You can always tell it’s an election year when the Clay County School District starts talking about where they rank against other schools. In a post on its Facebook page on 3/5/2024, the district touted its status as the “Number one ranked school district in Florida,” according to a company called Niche.
You might say to yourself- isn’t that good news? Don’t the people of Clay County want excellent, if not the best, schools for their children? Indeed, that is a noble aim, but that depends on how you measure the school district. Would anyone consider a school district with 43% (over 16,000) of their students reading below grade level the best?
Studies have shown time and time again that reading on grade level is the single most significant predictor of future success for children both in school and later as adults. Reading on grade level by third grade is even more critical, as that is when students begin to read to learn.
Reading is the foundation of all other subjects students will encounter in their school careers. Success in math, science, social studies, and music is jeopardized when a student falls behind in reading.
Niche, the company that has awarded Clay Schools the top spot in Florida, is a company that was started to help college students find the best school for them and have the best chances of getting accepted.
Like many private, for-profit companies in the education realm, they soon learned there was an untapped revenue resource by also doing the reverse, helping schools attract prospective students.
So, Niche ingeniously developed a system where schools and school districts could earn scores via reviews left on Niche’s website, www.niche.com. Niche compiles the reviews, which are then easily searchable on their website. Niche also uses the reviews to rank schools and districts into lists of top performers.
Niche is run by people smart enough to know that public schools, run by elected officials, are very aware of their district’s public perception. And as such, no school district will want to be left of highly visible rankings.
Well, dear school districts, fear not! Niche will gladly help you get the most out of their system by teaching you how to game the numbers. On its website, Niche shows what can be done to ensure that survey results are as good as possible. The way to do that is to make only people who have good things to say take a survey.
What if these tips don’t get a school district where they want to be? Well, Niche has a plan for that, too. A paid plan, that is. Niche will partner with a school district for a tidy fee to gain more control over their surveys and rankings and get better results. Not that Niche will not fix any problems or issues in schools that might lead to people leaving negative reviews. They will help school districts drown out the nay-sayers with an avalanche of positive reviews. When Niche is done, all that people will notice about your school district is the beautiful rug, and the dirt swept under it will be out of sight, out of mind.
According to Niche, Clay County Schools have executed the plan so well that they rank number one across all public school districts in Florida. Clay County Schools were quick to take a victory lap, touting their new status at the top of the heap of Niche-reviewed school districts. A link on their Facebook post takes you to a Niche website page where you’d expect to find the education-related data used to rank school districts.
Well, you’d be wrong. Instead, Niche lists categories that have little to do with schools:
It is unclear if Clay County Schools have a paid relationship with Niche to help game their reviews and rankings, but it is clear that experts have become wary of companies like Niche and how they do business. In an article from last year, a writer for the San Diego Tribune highlighted that Niche and companies like them operate in a way that caters toward high-income area schools that tend to skew majority white. Hopefully, in the future, Clay County will focus more on fundamentals like reading and less on marketing ploys to look good online.
Disappointed, deceived and disheartened.