While producing a list like this is never heartening, it can be a useful rallying tool for change on a community or legislative level. Additionally, the NeighborhoodScout ranking of America’s worst public schools is different from most - it’s a patented ranking system that takes into account both the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) state-level achievement in reading and math, as well as the National Assessment of Educational Progress benchmarks in those same subjects, which are universal across the country. Because of this, we are able to compare schools all across America on the same ranking system, even if students in those schools took different assessment tests. Our method measures the gap between a state’s rate of student proficiency on its state-mandated NCLB test, and that state’s passing rate for the NAEP, and applies the state-specific gap in performance on these two tests to each school. (For more information on this patented ranking system, check out our list of the 100 best schools in America).
From this, an improvement of a school’s national ranking can be accomplished a couple of different ways. Firstly, there is an incentive to make the state-specific tests more difficult, rather than less, thus closing the gap with the often more difficult national NAEP measurement. If the state-specific tests are harder than the NAEP, this can help the ranking of well-performing schools on these tougher NCLB tests even more. And, if the state does better on its NAEP than other states, it helps the best schools in that state compare favorably against the best schools in other states. The two work together to show the best of the best, and rank all schools on a comparable index based on student performance. It’s a holistic way of measuring that’s completely unique to NeighborhoodScout.
