Beyond ‘good’ and ‘bad’: Disrupting narratives about school quality

Abstract

Parents and the public use accountability data to judge if schools are doing a good or a bad job educating their students. However, using the current data, schools perceived as “good” tend to be in better-resourced districts and enroll higher percentages of wealthy and white students. Schools perceived as “bad” tend to be in more economically oppressed districts and enroll higher percentages of low-income students and students of color. James Noonan and Jack Schneider suggest more equitable collection of better and more nuanced data about schools can provide more complete pictures of strengths and weaknesses and could offer a way to spur investment in under resourced schools.