Assessing proficiency in private schools

[Anonymous]

17:23 ... would you mind sharing what schools you have seen eliminating top end grades, merging with other schools, or having teachers instructing whole grades of less than 8 to 10 students? I thought I kept up with private school matters in this area pretty closely ... at least, I waste far more time on DCUM than I should, that's for sure ... but I am completely unaware of occurences that match what you describe. ???

There was a church school in Potomac (2 or 3 years ago) that eliminated the 4th and 5th grades the year my son applied. I noted there were diminishing numbers of students in the higher grades ( student flight). We liked the school and almost sent our child there when he was admitted. But to the school's credit, the Director of Admission did inform me that the school was eliminating the 4th and 5th grades the following year (no explicit reason given). We had cold feet and withdrew. Six months later in the Post and Gazette we read an article about the school and an impending merger with another neighboring church school. I had predicted this less than a year ago.

I will not devulge any names but those "real" private school families will know.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Many top high schools, colleges and professional schools also don't publish class ranks. This is for at least two reasons. First, it may undermine student's inclination to take harder classes in which it is more difficult to earn a high grade. Second, it may cause people looking at a student's profile (in a school admissions process, a job application process, etc.) to fixate on the number rather than taking the time to look into the details of what a student actually did and/or knows (hence the hiring of a top ranked student who takes the easy route whenever possible over a student who challenged himself with subjects out of his comfort zone).

I think it's a good analogy to the publication of school's test scores. As a parent of kids at a private school, I do not want the teachers or student focused on test scores (otherwise I would have sent my kids to the public school I went to). Nor do I want numbers out in the public that are not particularly meaningful but that provide some sort of quantification fix to people who find a need to rank based on numbers.

For those of you needing numbers to tell you that my post is worth your time reading, I've never scored below 99% on any standardized test I've taken

Para 1 doesn't really apply because the kiss aren't submitting ERB scores to colleges.

Para 2 simply dismisses the request for numbers with "I don't want them out there" and they provide a "quantitative fix" for, by implication, some weirdo junkies.

Do you have anything better than this?

Hence the word "analogy." My points were that (1) I don't want teachers or schools to focus their time, energy or efforts on increasing test scores, which they would be more inclined to do if these scores were shared outside of the school community (analogy would be to students focusing on getting high grades rather than taking challenging classes), and (2) I want people evaluating the school to be required to look at more than a set of numbers, which is something I believe people are inclined to rely upon too heavily in most settings (analogy would be to forcing employers, colleges, grad schools, etc. to look at least to a full transcript to see what a child has done). My high school did not do class rank or average test scores (5 of us in a class of fewer than 100 went to the same ivy together). Neither my college nor law school (also a top ivy) published class rank, and the university was one of the later ones in disclosing average SATs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Actually, 15:51, the scores are grade-level normed. You get to see the pctiles across a whole range of tests and subtests.

Yes, that's why I said (at 15:51, in fact): "Because they are grade-level normed, they give you no sense of how far above grade level the class (or some part of it) functions at."

Basically, this kind of test doesn't let you differentiate between a kid who is highly proficient at grade level vs. one who is performing four years above grade level. There is (or could be -- depending on pedagogy) a huge difference between being in a class with a bunch of the former vs. one with a bunch of the latter. But the aggregate ERB scores would look identical. ERBs aren't how-far-can-you-go tests; they're are-you-proficient-at-grade-level (as conventionally defined) tests. And, unlike in a public system where the state defines grade level curriculum and everybody's supposed to be taught the same things in the same year, private schools define their own curricula and some may make different choices than others do (or than the test-maker assumed). The subcategories are numerous enough, the subtests short enough (e.g. 10 questions), and the scores high enough, that one missed answer can produce a significant difference in percentile, depending on cohort.

Re arguments about transparency raised in subsequent posts. The metaphor suggests that standardized test scores are like some big picture window on a school. Arguably, they're more like a very small and oddly-placed peephole that is, at best, of very limited utility for people who don't have any prior knowledge of what inside looks like and that risks giving them a misleading impression of what's going on there. There's no such thing as full transparency -- you can't/don't see every possible attribute of anything. We select. And we select the things we think are or should be treated as defining attributes. Some people think standardized test scores are a defining attribute of schools; others don't.

[Anonymous]

Some of the posts here would benefit from MoCo's "brief, constructive response" approach that a PP denigrated.

[Anonymous]

Thanks 17:54. Given the tuition I pay, I fancy myself a "real" private school family, but I am located in Virginia and am most interested in secular schools, so perhaps that explains my out-of-the-loopness here.

[Anonymous]

A better analogy might be with malpractice. If a school has horrible scores, that indicates that on some level it is failing the students. Perhaps Mary Poppins teaches every class. But how can you say that parents should have no info before they commit to the school? It is comparable to malpractice, or fraud.

I agree with the PP who said that schools should have some flexibility in setting curriculum. But I would apply this more to science and social studies. The ERBs test math and English, and if a certain school isn't doing math facts or differe
My grammar rules by certain grades, or hasn't already done them, then it's kids are behind.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Some of the posts here would benefit from MoCo's "brief, constructive response" approach that a PP denigrated.

But she keeps mentioning that she scores in the 99th percentile and went to not one, but two top ivies. So she must be right, you're wrong.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Hence the word "analogy." My points were that (1) I don't want teachers or schools to focus their time, energy or efforts on increasing test scores, which they would be more inclined to do if these scores were shared outside of the school community (analogy would be to students focusing on getting high grades rather than taking challenging classes), and (2) I want people evaluating the school to be required to look at more than a set of numbers, which is something I believe people are inclined to rely upon too heavily in most settings (analogy would be to forcing employers, colleges, grad schools, etc. to look at least to a full transcript to see what a child has done). My high school did not do class rank or average test scores (5 of us in a class of fewer than 100 went to the same ivy together). Neither my college nor law school (also a top ivy) published class rank, and the university was one of the later ones in disclosing average SATs.

Your first point is your best point so far, I have to say. There may be some increased attention given to test results. I do think the risk is fairly low, since (a) you have asserted repeatedly that the scores are already high, and (b) the even the high-performing schools are already using the tests to find areas for improvement, as we've all agreed, thus this wouldn't represent a huge shift in school culture. On the other hand, for schools that are testing poorly, I think it would be good rather than bad to get that information out there.

I don't agree with your second point, that we would all be better off muddling along on the rumor and innuendo that we get from DCUM, friends, and a warm and fuzzy visit to the school. I think most of us would be better at evaluating the hard data, especially with helpful school staff on hand to explain why they learned multiplication in 3rd grade not 2nd. Compared to how poorly equipped most of us are to evaluate the many rumors that fly around concerning various schools.

I went to an Ivy too and have 99th percentile test scores on every standardized tests, also National Merit Scholarship Semifinalist, FWIW.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

17:23 ... would you mind sharing what schools you have seen eliminating top end grades, merging with other schools, or having teachers instructing whole grades of less than 8 to 10 students? I thought I kept up with private school matters in this area pretty closely ... at least, I waste far more time on DCUM than I should, that's for sure ... but I am completely unaware of occurences that match what you describe. ???

There was a church school in Potomac (2 or 3 years ago) that eliminated the 4th and 5th grades the year my son applied. I noted there were diminishing numbers of students in the higher grades ( student flight). We liked the school and almost sent our child there when he was admitted. But to the school's credit, the Director of Admission did inform me that the school was eliminating the 4th and 5th grades the following year (no explicit reason given). We had cold feet and withdrew. Six months later in the Post and Gazette we read an article about the school and an impending merger with another neighboring church school. I had predicted this less than a year ago.

I will not devulge any names but those "real" private school families will know.

Rock Creek, a language immersion school off Foxhall, folded a few years ago. There is another private in Silver Spring that folded 2-3 years ago - even though some friends were burned, I can't remember the name, sorry, maybe starting with a "ch"?

[Anonymous]

If your talking about St. Andrews and St. Francis, I think this was a great move. St. Francis was losing a lot of boys to other schools who wanted more sports. That merger was IMO a good idea.

I looked at St. Andrews for my DS for 4th grade in June and they were completely filled. No open spots.

The only other schools that I can think of that closed was a school in DC that I think dealt with languages and a school for learning differences in Silver Spring.

[Anonymous]

It was the Newport School! Finally remembered

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It was the Newport School! Finally remembered

Yes, Newport is the one I was trying to recall. Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Another analogy: from among all the charters in Washington DC, how do you tell the good from the truly horrendous? And there are some truly horrendous charters. Thank goodness we have some public test results to help us sift through that.

But there are some bad private schools, too. And it would be helpful to have test scores to identify them.

[Anonymous]

Test scores never hurt anyone.

If you believe them, use them to help make decisions about schools. If you don't, ignore them in your decision making about schools to attend. What's all this fuss? Why do schools even hide them? Are test score report cards threatening to schools that prefer to hide them in public, but make thir students sit for them in private?

There are report cards for hospitals (including private hospitals) in many states in the union. Most hospitals hate the anuual release of these report cards for exactly the same reasons private schools in the educational sector prefer not to release test scores in the public arena. Follow the money trail. It's a business.

[Anonymous]

If your talking about St. Andrews and St. Francis, I think this was a great move. St. Francis was losing a lot of boys to other schools who wanted more sports. That merger was IMO a good idea.

I looked at St. Andrews for my DS for 4th grade in June and they were completely filled. No open spots.

The only other schools that I can think of that closed was a school in DC that I think dealt with languages and a school for learning differences in Silver Spring.

Great moves save businesses.