On July 19, the Mackinaw Center for Public Policy published the “Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card” which is an “apples-to-apples” comparison of public high schools because it adjusts scores by taking in account the socioeconomic status of their students.  Socioeconomic status in the CAP Report Card is measured by the percentage of a school’s students who qualify for a free or reduced lunch.  The CAP summarizes the socioeconomic factor and typical rankings:

A student’s socioeconomic status typically refers to such factors as his or her family’s household income and parents’ educational background. Students from low-income families or homes where the parents have not completed high school tend to have lower levels of academic achievement than those from, high-income households.  This disparity is a major — and legitimate — reason many people resist the idea of comparing schools based solely on standardized test scores:  One school may outperform another simply because its student population has a higher average socioeconomic status, not because the school is actually better at educating students. With this report card, we adjust the performance of a school’s students on standardized tests to recognize the school’s socioeconomic disadvantages.

Grand Rapids City High, Ottawa, Creston, and Central ranked among Kent County’s 10 best.  The Center’s director of education policy and a coauthor of the report card, Michael Van Beek, stated that this report “helps us identify outstanding schools that by most measures would appear mediocre”.

The CAP Scores for 684 Michigan public high schools appear in the study which can be found here.

This is an interesting report and definitely highlights some positive results being achieved in many of our high needs schools.  There is a lot of great work being done in many of these schools that is often overlooked!