Ed Morrison · Measuring our schools

August 22nd, 2010

It’s hard to see how Cleveland will make the transition to a smart economy when the city’s schools are not getting the basics right.

That’s the same challenge emerging in other cities. Two newspapers are running investigative series that are useful.

The Los Angeles Times is publishing an investigative report that tries to rank teacher quality by improvement in test scores. The investigations uses value-added analysis, which rates teachers based on their students’ progress on standardized tests from year to year.

Grading the Teachers: Who’s teaching L.A.’s kids?

Among the findings:

  • Highly effective teachers routinely propel students from below grade level to advanced in a single year.
  • Although many parents fixate on picking the right school for their child, it matters far more which teacher the child gets. Teachers had three times as much influence on students’ academic development as the school they attend. Yet parents have no access to objective information about individual instructors, and they often have little say in which teacher their child gets.

    • This morning the Columbus Dispatch published results of its evaluation of the region’s high schools.

    When an A isn’t enough
    Numbers aren’t adding up to success

    Among the findings:

  • Despite earning good grades and taking honors courses in high school, many students find themselves ill-prepared for college.
  • Statewide, 39 percent of about 52,000 first-year public college students took at least one remedial course in 2008.
  • Remedial classes – which cost as much as other college classes but don’t provide credit toward a degree – make the road to a college degree more of an uphill climb. Students can drain their financial aid to pay for developmental classes. It takes them longer to earn a degree. And they are more likely to drop out.

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