Many states, school districts, and information-sharing platforms report measures of school performance. Often called "school ratings," they are widely consulted by parents and educators alike. A school's rating is often strongly correlated with the racial make-up of its student body. In this paper, the authors analyzed this correlation in commonly used ratings of schools in New York City (NYC) and Denver, formulating a new measure of school performance. This study's findings suggest that, for middle schools in NYC and Denver, the racial make-up of a school's student body is largely unrelated to school quality. This study offers a simple method for adjusting academic performance ratings that removes the correlation between the rating and race. The researchers find that race-balanced progress ratings are at least if not more predictive of school quality than are conventional progress ratings.