Eliot-Hine

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think its very hard to get a 5 on math if your school never teaches level 5 material. ELA is different — reading lots outside of school easily helps a lot there.

Both my kids have always gotten 5s on math and it’s a combination of being really gifted in math and having an excellent math tutor.

This is satire, right? You pay for a tutor and still cling to the idea of exceptionalism? Must be satire.

You can have a totally brilliant kid but still need to be taught math. Not sure how that escapes you. Same goes for many subjects. This is why there is so much untapped potential in bad schools- the kids are smart but they won’t get top scores on standardized tests because the teachers aren’t teaching them what they need to know to get those top scores.

The original post implied it's easy to get 5s. PP said "I think it's very hard to get a 5 on math if your school never teaches level 5 material..." Response said "Both my kids have always gotten 5s on math and it’s a combination of being really gifted in math and having an excellent math tutor."

The response came off as countering that it's easy to get 5s while also noting that they use a tutor.

The response basically proves it's NOT easy to get 5s: it took not a combination of gifted child AND tutor - i.e. not easy unless you have outside supplementation, kids aren't taught above grade level math in DC elementary schools, so even a bright child may not score a 5 easily.

Do you need to know above grade level math to get a 5 on a grade level exam? That seems odd? I thought you get a 5 if you get most of the exam questions correct (more than you need to answer correctly to receive a 4).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. If you look at the white subscores, EH kids actually do as well or better than any other MS including Latin, Deal etc. I hate making this argument because it sounds so privileged and like I don’t care about black kids. But it firmly dispels the notion that kids “are not learning.”

And to me, the more interesting stat is PARCC 3s. Those are solid kids doing well despite a lot of possible disadvantages. They’re bright kids engaged in learning.

I’m not sure what more I have to contribute to this thread except my original post, which is “PARCC scores do not reflect my kid’s overall experience.” I’d just really encourage parents to consider whether your perceptions are fear and anxiety based, or whether you can try something unfamiliar to your own educational background. The kids are alright, I promise!

I appreciate your comment, but as a mother to non-white kids, it’s not true that “the kids are alright”. Our kids count too.

Of course nonwhite kids count, and of course the best way to evaluate a school is by knowing what's actually going on there. But test scores are not disaggregated by family background (except for at-risk), and in DC almost all white kids are in families with well-educated parents. There are many families of other races with well-educated parents, but overall those groups are more diverse. So if you only have test scores, a simple way to see how kids from families with well-educated parents are doing is to look at the white kids.

I used to think like this, until I realized that data was often suppressed at the subject/grade level because there just aren't enough white kids at most schools for that level of granularity. Then I had an epiphany. I actually don't really care so much about percentages for a small number of white kids or even that much about percentages overall. I mostly just care that my child has a large enough cohort of peers who are capable of and motivated to do grade-level (or above) work. A large enough cohort means they have friends pushing them to succeed academically. A large enough cohort means the school might be able to justify setting aside resources to teach grade-level (or above) material.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think its very hard to get a 5 on math if your school never teaches level 5 material. ELA is different — reading lots outside of school easily helps a lot there.

Both my kids have always gotten 5s on math and it’s a combination of being really gifted in math and having an excellent math tutor.

This is satire, right? You pay for a tutor and still cling to the idea of exceptionalism? Must be satire.

You can have a totally brilliant kid but still need to be taught math. Not sure how that escapes you. Same goes for many subjects. This is why there is so much untapped potential in bad schools- the kids are smart but they won’t get top scores on standardized tests because the teachers aren’t teaching them what they need to know to get those top scores.

The original post implied it's easy to get 5s. PP said "I think it's very hard to get a 5 on math if your school never teaches level 5 material..." Response said "Both my kids have always gotten 5s on math and it’s a combination of being really gifted in math and having an excellent math tutor."

The response came off as countering that it's easy to get 5s while also noting that they use a tutor.

The response basically proves it's NOT easy to get 5s: it took not a combination of gifted child AND tutor - i.e. not easy unless you have outside supplementation, kids aren't taught above grade level math in DC elementary schools, so even a bright child may not score a 5 easily.

Do you need to know above grade level math to get a 5 on a grade level exam? That seems odd? I thought you get a 5 if you get most of the exam questions correct (more than you need to answer correctly to receive a 4).

Yes, I believe a 5 requires you to get questions correct that are above grade level because of the design of the exam. Just like the test has some easier questions to distinguish 1s from 2s from 3s; it's not just percentage of questions that are all the same level of difficulty.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. If you look at the white subscores, EH kids actually do as well or better than any other MS including Latin, Deal etc. I hate making this argument because it sounds so privileged and like I don’t care about black kids. But it firmly dispels the notion that kids “are not learning.”

And to me, the more interesting stat is PARCC 3s. Those are solid kids doing well despite a lot of possible disadvantages. They’re bright kids engaged in learning.

I’m not sure what more I have to contribute to this thread except my original post, which is “PARCC scores do not reflect my kid’s overall experience.” I’d just really encourage parents to consider whether your perceptions are fear and anxiety based, or whether you can try something unfamiliar to your own educational background. The kids are alright, I promise!

I appreciate your comment, but as a mother to non-white kids, it’s not true that “the kids are alright”. Our kids count too.

Of course nonwhite kids count, and of course the best way to evaluate a school is by knowing what's actually going on there. But test scores are not disaggregated by family background (except for at-risk), and in DC almost all white kids are in families with well-educated parents. There are many families of other races with well-educated parents, but overall those groups are more diverse. So if you only have test scores, a simple way to see how kids from families with well-educated parents are doing is to look at the white kids.

I used to think like this, until I realized that data was often suppressed at the subject/grade level because there just aren't enough white kids at most schools for that level of granularity. Then I had an epiphany. I actually don't really care so much about percentages for a small number of white kids or even that much about percentages overall. I mostly just care that my child has a large enough cohort of peers who are capable of and motivated to do grade-level (or above) work. A large enough cohort means they have friends pushing them to succeed academically. A large enough cohort means the school might be able to justify setting aside resources to teach grade-level (or above) material.

I think it's actually both. If a school is a Janney with almost entirely UMC kids, then if they suddenly had a 50% 4+ rate, I'd assume something was seriously wrong despite 50% being a plenty large enough cohort from my perpspective.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. If you look at the white subscores, EH kids actually do as well or better than any other MS including Latin, Deal etc. I hate making this argument because it sounds so privileged and like I don’t care about black kids. But it firmly dispels the notion that kids “are not learning.”

And to me, the more interesting stat is PARCC 3s. Those are solid kids doing well despite a lot of possible disadvantages. They’re bright kids engaged in learning.

I’m not sure what more I have to contribute to this thread except my original post, which is “PARCC scores do not reflect my kid’s overall experience.” I’d just really encourage parents to consider whether your perceptions are fear and anxiety based, or whether you can try something unfamiliar to your own educational background. The kids are alright, I promise!

I appreciate your comment, but as a mother to non-white kids, it’s not true that “the kids are alright”. Our kids count too.

Of course nonwhite kids count, and of course the best way to evaluate a school is by knowing what's actually going on there. But test scores are not disaggregated by family background (except for at-risk), and in DC almost all white kids are in families with well-educated parents. There are many families of other races with well-educated parents, but overall those groups are more diverse. So if you only have test scores, a simple way to see how kids from families with well-educated parents are doing is to look at the white kids.

I used to think like this, until I realized that data was often suppressed at the subject/grade level because there just aren't enough white kids at most schools for that level of granularity. Then I had an epiphany. I actually don't really care so much about percentages for a small number of white kids or even that much about percentages overall. I mostly just care that my child has a large enough cohort of peers who are capable of and motivated to do grade-level (or above) work. A large enough cohort means they have friends pushing them to succeed academically. A large enough cohort means the school might be able to justify setting aside resources to teach grade-level (or above) material.

I think it's actually both. If a school is a Janney with almost entirely UMC kids, then if they suddenly had a 50% 4+ rate, I'd assume something was seriously wrong despite 50% being a plenty large enough cohort from my perpspective.

Sure, but my family (and probably most who might consider EH) are largely not in reasonable commuting distance of schools with a majority of UMC students. And it's very hard with the given metrics to assess the kind of growth/loss you're describing at schools where students scoring 4+ are a fairly small percentage of the overall student population.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is the math just much harder? It’s weird to have two tests we kind of treat as the same but where 2-3x as many kids citywide do better in one than the other. When other states took PARCC, did all schools have this discrepancy?

Yes, it a patter/problem in all American education. It's why we have foreign workers in many of the stem fields.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think its very hard to get a 5 on math if your school never teaches level 5 material. ELA is different — reading lots outside of school easily helps a lot there.

Both my kids have always gotten 5s on math and it’s a combination of being really gifted in math and having an excellent math tutor.

This is satire, right? You pay for a tutor and still cling to the idea of exceptionalism? Must be satire.

You can have a totally brilliant kid but still need to be taught math. Not sure how that escapes you. Same goes for many subjects. This is why there is so much untapped potential in bad schools- the kids are smart but they won’t get top scores on standardized tests because the teachers aren’t teaching them what they need to know to get those top scores.

This.

I thought I was at a good enough DCPS school, but when we were discussing PARCC with the teacher she said "no one gets a 5 in Math" and that raised so many alarm bells. What that means is that the teachers are not able to teach the hardest problems that show up on PARCC.

It doesn't matter how smart the kid is, or how smart the parents are -- if the kids aren't exposed to the material, they won't be able to solve the problem.

My kid did eek out a 5 last year, along with I think 2 other kids in his grade.