Recent policy studies have tried to identify “high-flying” schools — schools that help students reach very high levels of achievement, despite significant disadvantages. A new policy brief demonstrates three major problems with the findings of these reports.
(1) Due to questionable methodological assumptions, the number high-flying schools is significantly smaller than the number reported in those studies;
(2) The numbers in these reports are being misused in a way that understates the significance of, and need to address, socioeconomic disadvantages; and
(3) these reports fail to directly address the vast amount of evidence that inequity in educational outcomes is primarily due to students’ social and economic disadvantages.
Read what author Douglas N. Harris has to say by downloading the PDF