Education Week - March 16, 2016 - 12

CHARTING THE 'BIG FISH' EFFECT
High-performing 8th graders end up with a lower class rank when they choose a higherperforming high school rather than their assigned neighborhood school.

GRADE 9 RANK
FOR HIGH-SCORING
STUDENT

Rank at actual high school  

Rank at assigned high school

GRADE 9 RANK
FOR AVERAGE-SCORING
STUDENT

SOURCE: University of Chicago Consortium on Chicago School Research

"

Even if you are high
achieving, you are
surrounded by
other highachieving kids, and
somebody has to be
the lower rank."
LAUREN SARTAIN
University of Chicago Consortium
on Chicago School Research

Study: Drops in Class Rank Impact Students
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

what happened when students attended high schools that were different from those they had been
assigned by neighborhood.
Sartain and her colleagues tracked
four groups of Chicago students entering 9th grade from 2008 to 2011,
totaling more than 72,000 students.
More than three out of four students
in the district attends a different
high school from his or her neighborhood-assigned school.
They calculated each student's
general academic ability based on
his or her grade point average, attendance rate, and the number of
suspensions accumulated in 8th
grade, as well as math and reading test scores for grades 3-8, and,
to a lesser extent, the student's own
reported study skills and habits.
Separately, the researchers calculated each student's class rank as

the schools themselves do, based on
their 8th grade standardized test
scores. They compared the class
ranks for students at both their
neighborhood-assigned school and
the one they actually attended.

Psychological Effects?
While average-performing students remained at about the same
rank or even moved up a little in
their new schools, low-performing
students dropped to even lower
ranks, and the students in the top
20 percent of their class in 8th
grade showed an even bigger drop
in class rank when they moved to
high schools of choice.
No significant differences were
found in the effect of class rank
for male versus female students or
students of different races.
Students who started at the
same ability level at the end of 8th

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12 | EDUCATION WEEK | March 16, 2016 | www.edweek.org

grade ended up with a full standard deviation difference or more
in their class rank at their next
school, depending on which school
they attended.
"Think about a student who has
been at the top of their class for
eight years, basically," said Sartain,
noting that most Chicago primary
schools follow a K-8 model rather
than having separate middle
schools. "You're really used to being
the big dog. We think there are definitely going to be psychological effects, for, 'I used to be at the high
end, but now I'm in high school and
I'm in the middle of the pack.' "
There were more concrete problems than just a hit to students'
egos. Students of the same ability level who entered high school
with a class rank in the third quintile-right at average-had GPAs
that were .04 points higher than
students in the bottom 20 percent,
and .06 points lower than students
ranked in the top 20 percent at
their school. There was a similar,
statistically significant gap for state
test scores.

RAND researcher Rebecca Herman, who was part of the SREE
symposium but was not associated
with the study, said the differences
in outcomes could stem from tracking students-for example, recommending that freshman take honors
classes only if they were in the top
20 percent of their incoming class-
but she doubted individual teachers
treated students differently based
on their class rank.
"Most teachers are not in their
head making the same ranking [researchers] made," she said at the
SREE symposium. "The filters that
teachers and staff have when they
are looking at the data is critical."
Interestingly, class rank did not
affect whether students chose to enroll in college after graduation, but
it did affect whether they stayed in
college. Based on the two years of
data on students who entered col-

lege during the study, Sartain and
her colleagues found that students
who had been in the top 20 percent
of both rank and ability level in 8th
grade but were ranked only average
in their high school class were .5
percentage points less likely to finish their freshman year in college
than students who continued to be
ranked in the top 20 percent.
That is troubling, Sartain said,
since one of the reasons parents
often give for enrolling students
in higher-performing high schools
is to improve their chance of being
accepted to good colleges.
The researchers are now digging into the data more deeply, to
figure out what role tracking, personal identity, peer connections,
and other issues might play in students' trajectories at a new school.
The results suggest school leaders
and parents should take a more holistic look at what schools offer their
students, particularly during the high
school transition period, said study
co-author Marisa de la Torre, the associate director for professional development at the Chicago consortium.
"We see so much data out there
about every single high school-
test scores, graduation rates-but
there's very little information
around who your peers are going
to be," de la Torre said.
Sartain agreed. "It was really surprising to me to see that students
who were very high achieving could
end up with very different outcomes,
even going to a better school. It's just
not something that's talked about a
lot in the world of school choice.
"There's a lot of jargon around
finding a good fit for your child,"
she continued. "This paper pushes
the conversation around what data
should be available to parents and
what does 'good fit' really mean."
Coverage of the experiences of lowincome, high-achieving students
is supported in part by a grant from
the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, at
www.jkcf.org. Education Week retains
sole editorial control over the content
of this coverage.
http://global.k-state.edu/education http://www.jkcf.org http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - March 16, 2016

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