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