DC school data on academic quality?
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Anonymous
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Hi all - I'm new to DC public schools and trying to get the lay of the land. As far as academics, where do you folks get data on different schools? There are pages on the My School DC site (ex: https://www.myschooldc.org/schools/profile/149) that have some basic PARCC scores, but it's not broken out by grade or year or demographics or anything. And honestly, I'm not even sure what 1-5 means (is 3 on grade level?) Doesn't seem fair to compare a K-5 school with a K-8 school if I can't break out the grades.
Where do I go to get more details on this? And what about this STAR thing I've heard about? I don't see those scores by school anywhere. Is there anything besides test scores and empty phrases ("Rigorous Academic Programming" that could mean anything) that I can use to compare schools on academics? Name of curriculum or if there's differentiation or anything like that? I'm considering a giant list of schools for my kid for next year (K) and I can't go to 35 open houses. I've gotta find some way to winnow beyond just location and reputation on DCUM (which obviously comes with it's own biases). |
Anonymous
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Some states use 3 as grade level but DC uses 4. If you want, you can take half the 3s as a way to ballpark it.
Before the pandemic they had this system of rating schools with stars. I'm not sure it's really a thing anymore. I would suggest you get the OSSE PARCC score spreadsheets and then at least you can see scores by grade. Many DC schools have such small testing populations that the data isn't very useful. |
Anonymous
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STARs are gone (died w/ COVID when PARCC scores died). Not sure if they're coming back.
You can find test score data broken down in a spreadsheet and manipulate it anyway you like. Search DCUM for it. People on DCUM by and large favor good test scores and good test scores for demographics as long as there's a big enough chunk of high performers. Despite its rep, I think DCUM tends to slightly favor more diverse schools, as well as moderately favor DCPSes over charters. DCUM favors IB/neighborhood/nearby/walkable over a few PARCC points nearly every time. DCUM tends to care about locking in a middle school feed earlier/more than most people who don't live in NW. Ask DCUM for its wisdom keeping the above in mind and you'll get pretty good advice. Better than looking at raw test data without knowing enough about the context to actually understand the demographics you're trying to control for (e.g., Shepherd AA is not LT AA is not EOTR AA). |
Anonymous
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OP here. Thanks folks. You both reference spreadsheets, but I'm having no luck finding them despite google and DCUM searches. Can anyone provide a link?
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Anonymous
Some of this is true. But there are definitely schools with decent scores that DCUM, well, doesn't really pan as much as just NEVER discuss. Center City Shaw immediately comes to mind - they've got almost 20% 4+ on math and 25% 4+ on ELA, but there are literally 2 threads that mention it in the last five years. Compare to Eliot-Hine which is a constant source of discussion with actually slightly worse scores. I actually think a lot of the feedback on a lot of the schools is really helpful on DCUM - but you don't know what you don't know and there's a LOT of schools that DCUM just doesn't know. |
Anonymous
OP again - is this it? https://dcgov.app.box.com/v/PARCC-MSAA-Public |
Anonymous
Isn't CCS a PK-8? If so, which part is 20/25%+ 4? If it's the ES, that's not a big enough cohort for most DCUMers when there are so many better ESes. Since it's a charter, there's no one investigating it as a backup IB option. EH is a middle school (so good ones are harder to come by) and one that I don't think many on DCUM actually lottery for, FWIW... You mostly hear about it as ppl investigate their IB and hope for positive momentum (which I think there actually is now, but it's pretty new). |
Anonymous
Yes. For example, if you look at 5th grade math, top elementary schools are Janney, Stoddert, Lafayette, Key, and Mann. For 5th grade ELA, top elementary schools are Janney, Key, Ross, Lafayette, and Hearst. You generally need to be in-bounds for these schools, so you have to figure out where you want to live and what schools you would be in-bounds for. |
Anonymous
Yes. You'll want to exclude MSAA results unless you anticipate your kid taking the MSAA though (i.e., if your kid has special needs). |
Anonymous
SP here. Actually, that is for grades 3-5 for these schools. Numbers will be off though because Basis, Latin, and other other charters pick off some of the best students for 5th grade. So, take the numbers with a grain of salt. |
Anonymous
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It's not just the PARCC scores that matter, it's the median growth percentile. A school where kids come in at a 4 and stay at a 4 is fine, but a school where kids come in at a 1 and grow to a 4 is a "better" school in my view. It's just not that hard to teach most high-income kids, keeping them on grade level with lots of parental support is not a major pedagogical achievement. You may also like to look at retention as a metric of parent satisfaction.
You can see all kinds of data here: https://osse.dc.gov/dcschoolreportcard/schoolsnapshot Charter schools have site reviews: https://dcpcsb.org/qualitative-site-reviews |
Anonymous
OP here. Those qualitative site reviews are great, thank you. Those school snapshots show very little. How can I find the median growth percentile? I'd be really interested in that data but I don't see it anywhere. |
Anonymous
It doesn't exist anymore AFAIK and actually wasn't terribly helpful when it did. (Only did single year comparisons and weighted the most recent year 100%, which led numbers to be all over the place. Like a school had 188% followed by 79% and that was somehow bad even though that means kids grew a ton over 2 years; whereas 20% followed by 101% was good, even though it meant over 2 years the students went down.) |
Anonymous
| ^^ Sorry, these percentages are based on 100% being the "on target" growth over the course of a year. |
Anonymous
The snapshots show you something important, which is retention. The lottery gets a lot easier going into K and beyond, so schools that retain their preschoolers into K and 1st are likely to be quality schools. There aren't standardized test scores for those grades, so retention is an important metric. I'm not sure that median growth percentiles are published anymore, but here's an old example: https://dcschoolreportcard.org/schools/1-0309/student-growth I'd really caution you against making too much of this data. I know it's fun, but really, try to not over-interpret it. People can opt their kids out of the PARCC test, many schools have small test-taking populations, DC is a pretty mobile city so kids tend to move from school to school, and what you're looking at is a test administered exactly a year ago so a lot of the students taking that test have graduated already. A lot of DCPS schools are changing/gentrifying fast and test scores can change year to year just based on who happens to enroll. Be aware that a re-boundarying process is underway. |