between Elmhurst, Hinsdale, Clarendon Hills, and Lagrange Park. Elmhurst is also the largest city of that group, probably the most affordable place to live, with a greater amount of racial and socioeconomic diversity. However, in no way would I consider Elmhurst schools as a whole to be bad or underperforming from looking at the numbers here.

I would like to point out that Fischer now has a rating of 7/10. This school does have a lot of ESL and low income students from the neighboring town within it's boundary lines. However, the teachers, administrators, kids, and parents show a lot of dedication to the school. I have a student in the school's dual language program. Not only are they excelling in language arts, doing well in math, but they're also doing well learning to speak, read and write in Spanish. I do agree with you that equity is bringing down the rankings. York recently lowered to a 7. I looked at other high schools with a 10 ranking, and York has a higher percentage of kids in AP classes and has higher SAT/ACT scores, but their equity school is lower.

I think looking at equity is important. When some kids get to college they'll be going up against kids who had to work harder to get there than they did. If they're not aware of this reality, some aren't able to compete with these kids, and blame it on factors other than it takes a lot of hard work in college to excel. This reality is even more evident in the work place, and hiring managers know it.