Dive Brief:

• A perception gap may account for the reasons that American parents tend to highly rate their own child’s school while bemoaning the state of the nation's public schools as a whole, according to Jack Schneider, the director of research for the Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment.
• Schneider writes in The Atlantic that data systems that rely predominantly on standardized test scores may give an inaccurate representation to parents about the quality of a given school, and they are able to make more informed decisions about their own child’s school because they have that additional context.
• Schneider hopes a more comprehensive framework of assessment can be utilized for schools to help parents close that perception gap, with less of a weighted dependence on standardized test results, and he says the MCIEA is working to build a different kind of data system to help parents, educators and lawmakers.

Dive Insight:

The perception gap, in part, centers around concerns regarding forms of assessment and performance metrics. Does the reliance on standardized tests offer a comprehensive view of how a student is performing at a school, and does the summative total of tests indicate how a school is performing overall? Some high schools believe a different kind of metric is needed. A group of 100 elite high schools throughout the country are hoping to transition to “mastery-based” transcripts, which would not include any courses or grades, but will measure student proficiency in ways that include examples of work, like lab reports or essays.

The challenge educators and administrators have is in pushing for metrics of achievement that may offer a more comprehensive view of student performance but may not be widely accepted among other educators, colleges or employers. The reason the Mastery Transcript Consortium, for example, is starting with 100 elite high schools is that it believes those schools have a better chance of convincing colleges to accept the alternative transcripts they will offer. While administrators might prefer transcripts or assessments that look beyond just standardized test scores, there may need to be even more political will to find and adhere to a standard that all stakeholders respect as legitimate.