How should city-level leaders manage a portfolio of schools? The first thing they should do is take stock of the city’s supply of public schools. A new report from IFF, a nonprofit community development financial institution, provides a helpful look at Cleveland’s public schools, both district and charter. In an effort to uncover those with the highest need for quality seats, the analysis slices the city into thirty neighborhoods based on several variables: schools’ academic performance, facility utilization and physical condition, and commuting patterns. The facility analyses are the major contribution of this work, principally the schools’ utilization rates—the ratio of student enrollment to the physical capacity of the building. The utilization rates are needed to determine the actual number of available high-quality seats. The analysts obtained building-capacity statistics through the district; they estimated charter capacity by using the schools’ highest enrollment point (perhaps underreporting charters’ capacity—especially for new schools). Happily, the study reports that Cleveland’s highly rated K–8 schools are at 90 percent capacity. Yet it is less satisfying to learn that its highest-rated high schools are at only 68 percent capacity (the report does not suggest any reasons why). Meanwhile, most of the city’s poorly rated schools are under capacity, averaging 71 percent utilization. The study could be significantly improved in one regard. Its academic measure consists solely of an achievement-based metric—the state’s performance index. But in urban areas in particular, where achievement tends to be low, considering learning gains (a.k.a. “value-added”) is also crucial when evaluating school performance. Cleveland’s policymaking community would be wise to reconsider the school-quality analysis by looking through both the student achievement and value-added lenses. An analysis of that type would still reveal that Cleveland has far too many low-quality seats. But it would also shine a brighter light on which schools help their students make extraordinary gains—and are worth investing in.
Source: IFF, A Shared Responsibility: Ensuring Quality Education in Every Cleveland Neighborhood (Chicago: Author, 2015).
