Could a ‘high school readiness’ metric help parents evaluate K-8 education?

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, an increasing number of parents are questioning whether public schools deliver the quality of education they’ve promised.

Now, the Fordham Institute, an education reform think tank, is proposing a new metric to measure school success: “high school readiness.”

High school readiness is the idea that elementary and middle schools should be judged by how their students perform in high school, as measured by GPA.

Fordham explains this would communicate to “school staff that their mission isn’t just proficiency on testing day or uncontroversial promotion to the next grade level. Rather, the mission of any good school is to prepare students for future success.”