Not too shabby

How many are wondering how Sun Prairie High really ranks against its peers?  Did anyone look?  How many can't wait until November 7th to get past all these ads?

Well we took a look at the "report card" data for comparable high schools.  Now, Dr. Culver would want us to state clearly what comparable we seek.  So...to be clear...we are NOT going to compare Sun Prairie High to other Dane Co. schools.  There's simply far too much variability there for any comparison to be worthwhile.

Instead we looked at the 20 school districts closest in size to Sun Prairie in terms of total enrollment.   These will be moderate to large sized cities who, at least in  theory, face many of the same challenges as Sun Prairie.   For the record, there is a school board policy which states that administrator salary ranges are to be based on averages from the 14 school districts closest in size to Sun Prairie.  We figure that if it's a good enough basis for administrator salaries, it must be good for student performance...right?

So...ho did we fare?  Not too shabby. 6th out of 31 high schools to be exact.  That's really pretty good...so why don't we have more National Merit scholars?

We looked at the data to see if there were any significant correlations between accountability scores and  school enrollment (NO!), percent of minority students (inverse correlation, statistically significant), and percentage of socio-economically disadvantaged kids (inverse correlation, extreme statistical significance).

As the clock ticks ever closer towards election day, perhaps one measure of a candidate's strength is the ability to fight poverty.  Coming in a very close second is the likelihood that a candidate will properly fund schools to deal with achievement gaps.

Here's a tip...making the rich richer is not part of the equation.