“Great” Schools
A question I get a lot when looking at houses is “Is this a good school district?” It’s a question that’s almost impossible to answer. When you say “good” do you mean test scores? Graduation rates? Cultural diversity? College admissions? Overall happiness of the students? Community involvement? What you think makes a good school and what I think makes a good school might be very different.
This complexity is compounded by the fact Portland school district boundaries have been redrawn every few years in the recent past. If you have a 3 year old and you’re trying to plan for her high school experience, you might be out of luck. Add fast-moving gentrification to that and you have neighborhoods and schools that have changed markedly in the last decade.
I’ve been thinking about this subject a lot lately because of this article. It breaks down in a non Portland-specific way how sites like Great Schools don’t tell the whole story about how “good” or “bad” a school is.