What is this blog?
This blog will contain my personal analysis of Dane County schools primarily based on the state testing data. The posts are really intended to be read sequentially, more or less. So far it's not really a stream-of-consciousness like a normal blog; rather it's more of a straightforward analysis.
Why bother with this?
Our friends recently mentioned that they were concerned with the Madison schools among other things and were thinking about moving to a small town like Lodi. Other people we know are putting their kids in private school. I thought that Madison schools might not be in the dismal situation that seems to be the conventional wisdom today but I couldn't say for sure.
I stumbled upon the State of Wisconsin web site that provides test scores for various grades for every school in Wisconsin and decided to conduct an analysis to see what I could discover about the various schools in the area. Should we move? Should they move? Should you be concerned about the schools? I attempt to answer these questions given numerous assumptions.
Summary of Results
Madison has the best schools in Dane county and among the best in all of Wisconsin.
But, and it’s a big BUT, you have to make sure you’re in the right one. Choose poorly and you get a relatively bad school.
Verona and Middleton also seem to have good schools comparable to the Madison ones. You still need to choose the best one by location but you won’t end up with bad one anywhere in either Verona or Middleton.
The trend in Madison’s elementary school test scores seems to be heading toward the middle rather maintaining high scores and increasing low ones.
Some area schools are relatively bad. Does that mean your kid won’t get a decent education there? No. What does it mean? I think it means that your kid will more likely have average scores than high scores. If you think your kid is going to be a hard-working average student, then it probably doesn’t matter where your child goes is my guess.
No comments:
Post a Comment