Interpreting school data is best done cautiously

Each of the school districts in Washington County possesses its own distinct character, its distinct strengths and its own distinct needs. It is very important to keep this in mind when data from one district is compared to another. In many cases comparisons ultimately can be misleading. On May 18 and again on May 23, comparative school data appeared in the Bangor Daily News that are in need of clarification and that should be placed in fuller context.

In the May 18 article an area official was quoted as saying that it costs $8,800 to send a student to Calais High School, and $6,300 to send a student to Shead High School. This data is misleading and actually incorrect in the context in which it appeared, although that may well not have been the intention. Those figures reference what is spent to educate each student in the given district’s high school, not what it costs to tuition or “send” a student to Calais High School or to Shead High School.

The tuition cost to send your student to Calais is $6,880, while the tuition cost to send your student to Shead, using the same Department of Education data referenced in that article is $6,680. Placed in context, while it costs just $200 more to send your student to Calais than to Eastport. Calais, in fact, spends $8,818 to educate each of its students attending the renovated and redesigned Calais High School with a full range of programs.

In the May 23 commentary was a series of comparisons of aggregate grade 11 Maine Educational Assessment scores among the several high schools

in Washington County. The six schools were listed from “highest” to “lowest” scores in reading, writing, mathematics and science and technology. The total spread between the highest and the lowest scores across the six schools was not more than five points – except in one category (science and technology) where five of the six schools, not six, represented a total range of not more than five points – statistical significance is questionable at best.

It is important to highlight that there was little difference in student performance on the MEAs across the range of high schools in Washington County. I think it is also important to note that although Calais did not rank first in any one of those categories, in the previous year, Calais High School’s aggregate SAT scores were the highest scores across all high schools in Washington County. Perspective and context are important.

Disparity across the schools was noted particularly in the reporting of “drop-out rate.” Scrutiny of this data is important as well. How does your district report its dropout rate? Determining the dropout rate should be calculated by taking the number of students entering the grade 9 class in each year, and then following that grade 9 total number of students through graduation four years later.

That is how the dropout rate is supposed to be calculated, and that is how it is calculated in Calais. Reporting is not consistent across the state, and different methods of counting or reporting can change the way the data looks.

How does your district report the dropout rate? And what becomes of the statistic for the student who moves away with family out of district or out of state but fails to register for school again? That statistic is added to the dropout rate of the school where the student entered as a freshman unless there is evidence the student has entered another school.

So what is my point? Be careful when interpreting data, for the sake of your school and for the sake of the youth in each of our communities who are sorely in need of whole community support for their education.

Your community’s schools are the future for your youth, for our youth, and it is critical that we fund quality education in each of our communities and that we support the autonomy of each distinct school and community.

James A. Underwood is superintendent of schools in School Union 106.