" These Schools Are Beating the Odds in Teaching Kids to Read"

Anonymous
Congrats to Whittier.


The school where I grew up in WA isn’t in the dataset or on the map in the article. If I look it up their scores (whatever they’re measuring: apples, oranges, or other) aren’t great. Not surprised.

Anonymous
How much are these results a function of the distribution of poverty at schools? For example:

School 1 has 40% of students living in poverty and 60% UMC

School 2 has 40% of students living in poverty, 20% UMC, and 40% somewhere in between

Both schools have a poverty level of 40%, but very different underlying demographics overall.
Anonymous
The data is a little iffy. They highlight Pocomoke Elementary on the Maryland shore as way outperforming expectations relative to poverty level. Yet they have Pocomoke's poverty level as 100%, which is flatly incorrect (it's more like 65%). Pocomoke is outperforming their demographics, don't get me wrong. But not by quite as much as these graphs show. Every school in Dorchester County has a 100% poverty rate--which, again, incorrect and skews the data.

Some thing in North Carolina--according to this data, far more schools have poverty rates of 95-100% than what the state's own publicly available data says there are. Conversely, Arizona shows an absurd number of 0% poverty schools.
Anonymous

This is clearly just random noise in the data.

They are looking at huge number of tiny samples — 3rd grade only


Look at Gibbs, only “Bright Spot” in MoCo.

Website says 80% proficient in reading.

Usnews says 50% proficient.

Anonymous
The data also relies on all different tests and all different proficiency metrics and then compares them across all states as though they are equivalent. We all know that when PARCC was widely used, DC set the proficiency mark as a 4, whereas most states set it as a 3. This, comparatively, makes DC look far less proficient, but is completely misleading. This data has way too many problems to be useful.
Anonymous
Honestly, if you are on this board, the issue is not kids learning to read unless your kid has dyslexia or some other factor that is not neurotypical.

This board is not poverty level. It is middle, UMC families who have books, read to their kids, etc…. The kids will be reading. What becomes the issue is that schools with very high poverty level such as Title 1 focuses too much on learning to read past K/1st and not reading to learn, analysis, and writing as the achievement gap widens.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:The data also relies on all different tests and all different proficiency metrics and then compares them across all states as though they are equivalent. We all know that when PARCC was widely used, DC set the proficiency mark as a 4, whereas most states set it as a 3. This, comparatively, makes DC look far less proficient, but is completely misleading. This data has way too many problems to be useful.


This. The minimum score to be considered proficient in Virginia would fail in DC or Maryland. Ohio also has one of the easier tests, and the group that produced these comparisons highlights the success of certain Ohio schools. Well, when its easier to pass, it's easier to excel.

If you want to see how state standards compare, NAEP has this handy tool. It only compares 4th and 8th grade, reading and math. But it does give a general outline as to which states require a higher standard to be considered proficient. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/studies/statemappingtool/#/subject-grade
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:The data is a little iffy. They highlight Pocomoke Elementary on the Maryland shore as way outperforming expectations relative to poverty level. Yet they have Pocomoke's poverty level as 100%, which is flatly incorrect (it's more like 65%). Pocomoke is outperforming their demographics, don't get me wrong. But not by quite as much as these graphs show. Every school in Dorchester County has a 100% poverty rate--which, again, incorrect and skews the data.

Some thing in North Carolina--according to this data, far more schools have poverty rates of 95-100% than what the state's own publicly available data says there are. Conversely, Arizona shows an absurd number of 0% poverty schools.


Schools will show up as 100% poverty in some data if they meet the threshold for community eligiblity for free lunch - meaning that everyone gets free lunch because the percentage is high enough. You can see DCPS's list here: https://dcps.dc.gov/page/community-eligibility-provision-cep-schools.

Dunno what's happening in Arizona!
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The data is a little iffy. They highlight Pocomoke Elementary on the Maryland shore as way outperforming expectations relative to poverty level. Yet they have Pocomoke's poverty level as 100%, which is flatly incorrect (it's more like 65%). Pocomoke is outperforming their demographics, don't get me wrong. But not by quite as much as these graphs show. Every school in Dorchester County has a 100% poverty rate--which, again, incorrect and skews the data.

Some thing in North Carolina--according to this data, far more schools have poverty rates of 95-100% than what the state's own publicly available data says there are. Conversely, Arizona shows an absurd number of 0% poverty schools.


Schools will show up as 100% poverty in some data if they meet the threshold for community eligiblity for free lunch - meaning that everyone gets free lunch because the percentage is high enough. You can see DCPS's list here: https://dcps.dc.gov/page/community-eligibility-provision-cep-schools.

Dunno what's happening in Arizona!


This is not true and CEP eligibility is now different than Title 1 anyway, making it more confusing. But if you look at DC’s data, you will see that schools here are not all showing up as 100% poverty even if T1 (and certainly not if CEP eligible only, which includes schools like L-T and Bancroft that are much closer to the left than the right on DC’s graph).
Anonymous
This chart works best if you just compare schools in the same district, which you can do by clicking on a school and then asking the chart to just show you schools in the same system.

Otherwise it's an apples to organges comparison.

I do think if you look at just DCPS and DC charters, the way the schools are arrayed is a pretty good illustration of how well schools are doing on reading proficiency when cross-referenced with poverty levels. The schools I know to be doing well on this are shown as outliers on the chart.
Anonymous
We're in MCPS but our school shows up with a poverty level 20 points lower than it's FARMS rate which makes me wonder about the data
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:We're in MCPS but our school shows up with a poverty level 20 points lower than it's FARMS rate which makes me wonder about the data


I don't know about MCPS, but in DCPS the equivalent of FARMS is "at risk", which doesn't perfectly overlap with poverty. Some kids are designated at risk due to CPS issues, special needs, or other issues. Poverty is just one factor.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The data also relies on all different tests and all different proficiency metrics and then compares them across all states as though they are equivalent. We all know that when PARCC was widely used, DC set the proficiency mark as a 4, whereas most states set it as a 3. This, comparatively, makes DC look far less proficient, but is completely misleading. This data has way too many problems to be useful.


This. The minimum score to be considered proficient in Virginia would fail in DC or Maryland. Ohio also has one of the easier tests, and the group that produced these comparisons highlights the success of certain Ohio schools. Well, when its easier to pass, it's easier to excel.

If you want to see how state standards compare, NAEP has this handy tool. It only compares 4th and 8th grade, reading and math. But it does give a general outline as to which states require a higher standard to be considered proficient. https://nces.ed.gov/nationsreportcard/studies/statemappingtool/#/subject-grade


My impression from moving from DCPS to FCPS is that the Virginia SOLs are easier than the PARCC.
Anonymous
Anonymous wrote:The data also relies on all different tests and all different proficiency metrics and then compares them across all states as though they are equivalent. We all know that when PARCC was widely used, DC set the proficiency mark as a 4, whereas most states set it as a 3. This, comparatively, makes DC look far less proficient, but is completely misleading. This data has way too many problems to be useful.


Why does DC make themselves look bad?
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