In order to determine where a school is rank wide, there are certain criteria that are reviewed. When looking at the schools in Charleston on sites such as GreatSchools.org, you are able to see the rank of each school K-12. In order to determine each rank, there are three basic categories and within those categories are subcategories. GreatSchools.org looks at the academics, equity and environment of schools. Within academics, it focuses on the academic process with how much the school helped the students improve in one year along with the test scores. The equity category focuses on the equity overview in which they look at the school’s diversity, race/ethnicity, low-income students and the schools approach to these students, and students with disabilities. The final category breaks down the student demographics by race, discipline and attendance, the amount of students per teacher and counselor, and the neighborhood of the school.
For this piece I wanted to incorporate the use of ranking of schools in Charleston. With there being over 600 schools to choose from, it was difficult to make my selections. My goal was to include a variety of elementary, middle, and high schools. In this painting, there are highly ranked, average ranked, and low-ranked schools. The ranking does not come from characteristics of the school as a whole but what sites like GreatSchools.org look at. The same categories that we used to determine the school’s rank are the same that parents look at when finding a school for their child.
This piece opened my eyes to the differences within not only the children that attend these schools but also the neighborhoods. Being at a school in Charleston that is possibly one of the best in the country does not happen by accident in most cases. There is a good chance that the parents have done their research while also living in a very nice neighborhood due to them being in the upper middle class. When looking at the demographics, it is easy to see that most of the children at the ‘nicer” and higher ‘ranked’ schools are white. On the other hand, black students are not receiving the same education. Predominantly black schools such as Mitchell Elementary unfortunately do not have the budget or cannot receive as much parent support due to the parents of the children working everyday to provide for their family. They can only do so much to try and work and help with school.
This is where there needs to be change. There is an opportunity for the community to see the inequality between schools and try and make a change. All children deserve the best education no matter what school they attend.
