DC CAS results are posted...

[Anonymous]

Eaton has a fairly new principal who is fantastic. She has assembled a solid teaching staff and introduced team teaching. We have been at Eaton through 3 principals and could not be happier with the current principal, teachers and program.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stats aside, what do Eaton parents attribute changes to?

Aggressive test preparation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have a degree in statistics and can attest that the metrics used by 19:06 are skewed. In comparing test scores in order to gauge quality of instruction, it is essential to compare test scores by race. Blacks have lower test scores in general so, in comparing scores, the whites at each school should be compared to each other and then the blacks should be compared. Using this correct metric, Eaton is first in the city in three of the four categories.

Reading - Whites
Eaton - 96.5
Mann - 95.9
Lafay - 95

Reading - Blacks
Eaton - 83.8
Janney - 83.6
Lafay - 83.3

Math - Whites
Eaton - 94.8
Key - 94.5
Lafay - 93

Math - Blacks
Lafay - 83
Eaton - 73.7
Janney - 72.7

If we use the percentages in the advanced category as advocated by 19:06, Eaton still comes out ahead of Janney. For example, 55% of Eaton's white students are advanced in math while 51% of Janney's white students are advanced. 32% of Eaton's black students are advanced in math while 16% of Janney's black students are advanced.

For a degree in statistics, do you really find it meaningful that Eaton outperformed a school by .3% in a category? Isn't that something like one or a few kids at the most? That's pretty meaningless. The only score difference that seems significant to me is the Math/African Americans score, which is significantly worse for Eaton and Janney when compared to Lafayette.

[Anonymous]

Does DCPS have an official ranking of the schools by score and, if so, where does Eaton land in the ranking?
TIA

[Anonymous]

Has anyone analyzed the charter schools?

[Anonymous]

EL Haynes provided an explanation to parents about why they did not make AYP even with 66% proficient/adv in reading and 80% proficient/adv in math.

They did not make their target gains for special education.

[Anonymous]

A poster above mentioned aggressive test prep at Eaton (which intuitively looks like the only reason for their significant gains).

Does anyone at Lafayette, Janney, Murch, or Mann care to comment on the drill & kill routine and how vigorously it was employed at their schools?

[Anonymous]

http://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/65504.page

See the above thread in the General Education forum. I spent a lot of time on the posting at 22:23 on 8/16, explaining how I analyze and approach AYP data

[Anonymous]

I do a little back-of-the-envelope calculation with the scores every year, trying to get a general idea of how relatively privileged kids (usually, but not always, using "white" as a proxy) do in each of the upper NW schools (giving the most credit to "advanced" scores). For 2009, here are the numbers Excel spits out, with all the reasonable caveats about these numbers having, at most, a fuzzy resemblance to reality (I assign zero significance to differences between schools of less than 5%, and little to gaps of less than 10%):

Rank School '09 score (on a 400-point scale)
1 Oyster 288.09
2 Eaton 280.31
3 Janney 273.09
4 Lafayette 268.19
5 Hyde 265.05
6 Key 263.26
7 Murch 259.82
8 Hearst 256.51
9 Mann 256.14
10 Stoddert 226.63
11 Ross 195.45

The rolling 4-year score (weighted by recency) looks like this:

Rank School '06-'09 score (on a 1000-point scale)
1 Lafayette 684.93
2 Oyster 678.55
3 Janney 670.47
4 Eaton 670.33
5 Key 670.12
6 Mann 665.57
7 Murch 657.74
8 Hearst 619.85
9 Hyde 618.26
10 Stoddert 522.1
11 Ross 431.71

Apologies for the formatting.

[Anonymous]

Funny that Oyster ranks so high according to your system (for some kids) yet is in its second year of not making AYP (for other kids).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Funny that Oyster ranks so high according to your system (for some kids) yet is in its second year of not making AYP (for other kids).

As an Oyster parent, I'll say that it will be a terrible shame is Oyster resorts to increased skill and drill as a result of this year's scores. There will no doubt be pressure to do this, but we'll have to insist very loudly on better provisions for our advanced students.

[Anonymous]

"... terrible shame if..."

[Anonymous]

14:08 Thanks so much for sharing your "back of the envelpe" rankings. Very helpful

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Funny that Oyster ranks so high according to your system (for some kids) yet is in its second year of not making AYP (for other kids).

It looks like Oyster did not make AYP does to special education/under disabled student category. Though when you look at the detail by year there are no diabled students represented.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:A poster above mentioned aggressive test prep at Eaton (which intuitively looks like the only reason for their significant gains).

Does anyone at Lafayette, Janney, Murch, or Mann care to comment on the drill & kill routine and how vigorously it was employed at their schools?

I am a parent at of one of the schools listed above. I didn't find the test preparation to be overkill at all for my child. But the whole testing thing is not a big deal to me. Our school has gifted teachers and my child is learning and excelling in school. I don't feel the testing takes away from that.

However, if your child scored on the borderline between basic/proficient on the DC-BAS (the baseline test) there was a more visible effort to help those kids perform better on the test. I know some families were upset this because those kids did miss some regular instruction and/or specials.