Comparing Schools By Achievement Scores In City Club By Macke Reymond

Macke Reymond, in the video, “City Club”, describes how it is unfair to compare schools by achievement scores, without taking into account the demographics of the students. Factors that can affect overall achievement include poverty, race, special education, and English language learners. “Student’s come to school with different types of education endowments based on their backgrounds. They might have differences in their basic command of English, vocab, phonetic awareness, numeracy, and so on. These differences in knowledge affect the absolute level of knowledge they have, both when entering school and continuing on.” (Reymond) This being said, schools which contain large numbers of minority, special education, or English language learners are most likely going to have a lower achievement score than average schools due to the various differences behind

For example schools with large number of special education students are tested in the same way an average student would be tested even though most special education students have different cognitive knowledge than the average student. This is why it can be troublesome to grade a school based off of achievement, and it would be more accurate to grade a school off of academic progress rather than achievement in general. (Reymond) Children who are minority, English language learners, or in poverty tend to attend charter schools more frequently in Ohio than they would a suburban school. These social issues often make it hard to isolate variables regarding the school experience. It is unfair to grade a charter school on achievement, when there are various factors of these social issues that can attribute to low achievement that are not necessarily due to poor effort on a school’s part. English language learners may have a more difficult time learning because English is not their first language. The communication barrier between the teacher and student make it