Is Northville High School As Good as It Can Be?
One of the outstanding features of the Northville community and one that attracted many of us to move here was the Northville Public Schools (NPS). NPS has traditionally provided our students with an excellent learning opportunity and, by and large, most of our students have graduated from Northville High School (NHS) and gone on to attain a successful college education and/or career. However, as the famous quotation says, “you’re either getting better or getting worse, you cannot stay the same”. Should we expect even more of our high school?
Recently the state Board of Education released the results of the 2011 Michigan Merit Examination (MME)/ACT test scores for all of the Michigan 11th graders. Based upon the raw scores, NHS students placed in the 90th percentile which means that 90 percent of Michigan schools placed lower than NHS. This is an excellent record. However, there is another way to look at these scores.
When we compare these test results to other school districts, we will most often look at districts located in communities similar to Northville, districts such as Novi, Bloomfield Hills, and the Grosse Pointes. One reason we compare ourselves to these districts is because we inherently know that there is a direct correlation
between socioeconomic factors and success in school. This correlation has been proven. The poorer the population in a school district, the lower the expectation of the standardized test scores.
Recently, the Mackinac Center in Midland, MI, published a study in which they developed a ranking of all of the public high schools in Michigan based upon the past three years of the Michigan Merit Examination which includes the ACT tests taken each year by all eleventh grade students. However, rather than simply looking at only the raw test scores, they adjusted these scores to account for the disparities in the socioeconomic status of the districts’ student population. The study is called the “Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card (CAP).
The socioeconomic status that the CAP Report Card uses is measured by the percentage of the student population that qualifies for free or reduced price lunches under the federal government’s National School Lunch Program. Utilizing regression testing, they determined how well a school should perform on the tests and then ranked each district as to whether they performed better or worse than projected. Schools with a CAP score of 100 means that their test scores were as projected based upon their school lunch program participation. The goal of this study was to provide an “apples to apples” comparison of school districts scores.
According to this study, the top public high school in the state is the Star International Academy which is a charter public school in Dearborn Heights. Their CAP Score was 140.8, or 40.8 percentage points higher than the projected score.
Northville High School, with a CAP score of 106.5, had a ranking of 95 out of 273 public high schools in the state. This means that, based on the corrected score, NHS was in the 67th percentile, much lower than the raw score ranking. If we compare our scores to other districts also classified as “Suburban: Large”, Northville is ranked 15th out of 132 like-classified districts. A few of the schools ranked higher than Northville are Grosse Pointe South, East Grand Rapids and Bloomfield Hills Andover.
The lesson we can take away from this report is that there is always room for
improvement. We know our school district does an excellent job of educating our kids but we cannot rest on our laurels. Even as we continue to struggle during these difficult economic times, we need our teachers, administrators and parents to be striving for excellence, looking for new ways to inspire our children to pursue fields of study in math and science as well as the humanities. As many of us teach our children, we always need to strive to be number one.
Jon Forslund
12:09 pm on Thursday, August 16, 2012
While it's true that NHS can do better, the latest MDE report card shows that it does not have a significant achievement gap and, thus, is not designated a Focus School.
If you look at the Mackinac study, the top schools in the state are magnet schools. That is, students do not attend a building merely based on geography; students elect to go to a specific schools. Magnet schools typically outperform schools that with geographically based student populations because both the students and their support systems (e.g. parents) are "invested."
Finally, the top three schools in the Mackinac Center's ranking have both academic and attendance contracts. For example, if a student has excessive absences (s)he loses credit in that class. Traditional public schools must allow a noncompliant student (e.g. with attendance) to test out of a subject; however, the top academies in the Mackinac Center's ranking can force noncompliant students to withdraw from the school.
The Mackinac Center's work was interesting in that it showed how important socio-economic factors are in a school's performance. However, the Center claims that its study is a more "apples-to-apples" comparison; but comparing magnet schools to traditional public schools is more of a "apples-to-bowling balls" analogy.
By the way, any school in the Mackinac Center's study that had a CAP score over 100 actually outperformed its anticipated score. Since NHS had a 106.5, it still surpassed expectations.
Carol Maynard
4:16 am on Friday, August 17, 2012
A Key factor in a child's achievements in school is having Parents that Value Education. This "usually" ties in with a higher socio-economic status of the family. However, if the parents Value education, then anything is possible. You do not need a HS that looks like a Museum with all the latest "stuff". If a student is motivated to Learn, he will achieve. And a motivated student can learn, even without a teacher. It seems to me that the Northville Schools are doing a fine job, so are the parents. Also, just for the record, two of the Bottom Ranked Schools listed in the Metro Detroit Report Card were Schools for Special Needs Students and Autistic Students and those schools were the Burger Development Center in Garden City and the Beacon Day Treatment Center in Southgate. I think that I would Rank the State of Michigan a Zero for this stupidity. Also, most of those bottom ranked schools are trying to educate students whose basic needs aren't being met in the home. I am talking about proper nutrition and guidance.
Denise Nash
4:55 pm on Saturday, August 18, 2012
Personally, Tom, I would take literally anything to do with the Mackinac Center with a grain of salt. Anything like the MC, so connected to ALEC and funded by the Koch brothers would be partisan enough to adjust their criteria so that their favorite charter schools would end up at the top of the heap. When I saw this was the case, I had to respond.
This reminds me of the term "college ready" which the pundits love to throw around. Check it out and see what it really means - it's a measurement from the ACT. I don't believe either of my kids were "college ready", yet somehow managed to graduate from MSU - one with high honors, the other majoring in math. One is in UM grad school - yet he's not college ready. Imagine that. I have read on the web that the kids at the International School, which is INDEED the top rated school in Michigan, only have 78% of their kids at "college readiness" for last year - and 100% of them went to college.
All these measurements and terms are bandied about in order to denigrate our public school system and the teachers therein. I won't stand for it, based on my experiences here in Northville. You are/were a part of helping this district become what it is. It's time to find other measurement criteria that makes sense, and time for all of us to become defenders of Michigan's public school system, while working together to make it better for ALL kids. IMO, of course! ;-)
Northville Parent
10:59 pm on Saturday, August 18, 2012
A huge limiting factor right now is the number of teachers. That has an effect on the rest of the school as well -- the morale, extracurricular opportunities, personal development of students, etc. When teachers don't have time, students get less attention, extracurriculars sponsored by teachers suffer, etc. The cycle just keeps going!
Compared to other schools like Novi, Troy, and West Bloomfield, Northville seriously lags in the number of students sent to top tier schools. It's odd that we've lagged in this category considering that our student population is very similar to those schools. Until we start sending kids to top schools, I think it will be difficult for certain parents to take us seriously as a school district.