In school performance, we get what we ask for

That’s an issue that has been discussed recently following the publication of standardized test results from local schools.

In a broad statistical sense, wealthier school districts do tend to overall outperform poorer school districts. But is that because poorer students are less capable, or because poorer schools tend to have weaker teachers, lousy administrators and lower community expectations?

I think it is mostly the latter. There are many examples around the country and here locally where poorer schools outperform their wealthier counterparts.

Last week, I analyzed the individual local schools covered by Mainstreet Newspapers in the four counties where we have newspapers: Barrow, Banks, Jackson and Madison counties. In those communities, there are a total of 21 elementary schools, 11 middle schools and eight high schools.

After getting the poverty rate for each school (which in this case was defined as the percent of students getting free or reduced price lunch,) we looked at 2010 standardized testing results over at least three tests for each school, then combined the failure rate percentage for each test at each school, creating a relative composite “score.” (I won’t detail that methodology here.)

By then listing each school by both its poverty rate and composite scores, we were able to see if poverty rates dramatically affect student performance on an apples-to-apples comparison basis.

The results? While the overall failure rates did tend to rise as a school had a higher percentage of poverty students, there were numerous exceptions to that trend. Something else is going on at individual schools besides the poverty rate that affects student performance.

Here are a few examples:

• Although Benton Elementary School in Jackson County had the second highest poverty rate of all the elementary schools analyzed — 73 percent — it had the second best composite score. BES students far outperformed most of their peers from all four counties regardless of poverty rates.

• At the other extreme, Danielsville Elementary School in Madison County had the overall worst elementary school performance, but a relatively modest 56 percent poverty rate. That’s far below Benton’s poverty rate, but its composite failure rate was above all other schools regardless of wealth and was the highest of all 21 elementary schools evaluated.

• In middle schools, Kings Bridge Middle School in Jackson County was the worst of the 11 schools with a very high overall composite failure rate. Although the school does have a high poverty rate of 69 percent, its test results were twice as bad when compared to Banks County Middle School and East Jackson Middle School, both of which had similar poverty rates of 66 and 64 percent respectively.

• With a more modest 59 percent poverty rate, Madison County Middle School also did poorly in the peer comparison with a high composite failure rate. Commerce Middle School in Jackson County had an identical poverty rate to Madison — 59 percent — but CMS had an overall failure rate of just 19.1 compared to MCMS’ very high rate of 46.1.

• At the high school level, poverty rates did seem to track closer to school performance than at the middle and elementary school levels. Although we didn’t have enough current data to evaluate Madison County High School and Banks County High School, the other six high schools tracked fairly close to the schools’ poverty rates. The exception to that was Apalachee High School in Barrow County which had a lower composite failure rate than both East Jackson High School and Winder Barrow High School, although all three had similar poverty rates.

So what should we conclude from all of this?

First, poverty rates do broadly reflect school performance, especially if free and reduced lunch rates are below 40 percent. Below that level, the local schools did far better than their peers (Jefferson City Schools were all below 40 percent.) And above 65 percent schools typically did worse.

But there are so many exceptions to that trend — poor schools doing well academically and relatively wealthier schools doing poorly academically — one can’t just blame poverty for a school’s weak performance. Something else is going on.

Based on 30 years of covering public education in a variety of school districts, it’s my view that a community’s expectations and the strength of a school’s leadership have far more to do with academic success than anything else.

Weak schools typically have weak leadership, especially at the principal level. Strong principals who set high expectations of both their staff and their students will outperform schools with weak leadership regardless of poverty level.

But weak school leadership doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Typically, weak schools reflect a broader weak community psychology that doesn’t place as much value on education and thus, demands less from its local school officials.

Communities that embrace mediocrity from their local schools and have low expectations will get mediocrity in academic performance. Communities where the cultural mentality is, “It was good enough for me, so it’s good enough for my kids” will never achieve a high level of academic success. Communities and schools that are content with being “at the state average” will always have mediocre results.

More than wealth or poverty, a community’s expectations— that includes parents, taxpayers, community leaders and school officials — have far more to do with a local school’s academic success than any other factor including poverty.

In local school performance, we get what we ask for. Low standards will equal weak results; high standards will create strong results. The numbers prove it.

Mike Buffington is co-publisher of Mainstreet Newspapers, Inc. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com.