School detective: A parent's guide to school data in Minneapolis and St. Paul

It’s time to pick a school. Parents of pre-schoolers, middle-schoolers and every-schooler in-between have until the end of the month to decide which school their child will attend. It’s a big decision. These days, folks are saying even a single teacher can change the trajectory of a child’s education. So what does a school do? And how do we know a good one from a bad one?

There’s no easy answer to those questions, but in an age of school accountability, parents should have access to some data they can refer to. And they do. It’s just buried in the depths of Minneapolis and St. Paul Public Schools’ web sites. Here’s a guide to finding it.

But before you begin, a warning: Looking at pages and pages of data may give you a headache and it may not tell you which school is right for your family. Read carefully – data can be hard to understand and easy to misinterpret. Don’t forget to visit schools, attend open houses and talk to teachers, administrators and other parents about your school options. Minneapolis’s priority school request deadline is February 29. St. Paul’s is March 9.

Minneapolis

School Choice Center:  If you want simple, easy-to-read, side-by-side comparisons of schools, go here for K-8 and here for high schools. Enter your address, and you’ll get a list of school options in your area. For K-8, click “Compare these schools” at the top of the page. For high school, look below the map, on the right side of the screen, and click “See High School Comparisons.” It will give you a list of school options with data on enrollment, student and teacher demographics, test results, graduation rates and results from school surveys students and staff take every year.

This data is nice, because you don’t have to download anything, and you can easily compare different schools. Plus, if you want to learn more about a school’s programs, all you have to do is click on that school.

For more detail: School Information Reports

School information reports will give you a little more. Choose the year and the school you’d like to learn about, and a list of reports will appear – all are in PDF form, which you’ll have to download (annoying, I know). The “Intro and School Demographics” section includes a brief report on your school of choice with all kinds of information. A table lists the proportion of students who receive free and reduced lunch, English language learner services and special education referrals. Further down, a graph shows how many white, Hispanic, Asian, African American and American Indian students the school enrolls.

You can get some idea of the disciplinary tactics and behavior issues at the school by looking at suspension rates, and a section on staff shows the gender and ethnicity ratios of school employees and the proportion of staff with masters degrees.

Most of the numbers are listed alongside district numbers for comparison, but you can’t compare individual schools side-by side.

School information reports: Survey

If you select “Survey” you’ll find another helpful and sort of fascinating source of information about the selected school. Staff and students in grades 5, 8 and 11 take surveys regarding how they feel about their school every year, and this document shows the results.

Some of the most important questions: Do you like going to this school? Do students of different races, cultures and backgrounds work well together in this school? Do teachers have high expectations for all students? Are you often kept from doing your work because of student misbehavior? And do you feel safe in this school?

You’ll see graphs depicting how many students and teachers agree with those questions, with district comparisons listed in tables below each graph. And if you scroll way down, you’ll see a more detailed table, listing all the survey questions and the percent of students who agreed with each question – from whether school lunch tastes good to whether the school is clean.

More places to find Minneapolis data (See the last section of the article for a note on test data):

MPS Research, Evaluation and Assessment http://rea.mpls.k12.mn.us/evaluation_and_research

Reports and data on key MPS topics http://www.mpls.k12.mn.us/reports_and_data

Minnesota Department of Education http://education.state.mn.us/MDEAnalytics/Reports.jsp

This stuff is hard to understand! For Minneapolis data questions, call 612-668-0570

St. Paul

School Selection Guide: The simplest data set

In St. Paul, as with Minneapolis, the simplest data to look at is side-by-side comparisons of schools.

Go here for elementary schools.

Here  for middle schools.

Here for high schools.

Enter your address at the top of the page, and you’ll get a list of school choices. Check off the schools that interest you and hit “Compare.” You’ll get a list of schools with their hours, enrollment, demographics and test scores.

Having all this data is nice, because you don’t have to download anything, and you can easily compare different schools. Plus, if you want to learn more about a school’s programs, all you have to do is click on that school.

For more detail: School info page

You’ll get more from the school info page. Choose the school you want to learn about, then pick a topic. Look for graduation rates, dropout rates and post-secondary enrollment rates. You can learn about a school’s behavior issues and disciplinary practices by looking at suspension rates, listed under “Discipline.” Learn about school demographics by looking at “Home languages,” or “Enrollment.”

One interesting category is “Advanced Courses.” It gives you the proportion of students that passed honors classes, compared to the proportion that did not. The numbers can be broken down by gender, ethnicity, ELL status, etc.

The downside: the info pages do not offer side-by-side comparisons of schools, or even a comparison to the district.

If you want more detailed, side-by-side comparisons and district data

Try the District info page. The tables here give more detailed school comparisons, and district-wide data.

Much of the information is similar to what you’ll find on the school info pages, but there are a couple noteworthy items. My favorite: class sizes. You can find each school’s average class-size, broken down by grade or subject.

For more St. Paul data try:

SPPS Data Center http://datacenter.spps.org/

Minnesota Department of Education http://education.state.mn.us/MDEAnalytics/Reports.jsp

This stuff is hard to understand! For St. Paul data questions call 651-767-8383

A note on test scores

If you’ve been following along, you probably noticed that I skipped over a ton of test data. The data is hard to read and its value is debatable. What each test means will have to be the subject of a future guide, but see below for links to information about some of the tests mentioned on district web sites.

If you want to find out more about test scores and whether schools are making No Child Left Behind’s Adequate Yearly Progress, the Minnesota Department of Education’s web site is probably the best place to look. The Data for Parents and Educatorssection is fairly easy to use and offers lots of graphs and options for side-by-side comparisons of districts, schools or demographic groups. The site offers other useful information, besides test scores, including data on Minnesota charter schools.

• ACT http://www.act.org/aap/
• Adequate yearly progress (AYP) http://www.edweek.org/ew/issues/adequate-yearly-progress/
• AP http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/about.html
• EXPLORE http://www.actstudent.org/explore/
• MAP http://www.nwea.org/products-services/computer-based-adaptive-assessments/map
• MCA http://www.pacer.org/mpc/mcatests.asp
• PLAN http://www.act.org/plan/