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Deseret
Morning News, Friday, March 23, 2007
Charter
schools, Granite, Jordan get high marks
Tiffany
Erickson
Deseret
Morning News
Charter schools and Granite and Jordan school
districts have the highest-ranked schools in the state,
according to rankings recently released by the Sutherland
Institute.
This
month the institute launched what  leaders call a new and improved version of
a Web site that stacks both private and public schools against
each other, allowing the public to view the status of their
schools outside of just standardized test scores.
"We
feel it is essential to parents to have some sort of
clearinghouse to look at schools in their area and compare
them one to another — the end result is choosing the best
schools for their children," said Katie Christensen, public
relations manager for Sutherland.
She
said utahschools.org
is the largest independent clearinghouse of Utah school
information.
"Utah
has taken a giant leap in behalf of parental control of
education," said Paul Mero, president of Sutherland Institute.
"Sutherland believes parents are responsible for their
children's education and that the state's role in education is
primarily as a support to parents."
In
ranking the schools researchers looked at factors such as
standardized test scores from the 2005-06 school year, college
prep rankings based on the number of students that take the
ACT, average ACT scores and graduation rates. They also looked
at environment rankings based on the extra services a school
offers as well as factors such as class size, tutoring
services, parent organizations and extracurricular
activities.
The
Web site also includes private schools, ratings of which are
not available through the State Office of
Education.
Sutherland
leaders said that with the passage of school voucher
legislation, which will give Utahns private school vouchers
from $500 to $3,000 based on income, the site will become more
valuable and critical.
For
the group's rankings of all schools in Utah visit
utahschools.org.
The
Sutherland Institute is a conservative public policy think
tank committed to shaping Utah law and policy.
E-mail:
terickson@desnews.com
© 2007
Deseret News Publishing Company
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