Illinois ranked 17th and Maryland 14th in a new survey of school system quality conducted by Wallet Hub.com.
Wallet Hub.com, as the name implies, deals mostly with financial matters. For example, in connection with the report, Wallet Hub.com reminded readers that “education remains the traditional route to financial success for many Americans. Consider the median incomes for workers aged 25 and older in 2013. Those with a bachelor’s degree earned 59 percent more than those with only a high school diploma, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
Part of the methodology, then, for ranking states by what the organization calls “School Safety and Output” is to use the percentage of adults in the state who have a bachelor’s degree. It doesn’t get as much weight in the rubric as the percentage of public school students in grades 9–12 who reported being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property, the incidence of bullying reports, or even the financial literacy score, based on an assessment developed by Champlain College. But it gets half as much, Wallet Hub.com says.
The above map of the US shows the ranking for all 50 states when it comes to school system rank. Move your mouse over the map, and the ranking for the state you’re hovering over will be displayed.
How are the school system rankings determined?
Wallet Hub.com uses eight variables in a formula to determine the ranking of states for school quality. They are listed here, followed by their relative weight in Wallet Hub.com’s formula:
- Remote Learning Opportunities from Online Public Schools: 1
- Presence of Public Schools from the State in Top 700 Best US Schools: 1
- % of Children Who Repeated One or More Grades: 1
- Dropout Rates: 1
- Bookworms Rank: 0.5
- Pupil/Teacher Ratio: 1
- Math Test Scores: 1
- Reading Test Scores: 1
Sources scanned in for the metrics include the US Census Bureau, the National Center for Educational Statistics, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Education Association, the Kids Count report from the Anney E Casey Foundation [sic. I think, but cannot be sure because of the misspelling in Wallet Hub.com’s report, that this is the Annie E Casey Foundation in Baltimore], the Center for Financial Literacy at Champlain College, Stopbullying.gov, US News & World Report, and K12.com.
The use of data from K12.com casts doubt on the entire ranking. The company has been sued (see Huffington Post). Although schools can’t be sued for doing a bad job, people wouldn’t try to shut the company down if students were receiving a quality education. Basically, K12 has not demonstrated an ability to run a high-quality virtual school without wasting public money.
In one lawsuit (see Washington Post), filed by one of the company’s own shareholders, it was alleged that K12 aggressively recruited children who were ill-suited for the company’s model of online education, manipulated enrollment numbers, and falsified attendance and performance data in order to maximize tax-subsidized per-pupil funding.
Don’t let this company near your schools, and don’t let its inclusion in a report add one iota to the credibility score for the ranking system. The company has been shown to falsify data, and that means this report, despite the very nice interactive map of the US, which I’m going to try to copy for features that we run on this site, is not to be trusted.
Also, officials at 18 school districts in suburban Chicago laughed at a proposal K12 Inc submitted with a management company last year. It lacked any indication of quality or accountability—financial, educational, or otherwise—in the operation of a public charter school. The abysmal proposal even caused Illinois lawmakers to impose a moratorium on the creation of new virtual charter schools in the state.
In addition to the use of data from K12.com, the quality of the data is further compromised by its reliance on test scores in reading and math. The report fails to consider the full scope of what schools do. It is one shallow farce, to be sure. For a modest attempt to list missing pieces of data that should contribute to any score of school quality but didn’t, see the footnote to this article.
At the very least, test scores should be re-weighted appropriately and the results recomputed. At best, they should be used as a part of the overall score, but if that is how it’s going to be, Wallet Hub.com should consider the full scope of factors and variables that make quality school systems in any state, as well as the specific instruments used to assess student progress in those areas.
Finally, the use of the availability of remote learning opportunities for online public schools receives a weight of 1, and that means the more opportunities there are in a state, the higher the state ranks in the survey. This is exactly the opposite of how it should be, because face-to-face learning and teaching, especially for young children, has been shown to be much more effective—except in a few cases involving kids with special needs—for almost every race, socioeconomic status, or whatever. We believe this weight should, in fact, be negative for the quality of schools in a state.
For what it’s worth, Maryland ranked 27th and Illinois 24th in terms of educational output and safety.
Develop and present a report ranking schools or school systems by quality. Integrate multiple sources of information and evaluate the credibility and accuracy of each source, noting any discrepancies among the data. See Common Core English language arts literacy standard SL.11-12.2 for more information.
