When parents look for information to help them choose a good elementary or secondary school for their child, they often turn to a variety of sources online.

For instance, they may check out state government websites that provide “report cards” on local schools. Examples include Virginia’s School Quality Profiles or Ohio’s School Report Cards.

Parents might also rely on popular school rating websites like GreatSchools.org, Niche.com or U.S. News & World Report’s K-12 schools directory, which claims to help parents find the “best” schools for their child.

As a researcher who specializes in education policy, I see some shortcomings with how many of these websites portray school quality to the public. I’m interested in the kinds of information that parents use to make school-related decisions. I also study how parental decisions about which school to select for their child might influence student diversity within schools.

Along with fellow education researcher Jeffrey Henig, I conducted a survey with a nationally representative sample of 2,800 parents or caretakers of children under age 12. With financial support from the Spencer Foundation and technical assistance from YouGov, we embedded an experiment in the survey to see how enrollment decisions might vary if parents chose schools based on different kinds of academic performance data.

More specifically, we enabled parents to look at a school’s academic performance in two different ways: achievement status and achievement growth. Achievement status is based on students’ current levels of academic performance, whereas achievement growth considers students’ academic performance over time.

We found that when parents are given information about achievement growth, they tend to choose schools that are not only more effective at teaching their students but also more demographically diverse.

Status vs. growth

To make more informed choices for their children, parents need a better understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of these two ways to measure schools’ academic performance.

Read full story at The Conversation: https://theconversation.com/a-new-way-to-pick-the-best-school-for-your-child-177515

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