Entering Oyster as Spanish-dominant -- Spanish proficiency test?
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Anonymous
It sounds as if your neighbor has: (a) absolutely no idea about what she’s talking about; (b) never stepped foot inside Oyster or spoken with current parents; and/or (c) an ax to grind with Oyster (for whatever reason under the sun). While I am not interested in convincing anyone to come to Oyster; it annoys me when people don’t exercise basic common sense. Consider this: Oyster probably has the most affluent and best educated native Spanish-speaking parents among all of the public immersion schools in DC. Do you honestly think that these native speakers, WITH GOOD EDUCATIONAL OPTIONS, are going to put their children in a school that has a “dumbed down curriculum,” or teaches mediocre Spanish? Oyster has been a bilingual immersion school for over 40 years. No immersion school has been around longer in the DC metro area, besides WIS. While Oyster isn't perfect, a mediocre curriculum isn't one of its problems. Please use your thinking caps folks. |
Anonymous
My apologies, I made a mistake with the numbers above. They represent the proportion of students who are ADVANCED (which is the highest score, over PROFICIENT) Results from the 2013-14 DC CAS Math scores, among white students to better compare apples with apples: - Deal: 74% are ADVANCED - Oyster- Adams: 76% are ADVANCED The conclusion remains the same: The curriculum and the results at Oyster-Adams do NOT look dumbed down. |
Anonymous
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PP 16:39 continued
This discussion of scores is meaningless if you don't take into account the composition of the population in each school, and how much students are actually learning at the school versus their family background |
Anonymous
Hello, Sure, there are many things worth studying, but here I was only trying to do just one thing. I was surprised to hear several PPs mention the rumor that Oyster dumbs down its curriculum in Spanish (had never heard that before). So I constructed the analysis, and looked for the objective and comparable data, to try to accept or reject that rumor. Given the strength of what I found, I believe we can safely reject that rumor. And then, we can study something else 
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Anonymous
Based on the detailed excelsheet in that link, it's 69% Proficient in Math (73% is for reading). The comparable metric for Oyster (Advanced + Proficient, all races) is 80%. 80% > 69% so...no apparent problems with Oyster's curriculum, compared either to Deal or to LAMB. |
Anonymous
I completely agree. This is why we now have a Spanish grammar class in the middle school, because such parents pushed for it. |
Anonymous
Now that the Spanish level at OA and elsewhere has surfaced in the thread, this educated (but no so affluent) bilingual (but Spanish dominant) parent, would like to repost something from earlier in the thread
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Anonymous
Are they also pushing for more advanced math and tracking in math? Like algebra by 7th grade? Thanks! |
Anonymous
No one else can push for Spanish and monitor its quality like the educated Spanish speakers. Now math offerings should involve everyone, so join and don't just wait for others to do all the work. |
Anonymous
| Okay, well I meant to ask current oyster parents in general, TIA! |
Anonymous
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I have no dog in this fight. We bombed on the LAMB lottery and my child is too young for Oyster.
But I do hate it when people misuse data and that is what I feel is going on here in comparing these scores point blank. See the current Hardy thread on a 'dispassioned' evaluation of Hardy for a better analysis. But here is my crude analysis looking into the data on LAMB vs. Oyster. 2014 Test Scores - students scoring proficient or advanced LAMB: Math - 69.64 Reading - 73.21 Composition - 83.33 Science - 83.33 Oyster: Math - 79.59 Reading - 79.8 Composition - 78.05 Science - 78.47 Oyster scores better in key areas of math and reading. Interestingly, though, LAMB scores better in composition and science. It is probably differences in curriculum and approach that account for that. Now, more importantly than the face value test scores, let's look at the median growth percentile (MGP) for both schools. MGP is a better measure of school performance because it shows how much the kids are learning at school rather than how high of an income they have. High income brings up test scores across the board. (Again, see Hardy thread for an explanation of this). See http://greatergreatereducation.org/post/18970/heres-the-dc-school-ranking-you-should-be-looking-at/. MGP Math: Oyster - 51 (2014) LAMB - 61 (2013) *Same year data was not available. MGP Reading: Oyster - 52 (2014) LAMB - 59 (2013) *Again same year data not available. So, while Oyster kids are scoring higher on the tests in math and reading, LAMB kids are improving more each year. This could indicate that LAMB kids are learning more in school compared to Oyster kids. Looking over time, these trends seem to have continued for several years with Oyster having higher overall scores and LAMB having higher MPGs. For comparable information from a couple of years back, see http://osse.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/osse/release_content/attachments/DC%20Schoolwide%20Growth%20Data%20Report_0.pdf. Why would LAMB students score lower on the tests when they appear to be improving more on average each year? There could be a variety of reasons. One reason could be demographics since LAMB has a slight higher FARMs percentage and perhaps a more diverse population since you don't have to buy a million dollar home to get in, just win a school lottery (equally hard?). Another reason could perhaps be different teaching methods - it would be interesting to see how other Montessori schools stack up and whether Montessori teaching methods may play a role in the different scores. Finally, there are more ELL students at LAMB which could bring down their scores in the early years with some catch up to play in the later years. All I want to point out here is that you have to look more deeply into the data when comparing schools rather than just look at straight up test scores. Beyond the analysis above, it is also useful to disaggregate by subgroup. Regardless of all of this discussion, both LAMB and Oyster are great schools and I would give my left arm for my child to be accepted at either one of them. |
Anonymous
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PP, that's good analysis, but you should read the whole thread to understand the context here. The goal was not to compare schools. It was to verify whether, as several LAMB parents had suggested, Oyster was dumbing down its curriculum in Spanish (math is only taught in Spanish at Oyster)
Let me ask you: with the information you have, do you think Oyster is dumbing down its Spanish curriculum? PS: MGP methodology sounds super interesting, but it does have one fundamental weakness. The lowest the starting point, the easiest it is to drive large improvements. The highest the starting point, the toughest to drive large improvements. Which is why Deal, according to the article you link to, ranks number 38 based on MGP...and we all know that it is a quite good school (and that it doesn't seem to dumb down its curriculum) |
Anonymous
| The issue of dominant language is pretty straight-forward and leaves little room for interpretation: if your child's first language is Spanish, meaning that they speak Spanish at age level, and English at some lower level or not at all, then they are Spanish-dominant. If the opposite is true, then they are English-dominant. It's not about being fluent enough to lie their way through the test. They could be very fluent in Spanish (good for them!), but if their native tongue is English and they speak English at home, they are English-dominant. We are immigrants and speak Spanish at home. Our daughter, who was born here, speaks Spanish at home and at her Spanish-immersion daycare. She speaks a few words in English that she picked up from her classmates, but only Spanish at age-level. She is the poster child for Spanish dominance, and that's how we applied to Oyster. We are waitlisted, and we hope that a space that should go to her is not taken by someone who lied on their application. |
Anonymous
| What about children who speak multiple languages? |
Anonymous
Are you saying that to be considered a native Spanish speaker, one HAS to be born outside of the U.S.? So by your logic, no U.S.-born children of Spanish-speaking families qualify? |