A Wayland Town Crier letter and subsequent discussion raised the question of whether we might plausibly rank one school against another. Here's my answer.
We can certainly compare aspects of our schools with those of others (see the work of the Long Range Strategic Planning initiative here): percentage of eligible students attending; class size; per pupil expenditure; MCAS scores; and graduation rates come immediately to mind. The MA Department of Education collects and normalizes those data, but only such that we can compare to Massachusetts, and not the rest of the country. And to my knowledge, no one tracks other measures of merit: the quality of teacher preparation; the depth and breadth of curriculum; the number of students participating in athletics, the arts, and activities; the universities and jobs that our students go on to explore, and so on.
Let's say, however, that someone did track these things, and did so nationally ,or better, internationally. How would we weight these various attributes to arrive at a single ranking? Is MCAS weighted 3.0 or 3.5? Does athletics score 0.3, or 1.3, or 2.3? Where does per pupil expenditure fit: 1.9?
We can and do examine these measures to improve the education that we deliver. We just can't boil them down to a single number in order that we might establish a ranking.
Thank you.
send me email at dieffenbach @ alum.mit.edu.