Since Rhee was so great for DC, can someone show her improvements in DC-CAS?

[Anonymous]

Title says it all. Since she's so data-driven, where is the data to show her impact?

[Anonymous]

Those who choose to live by test results will ultimately die by test results.

[Anonymous]

Secondary students have improved an average of 14 percentage points in reading and 17 percentage points in math overall over the past three years.

Even with a dip this past year, reading proficiency and math proficiency of elementary school students rose 14 and 7 points.

Not saying whether that's great, mediocre or poor, but those are the numbers. Also not saying I think the obsession with testing is healthy, but you asked.

[Anonymous]

Where are the numbers for that and in what schools?

[Anonymous]

^^^I meant what specific secondary schools?

[Anonymous]

Well, not exactly. The first year of testing with Rhee at the helm was 2008. Scores in Elementary reading were 45.5% proficient or advanced. By 2010 they were down to 44.4%.

Elementary Math was 40.5 % proficient or advanced in 2008 and rose to 43.4% in 2010.

The only way her numbers look good if is you use 2007, which was the first year of the DC-CAS. As most testing experts will tell you, there is usually a dip in scores when you take on a new measure. Either way, the fact that she uses the 2007 numbers in all her press releases is odd, considering she wasn't even in DC when the 2007 CAS was administered.

In short, the "gains" made under Rhee are not much if any at all. This is particularly troubling when you consider the amount of time spent killing and drilling the children on the test.

Given that so much else was set aside to raise reading and math scores, Rhee delivered weak results to Elementary school parents and students. As parent of a child in a testing grade, it would be nice to see a new leader focus on curriculum instead of math and reading test prep.

[Anonymous]

Those are across the board numbers. If you want to look up individual schools, go to http://osse.dc.gov.

[Anonymous]

OP here. Does anyone know of any specific secondary schools where test scores have seen a marked improvement. My DC is younger, so I've been looking at profiles of elementary schools primarily and have noticed that most scores have either stayed the same roughly or dipped.

[Anonymous]

I think was Eaton one of the schools that had marked imporvement this past year - but I could be wrong about this. It's also good to look at increases or decreases among minority populations At some of the so-called better schools there were significant drops among Latino and AA students. I know folks tend to look more globally at scores but when you have a significant and widening acheivement gaps between groups at many of the schools touted on this board - it really does make you wonder.

[Anonymous]

You also have to wonder about schools who "Erased to the Top", a real investigation was quashed by Rhee. I believe that Marie Reed and several other elementaries showed evidence of such.

[Anonymous]

Yes, Marie Reed's ESL scores in 2009 were extraordinary. Seriously, someone should have bottled what they were doing there, but sadly, those scores dropped in 2010. It definitely makes you wonder if there was erasing going on at Reed.

There are many schools that saw very unusual spikes in scores in 2008 and 2009. There was a big group of new questions issued in 2010 AND a drop in scores.

Erased to the top or highly prepped off of old test copies seems likely.

[Anonymous]

But I thought it would take Rhee 2-3 years for her impact to show?

[Anonymous]

Her 3 years were this year's test 2010. And the scores dropped. Nuff said?

[Anonymous]

Nuff said.

[Anonymous]

What you really want to look at is NAEP scores (national standard, test questions are competently written). Increases from 2007 (last instructional year under Janey) to 2009 are tiny.

Also GFBrandenburg's blog has an interesting piece on how (and perhaps why) the discrepancy between DC-CAS scores and NAEP scores has increased dramatically during Rhee's tenure. http://gfbrandenburg.wordpress.com/2010/04/15/another-credibility-gap-looks-like-rhee-reinoso-are-gaming-the-tests-to-try-to-look-good/