…a new study that examined students who attended public high schools in Chicago. Surprisingly, students at selective-enrollment schools didn’t seem to benefit academically compared with similar students at different schools.
…
The researchers examined ninth-graders who entered Chicago’s public high schools, including charter schools, between 2008 and 2011.
…schools matter, but perception of the best schools may not line up with reality. One partial explanation, reflected in the latest Chicago study, is that the fallback school options for students considering attending a selective school are still quite high-achieving.
…
But another answer is that the common measurement of schools—raw test scores, unadjusted for differences in the level where students start—is misleading. (And this doesn’t even get into the limits of exclusively using test scores.) In a 2008 survey, an overwhelming majority of researchers said that schools should be evaluated instead based on how much their students grow academically over time.
As long as the popular conception of a good school is based on a flawed measure, excellent schools that don’t screen students by test scores or real-estate prices won’t get the credit they deserve—and schools with such careful selection will get far too much credit.