According to a new poll from Morning Consult commissioned by EdChoice, parents rely far more on school ratings sites like Niche and Great Schools than on state report cards, referred here in New Jersey as School Performance Reports. Parents also look to friends, neighbors, and personal visits to individual schools to gauge school quality. Only 23% of the 1,500 parents surveyed so they rely on state departments of education for information.

According to Matthew Ladner, “the public’s preference for private rating websites and informal networks strikes me as entirely appropriate given the presence of many state rating systems on a three-dimensional spectrum of convoluted, deceptive and/or more difficult to decipher than Mayan hieroglyphics.”

Is the New Jersey Department of Education’s (DOE) school ratings system more difficult to understand than Mayan hieroglyphics? Not really, but you need to know where to look, what to look at, and whether the category of information about your district or school (you can look at either) is reliable.

Here is how it works: First, go to nj.gov/education/ which will bring you to the DOE’s homepage. Then scroll down to the bottom of the page to “Data and Reports Portal” and click on “School and Student Information.” Under “Accountability and Performance Data,” choose “School Performance Reports.” Then you’ll come to a page that lists districts and schools in alphabetical order.

For instance, if you want to look at a school in our largest district, Newark, your best bet is to choose the District list, click on the “N” page, and find Newark Public Schools. (You can use the school name but NJ’s 2,500 separate schools would require lots of browsing.) Once you click the district’s name, you’ll see a list of all the schools in Newark, from Abington Avenue School to Wilson Avenue School. Choose the one you are interested in and you’ll find a plethora of information, from demographics to chronic absenteeism rates. Some of that data relies on self-reporting: when the state collects information on chronic absenteeism (under the button “Climate and Environment”), the DOE trusts districts to send them correct numbers. That is why Newark could claim 99.8% of students were present for remote learning from March-June 2020 when the actual percentage was far lower. On the other hand, under “Academic Achievement” you can see, either by district or school, what percentage of students reached proficiency in reading (ELA) and math based on results from the state standardized assessments. Here, you can see that during the last school year 29% of Newark district students were proficient in reading and in one elementary school, Quitman Street, 12.2% of students were proficient in reading.

Hieroglyphic? Not really. But cumbersome for sure.

The survey also asked parents how they felt about teachers sharing their political views with students. Overwhelmingly parents want their children’s teachers to keep their politics to themselves; discussions about American history, particularly contentious issues, should be led in a “calm and rational manner.”

Other questions in the poll revealed that parents prefer technology-based, college prep education and favor stricter discipline policies over more lenient ones. When parents were asked whether they would enroll their child in a school with a strong academic reputation even if their child would be an “isolated minority,” 79% said they would enroll their child there.