Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:CAPE is not inconsequential. It is the only widely standradized test that parents in DC have to see if their kid is working below, on, or above grade level. It also shows where your kid stands against all other kids in the city.
Now let me preface this by saying kids in DC are doing very poorly academically so the bar is not high with comparisons. It would be much better if DC used a standardized test that many other states used so you can get at least a better sense of where your kid stands nationwide. That would be a big eye opener to say the least, and not in a positive way either.
It was a big eye opener for me when my kid reached high school and started taking SAT-suite tests. But not in the way you mean. My kid’s DC percentiles on the 8th grade PARCC (95th) were actually lower than their nationwide percentiles on the PSAT8/9 (99th).
The fact is that an average tells you nothing about the distribution. DC has a lot of struggling students, but it’s also very strong at the top.
Yes, I agree that DC has a lot of kids who are very strong at the top, which is not too surprising for a city that has so many high achievers and Ivy grads coming to work here. the high is very high and the low is deeply, depressingly low.
+1 my kid who is above 99th percentile on i-ready ELA and also on other types of tests like COGAT verbal was only high 50th percentile for his class (at a school I have seen bashed here for weak academics) with a high 4 and low to mid 80th percentile for DC. I can guess that score was dragged down by writing which is only on CAPE but that was rated as meets/exceeds, so don't quite get the difference in the national vs DC percentiles.
Yeah, my older kid has a very similar ELA profile -- 99th percentile on iReady, 99th percentile on Fastbridge, which is an asssessement BASIS uses, but mid 80s for CAPE, and when i looked at the breakdown, it was entirely due to the writing portion pulling the total score down. tbh, his old school (Title 1 DCPS) didn't really teach writing very well at all. Switched my younger kid to a school that has a much more involved writing curriculum now, so I'll see what happens to him, and actually BASIS does teach writing in a more structure way, as well, so I'll see what happens to my odler kid as well.