Children at Risk School Ratings - By Poverty Level

Children at Risk rates all Texas public schools according to a variety of factors that are different from the state's accountability ratings. They just came out with their 2010 rankings, based on data from the 2008-2009 school year.

I'm not sure I'm crazy about the rankings for a couple of reasons. One reason is that they give "credit" for working with kids in poverty (why do that when you are ranking schools according to college readiness? Why not be completely transparent and show exactly what's going on?) I also prefer rankings that group statistically alike schools together, rather than a straight 1 to whatever brings up the rear. I have no way of knowing how much school #300 is like school #400. Are they actually almost identical, or are they very far apart in their performance? And, I think the focus on commended TAKS scores is too bad. It's an interesting indicator of how high students are performing at that school academically, but it does not take into account the tremendous effort that is put in just to get kids to pass TAKS. Also, are the high school rankings based just on Exit test data? That is unclear to me. Their methodology is explained here.

I looked at several local school districts to see what the correlation was between their high school Children at Risk rankings and the percent of children in poverty at those schools. Granted, I know the rankings already take into account poverty, but my assumption going into this is that schools with very low poverty rates are going to score much higher than schools with very high poverty rates.

For Fort Bend ISD:

State Ranking	High School	Student Poverty Rate
22	Clements	4.10%
35	Austin	13.10%
56	Dulles	16%
112	Kempner	23.50%
146	Elkins	14.20%
237	Hightower	30.20%
284	Bush	46.50%
660	Marshall	45.40%
975	Willowridge	55.60%

Fort Bend ISD performs as I expected, but with Kempner rating higher than the lower poverty Elkins.

Another suburban school district - Clear Creek ISD:

State Ranking High School Student Poverty Rate 65 Clear Lake 11.10% 217 Clear Brook 19.50% 330 Clear Creek 16.10% 1010 Clear View Ed Center 25%

I'm not familiar with Clear View Education Center, but here's some info I found on it:

Clear View distinguishes itself from other CCISD schools by having significantly smaller class sizes. This smaller learning environment allows for each student to receive one-on-one attention from teachers and administration to specifically meet his or her educational needs. (It serves 7th - 12th grades.)

I don't understand what it's characteristics are that make it so low performing.

Clear Creek ISD serves the Bay Area Houston area, with the Johnson Space Center right in the middle of it.

CCISD performs more poorly in the rankings than I expected. Poverty rates aren't as high as some of the Fort Bend ISD schools that are performing better, but then again, I do not how statistically different the #330 Clear Creek High School (16.1% poverty) is from the #237 Hightower High school (30.2% poverty.)

Houston ISD:

State Ranking	High School	Student Poverty Rate
3	Debakey HS for Health	49.40%
4	Carnegie Vanguard	28.80%
18	Eastwood Academy	81.50%
19	HSPVA	17.90%
40	Law Enforcement	76.40%
92	Lamar	44%
136	Westside	45.80%
387	Challenge Early College	58.40%
507	Barbara Jordan	81%
645	Waltrip	72.60%
656	Milby	84%
700	Cole Middle/High	23.80%
735	Austin	91.10%
766	Reagan	81.50%
803	Chavez	85.50%
881	Scarborough	81.80%
931	Madison	77.70%
941	Worthing	77.10%
958	Davis	89.10%
973	Westbury	73.70%
983	Sharpstown	83.10%
991	Furr	86%
998	Sterling	80%
999	Lee	90.90%
1005	Wheatley	92.30%
1008	Kashmere	92.10%
1013	Jones	80.70%

Houston ISD has many schools with very high poverty rates. Their schools with 70% or higher poverty rates are generally ranked very, very low. Exceptions are Eastwood Academy (a charter) and Law Enforcement High School (a magnet school.) I'm not sure why Cole Middle and High School performs so poorly with 23.8% of their kids in poverty. Otherwise, HISD high schools follow the trend of high poverty schools getting the lowest rankings. The top five ranked HISD schools are all charters or magnets.

This data  highlights another problem I have with the Children at Risk rankings. One stated purpose of the rankings is to arm parents with data regarding school choice and help them understand if their schools are doing a good job or not, so that they can demand better.  Children in high poverty, who are in subsidized housing, do not have much choice in where they go to school. On the other hand, I do have a choice because of my income level, and I chose to buy a house that is zoned to a high school in the top 25 of these rankings.

Back to another suburban school district - Conroe ISD:

State Ranking	High School	Student Poverty Rate
43	Woodlands	2.20%
450	Oak Ridge	20.70%
733	Conroe	46.20%
839	Caney Creek	48.80%

This one looks a lot like Fort Bend ISD, in that the school with an exceptionally low poverty rate ranks very high.

You can play around with sorting the rankings for other school districts, at this link on the Houston Chronicle website. The Texas Tribune also has a great data app for searching schools rankings.

Brian Thevenot with the Texas Tribune has a story on how smaller schools ranked higher statewide, but I think the real point he made is that schools that have selective enrollment, do the best. The Houston Chronicle hosted a live chat with Children at Risk staff on the rankings. I participated, and found it to be very interesting.

The moral of the story is the same as it's alway been - without spending a dime on a new ranking system - if you have the money to buy a house in a upper middle class or high income neighborhood, your kids will be going to a school that way outperforms schools in low income neighborhoods.

Robert Sanborn, president of Children at Risk, thinks the data points to the fact that smaller schools do better, and large, comprehensive high schools don't work (although large schools like Clements High School don't fit that paradigm.) I don't disagree that smaller high schools are ideal, but it doesn't seem like a viable solution in the real world where superintendents are consolidating schools and laying off teachers to rescue huge budget deficits.

What I do like about the Children at Risk rankings is that they give a reason for stakeholders to have a conversation about what is working and what is not in our public schools.