How Wealthy Parents Skew School Rankings
Research shows parents are willing to pay to opt-out of low-ranking school districts, but are good schools a good investment?
Every parent wants what’s best for their child. There may be differences in what a parent values, but a few things are universal: love, acceptance, security, opportunity.
And while most of what we as parents can give to our children is free, a good education can often be bought. Parents go to great lengths to get the best possible education for their child, even paying a premium of up to $270,000 for a home in a high-ranking school boundary.
Is it worth it?
Many parents think so, and often turn to school rankings to assess the return on their investment. The thinking goes that schools with a high score reflect better performance, and must have better teachers, resources and student outcomes. Schools with a low score must be lacking or might be perceived unsafe.
Neighborhoods with highly-rated schools see home values go up, while demand in low-rated districts is lower, and home values go down.
The implication is that good schools are in limited supply.
Last week, we discovered that homes can go for a premium as low as $82,000 for a school rated 5 or 6, or as high as $270,000 for a school rated a 9, over homes in lower-ranking school boundaries, rated 2, 3 or 4.
Repeated studies have found that parents are more than willing to “opt out” of a low-performing neighborhood school, either by making a move or switching to a charter school.
Families that make a move pay the premium and choose to enroll their child in a higher-performing school district. School quality is often a higher priority than other factors such as proximity to work or family.
In wealthy Fairfax County, many are choosing to move to neighboring Loudoun County. As Fairfax County’s demographics change, projected to be 62 percent non-White by 2040, many families, regardless of political persuasion, are choosing to move further out to new developments, in the name of more space and better schools.
Other families choosing to opt-out of bad schools are more likely to choose charter schools over traditional public schools. The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools claims that "high-quality charter schools are in high demand, with long waitlists in many cities across the country.”
This is especially prevalent in the Washington, DC area. Diving into the popular anonymous online forum DC Urban Moms and Dads, researchers examined school-focused discussions, searching through more than 400,000 messages.
“Where parents say they live in a neighborhood that is gentrifying, the study found that they mention charter schools more often than their neighborhood schools, suggesting these families are seeking information to opt out of their neighborhood schools,” the Washington Post reports. “Families are assigned and guaranteed slots at their neighborhood schools but can apply through the city’s school lottery system for a seat at a charter school or other school outside their neighborhood boundary.”
The study notes that many low-ranking schools “are never mentioned in the forums and parents are using the forum to share advice on how to get access to schools they perceive as the best in the city.”
For highly competitive and affluent parents in the Washington, DC area and across the country, the ability to choose the “right” school for your child can often be a marker of social standing, a way to signal your social and economic status. The school reflects your parenting skills and expectations for your child, not to mention the sense of validation and accomplishment a parent might feel when their child steps into a highly-ranked school.
Access to quality schools is clearly top-of-mind for parents, but are these “good” schools effective, and worth the investment?
How Wealthy Parents Skew School Ratings
Fairfax County offers twenty-eight high schools. Of the twenty-five schools rated on GreatSchools, only 32 percent are ranked between 7-10; 19 percent are ranked between 5-6; while 44 percent of its schools are ranked between 2-4. Is it possible that such a well-to-do enclave is failing nearly half of its students, or is something else going on?
The answer might be found by viewing the GreatSchools rankings through the lens of student demographics. Lower-ranked Fairfax County high schools, rated a 2, 3, or 4, have an average low-income population of 43%, while the higher-ranked schools, rated 9 or 10, have an average low-income population of only 5.8%.
In Fairfax County Public Schools, lower-ranked high schools have an average low-income population of 43%, while higher-ranked high schools have an average low-income population of only 5.8%.
Source: GreatSchools School Profiles & Zillow, accessed Recently Sold by School District, February 16, 2023.
Research shows there is a strong correlation between family income and academic achievement. This is due to a variety of factors, such as access to high-quality preschools, tutoring programs, and a home environment that is conducive to learning.
The result? Children from wealthy families tend to score higher on standardized tests and perform better in school, regardless of whether they attend a high-or low-ranked school.
And because school rankings heavily tilt toward test scores and other measures easily skewed by income, it can be difficult to assess whether a “good” school is effective at teaching your child to learn, or the student population is just wealthy.
Wealthy families tend to live in the same neighborhoods after all, while school district lines are drawn around those communities, pooling high-performing students in the same schools. School rankings often reflect the demographics of a school, and tend to reward schools with wealthier student populations.
The corollary, of course, is that schools with large populations of low socioeconomic students are penalized. GreatSchools knows this, and updated their ratings in the Fall of 2020, claiming that they now “give the most weight to growth data,” that is, student progress throughout a school year. GreatSchools says they “also increased our emphasis on equity data, so that it carries a similar weight as standardized test scores and college readiness information.”
But due to a lack of consistent data availability, as well as methodological differences, it’s almost impossible to compare and contrast between any two schools.
Let’s look at highly-sought after Langley High School, rated a 9. Langley’s overall score on GreatSchools is composed of two measures, Test Scores, weighted at 51 percent, and College Readiness, weighted at 49 percent.
On Test Scores, Langley students get a 9 rating. GreatSchools reports that, “test scores at this school are far above the state average, suggesting that most students at this school are performing at or above grade level.”
On College Readiness, a score made up of measures like the 4-year high school graduation rate, AP course participation, and SAT/ACT participation rate, Langley students also get a 9 rating. Again GreatSchools notes that, “This school is far above the state average in key measures of college and career readiness.”
Now let’s take a look at Herndon High School, rated a 3. Herndon’s overall score on GreatSchools is composed of three measures, including Test Scores, weighted at only 35 percent this time, College Readiness, weighted at only 31 percent, and one measure not included on the Langley rating: Equity, weighted at 35 percent.
Composite data for GreatSchools’ overall ratings is often weighted differently and inconsistent.
Source: GreatSchools School Profiles.
On Test Scores, Herndon students get a 4. Great Schools reports that “test scores at this school fall far below the state average. This suggests that students at this school are likely not performing at grade level.”
On College Readiness, Herndon students get a rating of 2. While AP course participation and SAT/ACT participation is at or above state average, the 4-year high school graduation rate is 6 points lower, causing Great Schools to report, “This school is far below the state average in key measures of college and career readiness.”
On Equity, Herndon gets a rating of 2. Equity wasn’t a measure included in Langley’s overall score, and yet it’s given over one-third weight in Herndon’s total score, with Great Schools claiming that “this school may have large achievement gaps.”
Langley and Herndon have vastly different student demographics. Low-income students at Langley make up only 2.4% of the population, while they represent a staggering 39% of Herndon’s student population. These student populations start at different places, and the ratings reflect those demographic differences, not how effective the school is at helping children learn and succeed.
As we discovered earlier, wealthy students test well before they enter kindergarten, an advantage that stays with them as they progress grade levels. Should schools be getting credit for their performance, or is it their parents who deserve accolades?
GreatSchools also includes a measure called “Academic Progress,” on certain school profiles which, if equally weighted in all school ratings, might allow parents to make distinctions about the effectiveness of the school. But growth data isn’t consistently shown, and it wasn’t included in either composite score for Langley or Herndon High.
What’s a parent to do?
Making Sense of School Rankings
One strategy is to look beyond the overall scores, and view school demographics data through the lens of your family. This is called contextualizing the data: the practice of looking beyond the numbers and considering the circumstances that may have influenced them. Contextualization is important because data can be easily misinterpreted or manipulated if it is not analyzed in the appropriate context.
Low-income populations are more likely to be racially diverse, a product of a long historical process. The corollary is that white students in the NoVA region are generally wealthier than their non-White peers.
Let’s say you belong in the latter group, and can shoulder the $270,000 premium to purchase a 3,000 square foot home in the Langley school district, instead of the same home in Herndon school district. Should you spend the extra cash?
On College Readiness, White students score a 9 out of 10 at Langley, while they score 10 out of 10 at Herndon.
On Advanced Coursework, 46 percent of White students are enrolled in Advanced Placement (AP courses) at Langley, while 48 percent of White students are enrolled in AP Courses at Herndon.
On Test Scores, White students receive a rating of 9 out of 10 at both at Langley and Herndon schools.
So if you’re relatively well-off, both Langley and Herndon high are “good” schools. There’s no need to pay a premium to live in the Langley district. Remember, children from wealthy families tend to exhibit stronger academic performance, regardless of whether they attend a high-or low-ranked school.
And if you want to split hairs, Herndon High, whose overall rating of 3 might have scared a wealthier family away, is actually slightly better for its more privileged student population than Langley High, whose overall rating is 9.
Wealthy families have the advantage of being able to choose a neighborhood and school without taking into account school ratings or without paying a premium. There is no evidence that wealthier students suffer when integrated with low-income students, and in fact, research shows the opposite: every student thrives.
While academic performance is an important factor in decision-making, parents also prioritize their child's safety and well-being when choosing a school. Drugs, school violence and bullying can be of concern in lower-ranked schools that have a reputation for being unsafe. Parents may wonder whether such a school can provide a safe environment for their child.
We’ll dive into questions around safe schools in our next newsletter. In the meantime, like this post if you found it useful or interesting, and please leave a comment sharing your thoughts or perspective.
I've been contemplating this piece for a week. There is so much to agree and so much yet to explore about this topic.
Westerners are unlikely to be familiar with the name Mencius, who was regarded in Chinese history as the successor of Confucius. The story goes (an English version can be read here: http://chinese-story-collection.blogspot.com/2016/08/mencius-mother-moving-three-times-meng.html) that Mencius's mother, a widow, moved her family three times in search of a better neighborhood to raise her son. Children imitate what they see, so having an environment that exhibits the characters we want to foster in our children is on top of every parent's mind. I would suggest this environment we want our children to immerse in (rather than calling it "imitate from") is the umbrella above all measurable rankings like school safety, diversity, and academic readiness.
Whether or not it's worth paying a premium for a home near a high-ranking school then becomes a discussion of parents' stated and implicit core values. I am going to state a few intentionally polarized values:
* Is the family valuing the Ivy League over state universities and community colleges?
* Is the family valuing certain career paths more than a laissez-faire development?
* Is the family valuing a like-minded and similar-status peer group and its network leverage over a diverse formative experience?
* Is the family valuing "rising tide lifts all boats" when it comes to tax money distribution to schools, or is the family valuing a hyper-local resource distribution because it sees public school system and government system as inefficient and wasteful?
....and I add - I have been thoroughly pleased with my children's teachers at Herndon Middle and Herndon High. Teachers everywhere I believe are underpaid and underappreciated.