Importance of classmates being at grade levels for reading/math
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Anonymous
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We live in DC (Capitol Hill area) and are the parents of a 15 month old. We won't be able to enter the PK3 lottery until 2025, so this is still some time off for us, but the big question that I have been wondering about as we look at DC public schools and decide whether we should stay or move to the suburbs is this--
How much does it really matter what percentage of a school's students are at grade level for reading/math? I ask because I noticed that even the better schools in DC have large percentages of students not at grade level. We are in-bound to Ludlow-Taylor which has maybe 40-60% at grade level. Nearby Maury seems to be at about 75% I might be off somewhat with the precise percentages but the point is that these are not the 90-95%+ figures at a number of schools in the suburbs. I've taught, though only at the college level, and even then it was pretty difficult for me to manage dealing with a class that not had obviously bright students but also students who obviously lacked the foundation to be in college (and mixing them together wasn't good for anyone). I know primary/secondary education is not college. I know that tracking is bad for students who are then stuck in the lower tracks (and in my own experience attending a racially mixed school district in suburban NJ, the higher tracks were almost all white while the lower tracks were almost all minorities, which was also not good). I've also seen various articles/studies saying that it doesn't really matter where one goes to college. Taking my home state of NJ, there was once a study showing that controlling for SAT scores, etc., folks who went to Rutgers earned just as much as those who went to Princeton. I wonder if the same is true for elementary schools through high schools generally (controlling for all factors that schools can't control such as socioeconomic factors, the parents' degree of education, etc., etc.). Putting my question again--how much is it going to matter if my child goes to a school in DC where say 50% are at grade level vs. a school in the suburbs where 95% are at grade level? I know socioeconomic factors is the big elephant in the room, and I should also mention that in addition to having our child having solid academics, we also want him to learn from a wide diversity of folks from all sorts of backgrounds (he is himself a mixed kid, and his mother is an immigrant). Thanks for any thoughts/comments you can share! |
Anonymous
| DC students in grades 3+ take a test called parcc. its multiple days and it includes both multiple choice and written responses. the test is in some respects useful but it only tells you so much about the overall quality of an elementary school |
Anonymous
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Look you already know the answer. And you are correct - your child will get a better education in a classroom when the majority of kids are all at level or above. Your child can get an adequate or slightly less than adequate in a school where that isn’t true.
Don’t worry about college. Worry about middle school and high school first. When your child is ready for middle school your ideas about what is acceptable in terms of what goes on in the classroom will radically change |
Anonymous
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It depends on the school's willingness to differentiate, and the quality of the teaching overall.
If the school has mostly high-income kids yet terrible test scores, that's a red flag to me. |
Anonymous
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It's not necessarily a problem for your kid's education - you're involved parents who probably read to your kid at home, so your kid will learn and will achieve or exceed grade level.
The problem is that the teacher will be busy with the other kids in the classroom. Your kid will be doing independent reading or art projects while the teacher works with the other kids; the teacher will not have time to regularly meet with the higher reading groups. Your kid will definitely notice the disparity. They may feel left out, or bored, or happy for the reprieve, depending on the kid and age; you may feel it's harmless, or not. Unfortunately, moving to a suburban district doesn't necessarily help this. We ended up in private. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
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95% is significantly better than 50%. No question about it. There are other subtle things like social aspects and teacher attention and the atmosphere in a classroom that has discipline and academic issues vs a classroom that doesn’t.
Also trust me tracking is good for kids who are in higher tracks. You just need to make sure your kid makes the cut which isn’t really rocket science. |
Anonymous
This is a valid point. Teachers in classrooms with large numbers of students not meeting benchmarks end up meeting with the students that don’t meet benchmarks most frequently. I’m reading specialist and help classroom teachers plan for instruction, and I frequently see the highest students doing the most independent busywork. There are some schools in the suburbs that provide alternate instruction to advanced learners so this isn’t a big deal. DCPD doesn’t do this. |
Anonymous
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OP, in this area the preschool and early elementary grades at a school like Ludlow are pretty solid. It's just that higher performing kids tend to peel off in search of a more desirable middle and high school track, so that brings down the stats. There's no reason to think you'd have a bad experience until your kid is in 3rd or 4th. And often the lower grades are demographically different as well. You can download a detailed breakdown of enrollment and PARCC scores from the OSSE website.
Also, this school system is in a state of change, constantly. So much has changed in the last 10 years. So much will change in the next. Ludlow-Taylor will be perfectly fine through 4th grade, so I suggest you not sweat it. Make decisions when you need to with up to date information at that time. |
Anonymous
At our upper NW DC school the specialists sometimes pulled out small groups for more advanced work (as well as those on the less advanced end). |
Anonymous
| In the burbs you will have other problems, like huge class sizes, physical crowding, and a longer commute. MoCo and NoVa are not some educational paradise-- we took a very serious look at houses and ran a ton of numbers and aside from certain very pricey zones, it isn't all that. |
Anonymous
They “sometimes” pull advanced kids. That’s not a formal program like they have in Fairfax or other suburban school divisions. I do agree with PP. Class sizes are insane. But I work in a NOVA elementary and the advanced kids are pulled for reading and math so they get a nice small class for a lot of the day. |
Anonymous
This is why there is so much interest in AAP in Fairfax County. It absolutely makes a difference if there are several different learning levels in the classroom. |
Anonymous
| I don’t think it matters for elementary but it will definitely matter for middle school and high school. |
Anonymous
That's my take. And for MS and HS, it's much easier to differentiate, so then you need to look at how the school does that, and whether there are enough on-level kids to allow that. But for ES, it matters less in the lower grades, and we've seen a lot more differentiation in upper ES (once they aren't teaching kids to read anymore). My take would be that LT is fine for ES now, and might be better in several years, so just keep an eye on things. |