A MACKINAC CENTER REPORT The Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card THE MICHIGAN PUBLIC HIGH SCHOOL CONTEXT AND PERFORMANCE REPORT CARD By Michael Van Beek, Daniel Bowen and Jonathan Mills The Mackinac Center for Public Policy The Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to improving the quality of life for all Michigan citizens by promoting sound solutions to state and local policy questions. The Mackinac Center assists policymakers, scholars, businesspeople, the media and the public by providing objective analysis of Michigan issues. The goal of all Center reports, commentaries and educational programs is to equip Michigan citizens and other decision makers to better evaluate policy options. 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Box 568 Midland, Michigan 48640 989-631-0900 Fax 989-631-0964 www.mackinac.org [email protected] The Mackinac Center for Public Policy The Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card By Michael Van Beek, Daniel Bowen and Jonathan Mills ©2012 by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy Midland, Michigan Guarantee of Quality Scholarship The Mackinac Center for Public Policy is committed to delivering the highest quality and most reliable research on Michigan issues. The Center guarantees that all original factual data are true and correct and that information attributed to other sources is accurately represented. The Center encourages rigorous critique of its research. If the accuracy of any material fact or reference to an independent source is questioned and brought to the Center’s attention with supporting evidence, the Center will respond in writing. If an error exists, it will be noted in an errata sheet that will accompany all subsequent distribution of the publication, which constitutes the complete and final remedy under this guarantee. The Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card i Contents Executive Summary .............................................................................................iii Introduction .......................................................................................................... 1 Why Another Report Card? ................................................................................. 2 Data and Methods................................................................................................. 3 Classifying Schools ............................................................................................... 5 Selected Results .................................................................................................... 6 The Complete Report Card ................................................................................18 The Michigan Public High School CAP Report Card: Alphabetical .........................19 The Michigan Public High School CAP Report Card: Ranked By Score ...................35 The Michigan Public High School CAP Report Card: Sorted by Locale ...................49 Appendix A: Notes on Testing Other Variables and Data Integrity ..............................................................................................63 Appendix B: Calculating CAP Scores and Letter Grades ..................................66 Calculating CAP Scores ..............................................................................................66 Assigning Letter Grades ..............................................................................................67 Appendix C: Free and Reduced-Price Lunch Weights .......................................69 Appendix D: Regression Results ........................................................................70 Appendix E: Filtering the List of Michigan Public High Schools .....................72 Appendix F: Locale Code Definitions ................................................................73 About the Authors ..............................................................................................76 Acknowledgments ..............................................................................................76 Mackinac Center for Public Policy The Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card ii Mackinac Center for Public Policy The Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card iii Executive Summary* * Citations provided in the main text. Assessing a high school’s effectiveness is not straightforward. Comparing a school’s standardized test scores to those of other schools is one approach to measuring effectiveness, but a major objection to this method is that students’ test scores tend to be related to students’ “socioeconomic” status — family household income, for example, or parents’ educational background. These factors, however, are outside a school’s control. The Michigan Public High School Context and Performance Report Card is an attempt to provide a better “apples-to-apples” comparison of public high schools by adjusting their students’ average standardized test scores to account for disparities in the socioeconomic status of their student populations. Socioeconomic status in the Context and Performance (“CAP”) Report Card is measured by the percentage of a school’s students who qualify for a free or reduced-price lunch under the federal government’s National School Lunch Program. The standardized tests used in the report card are from the Michigan Merit Examination — including the ACT® test — taken by the schools’ 11th- graders from 2008 through 2011. We used regression analysis to measure the relationship between student test results and subsidized-lunch counts in Michigan’s general education public high schools (schools focused on special education or alternative education were excluded from our analysis). We then determined whether each school’s student population performed better or worse than projected based on the school’s subsidized-lunch counts. The resulting “CAP Score” for a school was above 100 if the school exceeded its projected performance and below 100 if the school fell short (the statewide average CAP Score was set at 100). Grades were assigned using a standard bell curve, with 10 percent of the schools receiving an A, 20 percent receiving a B, 40 percent receiving a C, 20 percent receiving a D and 10 percent receiving an F. Star International Academy, a public charter school in Dearborn Heights, received the state’s highest CAP Score at 140.8 (an A), while Detroit’s Finney High School had the lowest CAP Score at 70.8 (an F). North Huron School had the highest CAP Score among conventional district-run high schools: 123.3 (an A). City Middle/High School in Grand Rapids received the highest CAP Score — 130.5 (an A) — among schools that use a selective admissions policy. Following guidelines established by the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Center for Education Statistics, the high schools were divided into four major “locales”: city, suburb, town and rural. Public high schools