The Mackinac Center for Public Policy recently released their 2013 Michigan Context And Performance Report Card. They also provide a handy, searchable database on their website to find your specific district and school results. BEFORE you start exploring, here are my two cents:
There is interesting information in this report. Looking at the methodology used to determine a CAP score is intriguing and I wish the powers of good, evil, and null would combine their forces to provide us one target. This ranking reminds me of what the Center for Michigan put out in January with value-added measures and rankings. After spending recent months enmeshed in the Michigan Department of Education’s data and measurement for my district, I see glaring differences in the three data points and wonder about the confusion it creates for the average citizen who only exposes himself to one set.
This got me thinking of when I did quality management. An external auditor came every six months to recertify us for ISO:9001. Keeping clients like Ford, Chrysler, and GM was dependent on us having that certification. The external auditor cost about $2,500 per visit and if we were non-compliant in an area without fixing it within six weeks we’d lose our certification. Oddly enough, there was only one time when a non-compliance was found that we couldn’t fix within six weeks. After that visit, we used a different external auditor, one that cost a little more even. When management explained the situation to the new auditor on his first visit, they set the expectation of the results they wanted to see (and were paying for). We had a long, positive relationship with this new auditor.
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This also reminds me of every time I’ve sold or refinanced a house. I will pay another $150 in a heartbeat to get the appraisal I want, be it higher for selling or lower for taxes. As much as I admire the work Audrey Spalding has done here for the Mackinac Center, I know that organizations would not spend money on a report that proved anything other than what they wanted.
Case in point, for the same period, any schools that received a D or F from the Mackinac Center should theoretically be a Focus school on MDE’s Bottom 30 list. These are reversed in a number of cases! Using similar adjustments for economically disadvantaged challenges and growth models, the Center for Michigan’s Value-Added Matrix identifies “champion” schools, often who have overcome odds with positive performance under harder conditions. Again the data points, all derived from the same MEAP results and economically disadvantaged numbers, are not really comparable with how MDE measures or ranks schools (and distributes funding) to districts.
In a circumstance where the education world is inundated with data points all while trying to determine standard indices by which to measure and guide our improvement, this can be confusing even to inquiring minds. School districts are just at the cusp of learning to triangulate data, so when those points don’t remotely compare it further confuses the system. What really scares me though, is that by the same theory that an organization will slice the same data to tell the story they want, a consumer who is only exposed to one of these stories, may develop an incomplete, or worse inaccurate, view of truth.
It seems that in such paradoxical conditions, it is critical for school leaders (that is ANYONE who works in a school serving our children) to be aware of these different data sets and be able to communicate to others the extreme caution that should be taken when making judgment about schools. We can’t afford not to look at external data points because our clients are looking at them, however they aren’t our money makers. What would be even better is if more of us pushed each organization who evaluates schools by any means, to articulate the good in their intentions AND work to align that good with the actual measures by which schools are funded and manage themselves. I guarantee if these methods were aligned with, not outside of, governmental measures, public schools could improve.