Beyond Test Scores in the News
News Coverage
Photo: Ron Edmonds for The Washington Post
How to Fix the Damage Done to Schools By Federal School Reform Laws
By Ashley Carey, Rachel S. White, Derek Gottlieb, and Andy Saultz (2023) The Washington Post. Foreword By Valerie Strauss
A new report— a multiyear effort involving two dozen leading scholars of education— describes six lessons learned from NCLB and ESSA and six aligned recommendations for the future of K-12 public school accountability.
Photo: Katye Martens Brier for The Washington Post
The Disturbing State of Racial Diversity in Massachusetts Public Schools
By Jack Schneider, Peter Piazza, Ashley Carey, and Rachel S. White (2020) The Washington Post. Foreword By Valerie Strauss
A new report on diversity in Massachusetts schools finds two seemingly contradictory results: a decrease in the number of predominantly White schools but also an uptick in the number of intensely segregated schools.
Photo: George Rizer for The Boston Globe
Time for State Lawmakers to Act on School Integration
By Globe Editorial Board (2020) The Boston Globe.
In Massachusetts, we tend to think of school segregation as something that happened 50 years ago in Boston — if we think of it at all. But racial segregation is still a serious problem in this state. And by some measures, it’s getting worse. In the last decade alone, the number of “intensely segregated” nonwhite schools — that is, schools with student populations that are at least 90 percent students of color — has grown by more than one-third, according to research from the Beyond Test Scores Project and the Center for Education and Civil Rights.
Op-Eds
Photo: iStock for The Washington Post
What to Know Before Using School Ratings Tools From Real Estate Companies
By Jack Schneider (2017) The Washington Post. Foreword By Valerie Strauss
I like where I live, in New England’s most densely populated city. My wife likes it, too, as does our daughter, who attends the public school across the street. Each morning, when we walk her to school, we feel lucky to live where we do, and happy about the education she’s getting. And when we interact with other families at the school — families that represent the many colors, creeds, and conditions of America — we worry a little less that the nation is coming apart at the seams.
Photo: Melanie Asmar for Chalkbeat
There’s a Better Way to Pick Schools Than Denver’s Rating System
By Jack Schneider and Paul Vranas (2020) The Denver Post.
It’s school choice season in Denver. Parents have until February 18 to do their homework, identifying up to 12 schools they can rank in order of preference. Those choices will then be run through a series of algorithms to determine where children will be enrolled next fall.
What Makes a Level 1 School?
By Jack Schneider (2016) CommonWealth Magazine.
In the state of Massachusetts, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education assigns all public schools a rating. Level 1 schools can boast they’ve received the state’s highest rating. Level 5 schools, by contrast, are branded failures. Educators and families take note.
Photo: Getty Images
Pass-Fail Raises the Question: What’s the Point of Grades?
By Jack Schneider (2020) The New York Times.
This pandemic has surfaced a dilemma frequently ignored: A-F grades are used poorly and for too many different purposes.
What Makes a Great School?
By Jack Schneider (2017) Harvard Graduate School of Education
The first problem with this state of affairs is that test scores don’t tell us a tremendous amount about what students are learning in school. As research has demonstrated, school factors explain only about 20 percent of achievement scores — about one-third of what student and family background characteristics explain. Consequently, test scores often indicate much more about demography than about schools.
Audio Clips
Rethinking Standardized Testing (2023) School Me Podcast. neaToday.
Putting Standardized Testing to the Test (2019) The Codcast. CommonWealth Magazine.
The Mismeasure of Schools: Data, Real Estate, and Segregation (2017) Have You Heard Podcast.
The Impacts of Testing Our Kids and Ranking Our Schools (2020) Integrated Schools Podcast.