Question about CAPE (the new PARCC)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If CAPE is like PARCC but built by DC for DC, does that mean that it can only be used to compare DC students with other DC students? And that it is not useful to see how DC students are doing on common core subjects compared with students in other states?

Is there any way to see how DC students compare with, say, students in California or a national average?

Nope! Even CAPE/PARCC will tell us which schools are abysmal. The real problem with a DC only test is that we don't have an objective measure of how good the "good" schools in DC are. How good is JR? How does it compare to other "top rated" by right public schools?

Good. This is utterly meaningless measurement. Scores are almost entirely caused by students as parents, not teachers. Teachers can move each student a bit, but that needs a different way of measurement. It's time to stop celebrating and loathing districts, principals, and teachers just for being in the same place as rich and academically focused families.

I hear this a lot, but what then is a good way to assess how teachers/schools are doing? Is improvements in test scores fair? Something else?

Assessing teachers is difficult. Value-added models - so, like, improvements in test scores - are not very good. But you don't have to solve that problem to figure out if it's going to be a good school for your kid. Test scores and truancy aren't a function of teacher quality, but you still should avoid the school where no one is at grade level and the kids don't show up for class.

DCPS teachers in group 1 have IVA (individual value added) based on student data from PARCC over two consecutive years. There is so much wrong with IVA: teachers never see individual student scores to see which students improved and by how much, teachers just get a final score with no explanation or recourse, it is all relative to other students in other classes/schools so IVA indirectly forces teachers to NOT collaborate and share best practices, and would you accept not knowing what your end-of-year goal is?