Garbage in, garbage out

The Panther Valley School District community is in an uproar over a recent report from an online company that it is one of the worst school districts in Pennsylvania.

It’s bad enough that the district had already been dealing with self-image issues because of the rampant poverty, a shrinking tax base and not enough money to provide some of the basic necessities of education.

But now, niche.com comes along and, using inaccurate information, concludes that the district is near the bottom of the barrel in its annual assessment of the nearly 500 school districts — to be more specific, the sixth worst in the state.

Panther Valley Superintendent Dennis Kergick nearly jumped out of his skin when he learned about the report, which appeared on the website pennlive.com citing data from niche.com.

Kergick is by nature an upbeat administrator who is trying to instill a positive attitude among all constituencies of the school community. This kind of a downer neither he nor the Panther Valley school family needs

Members of the school board weighed in on the topic at the monthly school board meeting earlier this month. They, too, were frustrated that the report, which received wide circulation, was inaccurate. Kergick also assailed the unscientific niche.com methodology.

In some cases, niche.com subscribers can submit an unflattering review about a school district that the company would take into consideration without proper verification or safeguards. Suppose these review-writers had an ax to grind or some other ulterior motive. It taints the review process much as it does when a reviewer writes an undeserved report about a restaurant or other business.

We echo Kergick’s conclusion that Panther Valley has its share of challenges. “We’re far from perfect,” he told the board and an anxious public. “We’re not in the top 50, but we sure as hell ain’t in the bottom 50,” he added.

On its website, niche tells those who visit that it “helps you discover the schools and neighborhoods that are right for you.”

Niche.com says that families from all over the U.S. use its ratings to research schools. According to a company representative, the niche.com rankings are based on rigorous analyses of data from the U.S. Department of Education, test scores, college data and ratings collected from “millions” of niche users.

If someone were planning to move into one of the four Panther Valley communities — Coaldale, Lansford, Nesquehoning or Summit Hill, and saw this information about the school district, he or she might have second thoughts and move a few miles away into a much better rated district.

Lehighton Area School District, which adjoins the Panther Valley district, comes to mind, because niche.com rated it as the best in Carbon County. Lehighton was given an overall rating of B-plus and ranked 161st among the 497 school districts in the state. Panther Valley was not given a numerical ranking, but it was given an overall rating of C-minus, the lowest among all schools in the five-county Times News area, with the exception of the Allentown School District, which also had a C-minus overall rating.

A niche.com spokesman told Kergick that it does not release a list of “worst schools.” PennLive reached its own conclusion based on how far down the list Panther Valley was.

Adding to the district officials’ frustration is erroneous information that had been fed to education officials but later corrected. Despite the correction, the original numbers have continued to show up in some statistics, including the ones used by niche.com in its evaluation.

Panther Valley has many dedicated staff members who are concerned about the welfare of students who depend on these employees to help them wend their ways through the pitfalls that life throws their way.

The last thing we need is for this kind of a dispiriting and inaccurate report to cast a shadow on the hard work that these dedicated professionals do on behalf of their young charges.

The phrase from the early days of computing — “garbage in, garbage out — is applicable in the Panther Valley instance, because it refers to what happens when powerful computers can produce erroneous amounts of data or information based on what they are fed. If they are fed garbage, the output will be garbage.

By Bruce Frassinelli | tneditor@tnonline.com