School Quality Measures: Where Does Music Fit In?
When my wife and I moved to a new city a few years ago, we considered a number of factors when figuring out where to buy a house. Like most people with kids, schools were on our mind. Aſter speaking with people, we ended up looking at a few different neighborhoods that all had—according to some who knew the area—great elementary schools and were part of a quality school district. At one point, however, my wife stumbled upon a school rat- ings website and called me. She was a little bit worried, as the website said one neighborhood elementary school was a “7,” while another was a “9.” Should we even continue to consider the house near the “7” school, she asked.
School quality ratings are ubiquitous. Giving a school a report card rating or numerical value impacts real estate decisions, decisions about school sanctions and reconstitution, and directs the broader public’s attention toward school quality in important ways. But do we really know how school quality ratings and rankings come to be? In this article, I briefly review the recent history of school ratings, discuss the myriad concerns associated with such ratings, and discuss how music is impacted. Finally, I turn an eye toward some alternative proposals for gauging school quality, and I discuss Michi- gan’s current policies and possibilities.
Some History of School Ratings
Beginning under No Child Leſt Behind in 2001/2002, states were required to identify schools that made (or failed to make) adequate yearly progress (i.e., percent of students passing the proficiency threshold on state math and English language arts tests). In a related but distinct policy, states identified the bottom 5% of schools (termed the “Persistently Lowest Achieving Schools” or PLAS) based again on proficiency and improvement in state math and reading scores, as well as low graduation rates if applicable (Bukoski, Lewis, Carpenter, Berry,
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& Sanders, 2015). Tese schools were publicly announced as such and had to submit plans for reconstitution or turnaround.
States no longer identify PLA schools, but each state—as well as certain large school systems such as the one in New York City—has kept school ratings, oſten in the form of a “school report card.” Tese report cards, especially under the law that replaced No Child Leſt Be- hind, known as the Every Student Succeeds Act, show considerable diversity of approach. Some include multiple measures of school efficacy including proficiency rates, amount of growth, gap closing (i.e., narrowing the achievement gap between racial subgroups), attendance, graduation rate, and more. Depending on the report card, there may be a summative letter grade, a certain number of “stars,” or even a numerical score out of 100 possible points. Some of these systems, including Michigan’s, are constantly in flux. For example, Michigan’s accountability dashboard features a nuanced, multiple measures approach without a sum- mative letter grade. But this dashboard, rolled out in early 2018, was recently replaced via new legislation at the end of 2018.
Questions and Challenges to School Ratings
Tere has been considerable concern about school ratings for various reasons. First, policy makers have expressed worry about what the ratings really mean: do they signal something “real” and important about school quality, or are they narrow and/or misleading? Te crux of this debate centers around several factors. For one, school ratings systems are oſten primarily based on proficiency rates on state tests, which are highly correlated with the socio-econom- ic status of the school population (Schneider, 2017). Tis casts doubt on what these ratings provide, except as a marker of wealth/poverty. Also, states set the cut points (i.e., the school ef-
Policy & Advocacy
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