Center city charter school

[Anonymous]

According to this article, the gulf in test scores between at risk students and not at risk students and between Black and white students is as high as it's ever been. But the Congress Heights campus of Center City PCS manages to have higher test scores than Ward 3 students. What are they doing right?

https://www.k12dive.com/news/solving-for-success-dcs-citywide-effort-to-boost-math-achievement/811797/

[Anonymous]

It looks like they did pretty well last year too. It's so important to look at more than one year of course.

It does seem like they aren't offering Algebra I or Geometry to their middle schoolers. So it's not really an apples to apples comparison with schools that do. Of course it's easier to have good scores if you're teaching less material.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:According to this article, the gulf in test scores between at risk students and not at risk students and between Black and white students is as high as it's ever been. But the Congress Heights campus of Center City PCS manages to have higher test scores than Ward 3 students. What are they doing right?

https://www.k12dive.com/news/solving-for-success-dcs-citywide-effort-to-boost-math-achievement/811797/

Maybe the article is wrong. OSSE says math proficiency is 71% at Deal, 38% at Congress Heights.

Another possibility is that the data is carefully cherry-picked. Deal has most of its 8th graders enrolled in Algebra I, so that only the kids who are struggling the most are taking the 8th grade math exam. If Congress Heights is limiting the opportunity to take Algebra in middle school, it’s possible that overall the kids taking the actual 8th grade math exam at Congress Heights are doing a little better than the kids taking that same exam at Deal. But in reality it’s better to be proficient in Algebra or Geometry, as many Deal 8th graders are, than to be proficient in 8th grade math.

[Anonymous]

To clarify, the article says offering Algebra I in 8th, but I don't see that on the middle school advanced math spreadsheet from OSSE, so either it's new this year or they're having kids take the 8th grade math CAPE.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:To clarify, the article says offering Algebra I in 8th, but I don't see that on the middle school advanced math spreadsheet from OSSE, so either it's new this year or they're having kids take the 8th grade math CAPE.

If they’re having their “algebra” students take the 8th grade exam, power to them. BASIS has been playing that game for years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To clarify, the article says offering Algebra I in 8th, but I don't see that on the middle school advanced math spreadsheet from OSSE, so either it's new this year or they're having kids take the 8th grade math CAPE.

If they’re having their “algebra” students take the 8th grade exam, power to them. BASIS has been playing that game for years.

Well, it means we don't have a good sense of how much Algebra they actually learned.

[Anonymous]

If you look at data by subgroup, Center City Congress Heights does a lot better than other schools citywide. I pulled up data via EmpowerK12.org which I find easier to navigate/look through. You can also sort by economically disadvantaged (with similar trend)

For black students scoring 3+
Congress Heights: 60%, 59%, 63%, 80%, 93%, 85% (grades 3-8 in order) and 73% overall
City Average: 43%, 43%, 38%,36%, 44%, 31% and 37% overall

For black students scoring 4+
Congress Heights: 15%, 36%, 26%, 40%, 41%, 70% and 38% overall
City Average: 19%, 18%, 15%, 15%, 15%, 14%, and 15% overall

EmpowerK12 is super helpful and easy to use, if you haven't been over there yet!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:To clarify, the article says offering Algebra I in 8th, but I don't see that on the middle school advanced math spreadsheet from OSSE, so either it's new this year or they're having kids take the 8th grade math CAPE.

If they’re having their “algebra” students take the 8th grade exam, power to them. BASIS has been playing that game for years.

Well, it means we don't have a good sense of how much Algebra they actually learned.

True.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If you look at data by subgroup, Center City Congress Heights does a lot better than other schools citywide. I pulled up data via EmpowerK12.org which I find easier to navigate/look through. You can also sort by economically disadvantaged (with similar trend)

For black students scoring 3+
Congress Heights: 60%, 59%, 63%, 80%, 93%, 85% (grades 3-8 in order) and 73% overall
City Average: 43%, 43%, 38%,36%, 44%, 31% and 37% overall

For black students scoring 4+
Congress Heights: 15%, 36%, 26%, 40%, 41%, 70% and 38% overall
City Average: 19%, 18%, 15%, 15%, 15%, 14%, and 15% overall

EmpowerK12 is super helpful and easy to use, if you haven't been over there yet!

Why is 8th grade 4+ such an outlier? Is it just a fluke result in a small cohort? Or are they getting dramatically better results via differentiation (even if to do it, they have to call advanced 8th grade math “algebra”?).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If you look at data by subgroup, Center City Congress Heights does a lot better than other schools citywide. I pulled up data via EmpowerK12.org which I find easier to navigate/look through. You can also sort by economically disadvantaged (with similar trend)

For black students scoring 3+
Congress Heights: 60%, 59%, 63%, 80%, 93%, 85% (grades 3-8 in order) and 73% overall
City Average: 43%, 43%, 38%,36%, 44%, 31% and 37% overall

For black students scoring 4+
Congress Heights: 15%, 36%, 26%, 40%, 41%, 70% and 38% overall
City Average: 19%, 18%, 15%, 15%, 15%, 14%, and 15% overall

EmpowerK12 is super helpful and easy to use, if you haven't been over there yet!

Why is 8th grade 4+ such an outlier? Is it just a fluke result in a small cohort? Or are they getting dramatically better results via differentiation (even if to do it, they have to call advanced 8th grade math “algebra”?).

You would need to know more about the school to know exactly why. It might be in how they're deciding which kids take which math course and which math test.