Mcps literacy benchmarks by race

[Anonymous]

Asians doing the best, Hispanics the worst

https://moco360.media/2024/01/24/early-literacy-rates-for-black-and-brown-students-alarming-advocates-say/

[Anonymous]

Let me guess...
MCPS: This test is biased and did not develop equitable achievement. We will get rid of this test per Antiracist System Action Plan, Domain 1.0..

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EtpLRvaotYP5T0UgqQZ7mMtAH_6OMyKHs1ulZtZNhSc/edit

[Anonymous]

In the olden days, kids learned to read in kindergarten—and learned to read well in first and second grade. Think: chapter books by second grade.

Or perhaps that was just a catholic school thing?

Regardless, why can’t mcps raise the bar and boost literacy?

Gentle tip: group by ability, smaller classes, and spend more time instructing instead of having kids so busy work in groups.

[Anonymous]

MCPS is not going to raise the bar. The achievement gap is too big now. Look at the original post

The only way MCPS can reduce the achievement gap is to LOWER the bar so everyone is good. Or, get rid of the bar/test, so there is no result.

Anonymous wrote:In the olden days, kids learned to read in kindergarten—and learned to read well in first and second grade. Think: chapter books by second grade.

Or perhaps that was just a catholic school thing?

Regardless, why can’t mcps raise the bar and boost literacy?

Gentle tip: group by ability, smaller classes, and spend more time instructing instead of having kids so busy work in groups.

[Anonymous]

What percentage of the Hispanic students are English language learners? That would go a long way towards understanding these numbers.

[Anonymous]

https://infogram.com/early-literacy-in-mcps-k-2-raceethnicity-pt2-1h7v4pwoz1v3j6k

[Anonymous]

Shocking to see only 53% Asian students are exceeding benchmark. What about the other half?

In past years, Asian students exceeded benchmark by almost 60%, and around 20% were on grade level. Rest 20% were behind.

[Anonymous]

Without multi-year trends there's not much utility in this data. MCPS isn't starting literacy education from scratch this year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What percentage of the Hispanic students are English language learners? That would go a long way towards understanding these numbers.

+1 ELL rate is close to 20%, and half are Hispanics. They really need to parse out the data better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What percentage of the Hispanic students are English language learners? That would go a long way towards understanding these numbers.

That's a great question, but the fact that this is based on DIBELS scores suggests it is limited to kids with some English proficiency.

To the bigger question, it looks like these are improvements over 2022 levels, including big gains for traditionally marginalized groups, so that's good news.

I'm cautiously optimistic that MCPS (finally) moving toward a more phonics-based approach will help to narrow the gap even further by integrating more evidence-based approaches.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Without multi-year trends there's not much utility in this data. MCPS isn't starting literacy education from scratch this year.

If you click through, you can compare to the 2022 numbers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What percentage of the Hispanic students are English language learners? That would go a long way towards understanding these numbers.

I think the percentage may be similar to students lower than the benchmark, very roughly 50%, which would make sense.
There are also Asian students who are English language learners. The numbers are not insignificant. No one talks about them but I was surprised to learn it can be a big group at some schools.

[Anonymous]

Then this opinion piece by former council members is well timed. For a system that acts like they rely on data, they keep dropping the ball.

https://moco360.media/2024/01/24/opinion-reading-in-county-third-grade-classrooms-is-a-three-alarm-fire-going-unanswered/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In the olden days, kids learned to read in kindergarten—and learned to read well in first and second grade. Think: chapter books by second grade.

Or perhaps that was just a catholic school thing?

Regardless, why can’t mcps raise the bar and boost literacy?

Gentle tip: group by ability, smaller classes, and spend more time instructing instead of having kids so busy work in groups.

How do we group kids by ability and not have them work in groups?

[Anonymous]

What percentage of these kids are pervasively disabled?