Something I have heard repeatedly is that the Park City School District is the #1 school district in the state. It reminds me of those old Enterprise Car Rental commercials. You’d see some guy proclaim that Enterprise was #1… they pick you up!<\/p>\n
But, regardless of the spin, you really knew that\u00a0Hertz was #1.<\/p>\n
This weekend, I decided to dig into the claim by the school district\u00a0that it was #1. What I came away with is while the Park City School District may like to declare itself number #1, and this may be true at an aggregate level, individual grade level results paint the picture of a good, but not perfect, school district.<\/p>\n
For weeks, maybe months, I have heard the claim that we were the best district in the state. I had reviewed the standardized test score numbers and I couldn’t figure out exactly how we were the best. Then today I was searching for something else and up popped a documents entitled, “District Narrative<\/a>.” This Park City School District document explained that according to SAGE test results our district overall was #1 in English Language Arts. \u00a0Yet, I had previously looked at SAGE test results and never saw our schools as the top performer.<\/p>\n I decided it was worth a second look. Here is where our schools stand at each grade level:<\/p>\n So, perhaps we are the best district by some cumulative\u00a0measure; however, I wouldn’t be glowing,\u00a0as our district is doing, about\u00a0any results\u00a0beyond\u00a04th Grade English and perhaps\u00a010th grade English. In fact Weilenman Charter School ranks about 20 places ahead of our schools in 3rd grade English. That said, I’m not sure what weight to put on standardized tests\u00a0when\u00a0I consider consider educational success, but since the Park City School District markets our SAGE test as “Park City is #1, I guess I’ll go with it.<\/p>\n Gut feeling tells me that Park City schools are better than average.Yet, when I hear the spin that\u00a0“Park City School District” is the best in the state and “now we need to be the best in the country,” it gives me pause. “Best in State” makes it sound like we are clearly better than everyone else at everything. Looking at individual grades, it looks like in many cases we have a lot of work to do.<\/p>\n\n