New Jersey, the 3rd state to officially join the United States, is now number two. Yes, we have another educational medal to brandish along with our number one ranking.
According to the U.S. News & World Report, the Garden State is second behind only Massachusetts in terms of Best High Schools, with 44% of NJ high schools ranking in the top 25% of schools nationwide. The publication released these scores midway through August, timed so that parents can add one more worry to their back-to-school lists.
The methodology walks through how school scores were calculated. This transparency is laudable, but worth taking full measure of. While the outlet uses two measures of standardized assessments that account for 40% of each school’s final score, these measures employ relative rankings rather than absolute proficiency levels. The scores are weighted against the state’s overall performance, and also compared to the expected performance based upon the school's demographics.
Put another way, schools are celebrated for being a modicum above a low statewide standard. When only 60% of all NJ 11th-graders are showing graduation readiness in math on the NJGPA exam, a school that’s 20% better than average still has 1 out of every 4 students below proficiency.
U.S. News & World Report also makes the mistake of translating each school’s score onto a 100-point scale, the same way that Niche uses letter grades that parents recognize and mistakenly believe just like the inflated grades on report cards. Thus you can have a school with a score of 96.52 - a solid A - with only 59% proficiency in math.
We don’t mean to single out any one school - or even one publication. This problem of inflated perception and lower expectations is common across NJ and the US. The motivations for the present practice of whistling past the graveyard are not difficult to discern, nor are they actively malicious. Parents want to think they’ve secured the best possible education for their children. Educators and policymakers don’t want to deliver uncomfortable truths, and students don’t want to face those realities until they’re forced to.
But acting in bad faith has bad outcomes. And getting honest about a problem is the only way to get at a solution. So please, don’t tell us that 59 percent is an A in the grading scale.
