April 18, 2019 |
Contact: Multiple Shortcomings Mar Report Ranking Michigan High SchoolsAn NEPC Review funded by the Great Lakes Center Key Takeaway: Report does a disservice by introducing questionable information not substantiated by any credible analysis. EAST LANSING, MI (April 18, 2019) - A recent report from Mackinac Center for Public Policy seeks to measure and publicize high school performance by ranking schools according to their test scores after attempting controlling for students’ “economic status.” The report touts its decision to take free-lunch status into account as its major contribution, in comparison to past school rankings (although this type of calculation has been done previously in many contexts). Beyond this choice, however, the study lacks both justification and explanation of its methodological decisions. The validity and reliability of combining disparate tests across different years without proper equating invalidates the findings – particularly for the high-stakes applications presented in the report. Additionally, the free-lunch percentage measures used in the study have a great deal of measurement error, which argues against this sort of ordinal ranking. And the use of a single predictor with unacceptably low correlations for this type of usage grossly oversimplifies and biases the estimates. Given these shortcomings, the rankings presented in this report should be given no weight in any discussions of policy or practice. In fact, this report does a disservice by introducing questionable information in an easily readable form that is not substantiated by any credible analysis. Find the review, by John T. Yun, at: Find The Michigan Context and Performance Report Card: High Schools 2018, written by Ben DeGrow and Ronald Klinger and published by Mackinac Center for Public Policy, at: NEPC Reviews (http://thinktankreview.org) provide the public, policymakers, and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. NEPC Reviews are made possible in part by support provided by the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice: http://www.greatlakescenter.org About The Great Lakes Center - ### - |
Friend on FacebookFollow on TwitterThe mission of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research & Practice is to support and disseminate high quality research and reviews of research for the purpose of informing education policy and to develop research-based resources for use by those who advocate for education reform. Visit the Great Lakes Center website at http://www.greatlakescenter.org/ |