DC School Report Cards are up

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:5 Star Elementary

Eaton Elementary School
Hyde-Addison Elementary School
Janney Elementary School
Mann Elementary School
Marie Reed Elementary School
Maury Elementary School
Oyster-Adams Bilingual School
SWS
Washington Yu Ying

Not impressed with this list. There are real problems at some of these supposedly 5-star schools. We like SWS, but our children haven't been taught to write effectively there over the years. They can't spell, punctuate or use good grammar there to save their lives in the upper grades, which seems to be the norm at SWS, leaving us to hire writing tutors. We know Maury families who bailed for "lesser" schools to avoid 18 months worth of trailers at miserable Eliot-Hine MS. We know a bunch of YuYing kids in their neighborhood whose spoken Chinese is hopeless after many years of "immersion" study (one of us is a native Mandarin speaker). Janney is super crowded. Lafayette, Murch and Brent didn't make the list, and they're more popular that some schools that did, with 100% in-boundary kindergartens. Etc etc.

This rating system isn’t meant to grade spelling, building condition, size, second language efficiency, and popularity. It’s a good think you didn’t design the system.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So, the way this is weighed, white kids scoring quite a bit lower than expected/average on PARCC does pretty much nothing to the ranking of the school. Yu Ying getting a score in the 90's with a white kid score of 41. Even though it is 30% white.

Maybe you understand this, but just to clarify, it doesn’t mean the white kids’ score are objectively very low. It just means that they are lower compared to other white kids across the district. The other population groups far exceed the scores for their relevant populations. And scores are just one factor in the mix.

This is important!

Agreed this is important. Taking CMI, for example, to pick on just one school that's been mentioned--it doesn't mean that the white kids at the school are doing horribly. It just means that they aren't doing as well as expected, relative to their counterparts at other schools.

Sure. Since I have a white kid, though, this matters to me. I don't really want my kid at a school where the white kids are doing worse than average, do I? Just like any other subgroup may have the same feeling about a school which does not do well in their demographic.

But, I understood that already - I know white kids are still overall going to score fairly well. My point was that this star system is HEAVILY weighted toward the progress of disabled (for some reason more than any other group by far), and secondarily weighted by at risk etc.

FINE> BUT, parents will simply read it as "this is the average score of the school relative to every other school". So there is no strong emphasis. Maybe it should be called STAR Rankings for Underperforming Demographics in DCPS and Charter Schools. But it isn't.

The weighting also appears to have little to do with the population in the school of any one demographic - ie, if the school is largely white, shouldn't their underperformance (yes, relative to expectation) be quite a bit more apparent in the scoring?

I'd love to see Bowser take to the powerpoint and explain all this convoluted math to parents in DC in some kind of town halls.

Agree with this. So how do you ask your school about this without seeming to be racist? Because at the end of the day, at our school, it appears that my (white) kids are not performing as well as they should be, even though the oldest got a 4 on both areas of PARCC. Would they have gotten a 5 at a school where white kids performed better, based on expectations of how white kids should have performed. Every subgroup should be asking this question.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So, the way this is weighed, white kids scoring quite a bit lower than expected/average on PARCC does pretty much nothing to the ranking of the school. Yu Ying getting a score in the 90's with a white kid score of 41. Even though it is 30% white.

Maybe you understand this, but just to clarify, it doesn’t mean the white kids’ score are objectively very low. It just means that they are lower compared to other white kids across the district. The other population groups far exceed the scores for their relevant populations. And scores are just one factor in the mix.

This is important!

Agreed this is important. Taking CMI, for example, to pick on just one school that's been mentioned--it doesn't mean that the white kids at the school are doing horribly. It just means that they aren't doing as well as expected, relative to their counterparts at other schools.

Sure. Since I have a white kid, though, this matters to me. I don't really want my kid at a school where the white kids are doing worse than average, do I? Just like any other subgroup may have the same feeling about a school which does not do well in their demographic.

But, I understood that already - I know white kids are still overall going to score fairly well. My point was that this star system is HEAVILY weighted toward the progress of disabled (for some reason more than any other group by far), and secondarily weighted by at risk etc.

FINE> BUT, parents will simply read it as "this is the average score of the school relative to every other school". So there is no strong emphasis. Maybe it should be called STAR Rankings for Underperforming Demographics in DCPS and Charter Schools. But it isn't.

The weighting also appears to have little to do with the population in the school of any one demographic - ie, if the school is largely white, shouldn't their underperformance (yes, relative to expectation) be quite a bit more apparent in the scoring?

I'd love to see Bowser take to the powerpoint and explain all this convoluted math to parents in DC in some kind of town halls.

Agree with this. So how do you ask your school about this without seeming to be racist? Because at the end of the day, at our school, it appears that my (white) kids are not performing as well as they should be, even though the oldest got a 4 on both areas of PARCC. Would they have gotten a 5 at a school where white kids performed better, based on expectations of how white kids should have performed. Every subgroup should be asking this question.

I should amend this to add that I don’t want to move my kids to a school that is predominantly white, such as WOTP. But my kids’ subgroup is performing significantly better at those schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So, the way this is weighed, white kids scoring quite a bit lower than expected/average on PARCC does pretty much nothing to the ranking of the school. Yu Ying getting a score in the 90's with a white kid score of 41. Even though it is 30% white.

Maybe you understand this, but just to clarify, it doesn’t mean the white kids’ score are objectively very low. It just means that they are lower compared to other white kids across the district. The other population groups far exceed the scores for their relevant populations. And scores are just one factor in the mix.

This is important!

Agreed this is important. Taking CMI, for example, to pick on just one school that's been mentioned--it doesn't mean that the white kids at the school are doing horribly. It just means that they aren't doing as well as expected, relative to their counterparts at other schools.

Sure. Since I have a white kid, though, this matters to me. I don't really want my kid at a school where the white kids are doing worse than average, do I? Just like any other subgroup may have the same feeling about a school which does not do well in their demographic.

But, I understood that already - I know white kids are still overall going to score fairly well. My point was that this star system is HEAVILY weighted toward the progress of disabled (for some reason more than any other group by far), and secondarily weighted by at risk etc.

FINE> BUT, parents will simply read it as "this is the average score of the school relative to every other school". So there is no strong emphasis. Maybe it should be called STAR Rankings for Underperforming Demographics in DCPS and Charter Schools. But it isn't.

The weighting also appears to have little to do with the population in the school of any one demographic - ie, if the school is largely white, shouldn't their underperformance (yes, relative to expectation) be quite a bit more apparent in the scoring?

I'd love to see Bowser take to the powerpoint and explain all this convoluted math to parents in DC in some kind of town halls.

Agree with this. So how do you ask your school about this without seeming to be racist? Because at the end of the day, at our school, it appears that my (white) kids are not performing as well as they should be, even though the oldest got a 4 on both areas of PARCC. Would they have gotten a 5 at a school where white kids performed better, based on expectations of how white kids should have performed. Every subgroup should be asking this question.

At a few schools I've looked at, white students are lagging in some of the "minor" categories, including attendance. So dig in and look at every measure.

Are you in a school where there aren't many white students, particularly in testing grades or just a small school overall? Small sample size can really skew these report cards. Also, in DC, white, high SES students are the most likely students to opt-out of PARCC. If a couple of the best students aren't being tested, that will show up.

As for how to ask, I would ask the principal why he/she thinks some subgroups are performing better than others, particularly in X domain (not just overall but see what metric seems to be dragging them down). And ask how he/she plans to address it.

[Anonymous]

Be sure to look at re-enrollment rate by student group too.

If you are at an EOTP school that has trouble retaining white students as they get older, that will affect the overall subgroup score but doesn't necessarily have anything to do with instruction or achievement.

[Anonymous]

If I were the parent of a child who is too young for the testing grades or just entering the lottery, the only pieces of this I would pay attention to are attendance, re-enrollment and the CLASS scores (Classroom organization, emotional support, instructional support).

And maybe whether there is a parent organization.

Also if your school has 1 or more self-contained classrooms for children with special needs, know that the STAR score is likely to be lower than it would be otherwise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:5 Star Elementary

Eaton Elementary School
Hyde-Addison Elementary School
Janney Elementary School
Mann Elementary School
Marie Reed Elementary School
Maury Elementary School
Oyster-Adams Bilingual School
SWS
Washington Yu Ying

Not impressed with this list. There are real problems at some of these supposedly 5-star schools. We like SWS, but our children haven't been taught to write effectively there over the years. They can't spell, punctuate or use good grammar there to save their lives in the upper grades, which seems to be the norm at SWS, leaving us to hire writing tutors. We know Maury families who bailed for "lesser" schools to avoid 18 months worth of trailers at miserable Eliot-Hine MS. We know a bunch of YuYing kids in their neighborhood whose spoken Chinese is hopeless after many years of "immersion" study (one of us is a native Mandarin speaker). Janney is super crowded. Lafayette, Murch and Brent didn't make the list, and they're more popular that some schools that did, with 100% in-boundary kindergartens. Etc etc.

The whole point of the ratings is that they are objective, not based on rumors and weird impressions you got from a random neighbor about a school you know nothing about.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So, the way this is weighed, white kids scoring quite a bit lower than expected/average on PARCC does pretty much nothing to the ranking of the school. Yu Ying getting a score in the 90's with a white kid score of 41. Even though it is 30% white.

Maybe you understand this, but just to clarify, it doesn’t mean the white kids’ score are objectively very low. It just means that they are lower compared to other white kids across the district. The other population groups far exceed the scores for their relevant populations. And scores are just one factor in the mix.

This is important!

Agreed this is important. Taking CMI, for example, to pick on just one school that's been mentioned--it doesn't mean that the white kids at the school are doing horribly. It just means that they aren't doing as well as expected, relative to their counterparts at other schools.

Sure. Since I have a white kid, though, this matters to me. I don't really want my kid at a school where the white kids are doing worse than average, do I? Just like any other subgroup may have the same feeling about a school which does not do well in their demographic.

But, I understood that already - I know white kids are still overall going to score fairly well. My point was that this star system is HEAVILY weighted toward the progress of disabled (for some reason more than any other group by far), and secondarily weighted by at risk etc.

FINE> BUT, parents will simply read it as "this is the average score of the school relative to every other school". So there is no strong emphasis. Maybe it should be called STAR Rankings for Underperforming Demographics in DCPS and Charter Schools. But it isn't.

The weighting also appears to have little to do with the population in the school of any one demographic - ie, if the school is largely white, shouldn't their underperformance (yes, relative to expectation) be quite a bit more apparent in the scoring?

I'd love to see Bowser take to the powerpoint and explain all this convoluted math to parents in DC in some kind of town halls.

Agree with this. So how do you ask your school about this without seeming to be racist? Because at the end of the day, at our school, it appears that my (white) kids are not performing as well as they should be, even though the oldest got a 4 on both areas of PARCC. Would they have gotten a 5 at a school where white kids performed better, based on expectations of how white kids should have performed. Every subgroup should be asking this question.

You can't ask it without seeming racist, because you ARE racist.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So, the way this is weighed, white kids scoring quite a bit lower than expected/average on PARCC does pretty much nothing to the ranking of the school. Yu Ying getting a score in the 90's with a white kid score of 41. Even though it is 30% white.

Maybe you understand this, but just to clarify, it doesn’t mean the white kids’ score are objectively very low. It just means that they are lower compared to other white kids across the district. The other population groups far exceed the scores for their relevant populations. And scores are just one factor in the mix.

This is important!

Agreed this is important. Taking CMI, for example, to pick on just one school that's been mentioned--it doesn't mean that the white kids at the school are doing horribly. It just means that they aren't doing as well as expected, relative to their counterparts at other schools.

Sure. Since I have a white kid, though, this matters to me. I don't really want my kid at a school where the white kids are doing worse than average, do I? Just like any other subgroup may have the same feeling about a school which does not do well in their demographic.

But, I understood that already - I know white kids are still overall going to score fairly well. My point was that this star system is HEAVILY weighted toward the progress of disabled (for some reason more than any other group by far), and secondarily weighted by at risk etc.

FINE> BUT, parents will simply read it as "this is the average score of the school relative to every other school". So there is no strong emphasis. Maybe it should be called STAR Rankings for Underperforming Demographics in DCPS and Charter Schools. But it isn't.

The weighting also appears to have little to do with the population in the school of any one demographic - ie, if the school is largely white, shouldn't their underperformance (yes, relative to expectation) be quite a bit more apparent in the scoring?

I'd love to see Bowser take to the powerpoint and explain all this convoluted math to parents in DC in some kind of town halls.

Agree with this. So how do you ask your school about this without seeming to be racist? Because at the end of the day, at our school, it appears that my (white) kids are not performing as well as they should be, even though the oldest got a 4 on both areas of PARCC. Would they have gotten a 5 at a school where white kids performed better, based on expectations of how white kids should have performed. Every subgroup should be asking this question.

At a few schools I've looked at, white students are lagging in some of the "minor" categories, including attendance. So dig in and look at every measure.

Are you in a school where there aren't many white students, particularly in testing grades or just a small school overall? Small sample size can really skew these report cards. Also, in DC, white, high SES students are the most likely students to opt-out of PARCC. If a couple of the best students aren't being tested, that will show up.

As for how to ask, I would ask the principal why he/she thinks some subgroups are performing better than others, particularly in X domain (not just overall but see what metric seems to be dragging them down). And ask how he/she plans to address it.

Thanks this is helpful. Our charter is small and white kids make up about a 1/3 of all kids. I did think about that factor and the impact of one or two kids with a small sample size.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If I were the parent of a child who is too young for the testing grades or just entering the lottery, the only pieces of this I would pay attention to are attendance, re-enrollment and the CLASS scores (Classroom organization, emotional support, instructional support).

And maybe whether there is a parent organization.

Also if your school has 1 or more self-contained classrooms for children with special needs, know that the STAR score is likely to be lower than it would be otherwise.

This, but you can't trust the site! We are trying to get them to post our parent organization.

It is really unfair how the special needs scores are rolled into the total with no context. It works as a disincentive to schools to offer those classrooms.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If I were the parent of a child who is too young for the testing grades or just entering the lottery, the only pieces of this I would pay attention to are attendance, re-enrollment and the CLASS scores (Classroom organization, emotional support, instructional support).

And maybe whether there is a parent organization.

Also if your school has 1 or more self-contained classrooms for children with special needs, know that the STAR score is likely to be lower than it would be otherwise.

This, but you can't trust the site! We are trying to get them to post our parent organization.

It is really unfair how the special needs scores are rolled into the total with no context. It works as a disincentive to schools to offer those classrooms.

Disagree re special needs rolling into the total score. For 10-15 years schools could choose not to test or report scores for students with disabilities -- and as the adage says, what is measured matters. When students didn't 'count' then they didn't get supports and no one was paying much attention to whether they were learning or not.

With these report card growth is really important -- and we should all care whether students with disabilities are making progress. If they are, then the overall score won't be affected as much. Also, many students with special needs are high achievers on standardized testing so you can't generalize.

What would be useful would be to take into consideration - or at least show the average level of SN (level 1 to 4). Schools with kids with primarily speech/language, ADHD, or anxiety (all of which are disabilities that qualify you for a special need) are very different from students with complex medical conditions or autism. There are alternative assessments for more severely impacted students, and there is a testing opt-out procedure for very rare cases.

Finally, DCPS places these classrooms where there is room, and pretty evenly around the city so that students with disabilities can attend school as close to their homes as possible. The schools don't have much choice whether to host these programs or not, which is a good thing IMO.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If I were the parent of a child who is too young for the testing grades or just entering the lottery, the only pieces of this I would pay attention to are attendance, re-enrollment and the CLASS scores (Classroom organization, emotional support, instructional support).

And maybe whether there is a parent organization.

Also if your school has 1 or more self-contained classrooms for children with special needs, know that the STAR score is likely to be lower than it would be otherwise.

This, but you can't trust the site! We are trying to get them to post our parent organization.

It is really unfair how the special needs scores are rolled into the total with no context. It works as a disincentive to schools to offer those classrooms.

Disagree re special needs rolling into the total score. For 10-15 years schools could choose not to test or report scores for students with disabilities -- and as the adage says, what is measured matters. When students didn't 'count' then they didn't get supports and no one was paying much attention to whether they were learning or not.

With these report card growth is really important -- and we should all care whether students with disabilities are making progress. If they are, then the overall score won't be affected as much. Also, many students with special needs are high achievers on standardized testing so you can't generalize.

What would be useful would be to take into consideration - or at least show the average level of SN (level 1 to 4). Schools with kids with primarily speech/language, ADHD, or anxiety (all of which are disabilities that qualify you for a special need) are very different from students with complex medical conditions or autism. There are alternative assessments for more severely impacted students, and there is a testing opt-out procedure for very rare cases.

Finally, DCPS places these classrooms where there is room, and pretty evenly around the city so that students with disabilities can attend school as close to their homes as possible. The schools don't have much choice whether to host these programs or not, which is a good thing IMO.

Level IV kids are definitely not evenly distributed. Look at Langley-- it's on the list of worst performing schools, and it has a ton of Level IV classrooms. Coincidence? I have friends with kids in middle grades there and they say there is just no way it is one of the worst schools in the city. Room to improve, yes. But they are having a fine experience and their kids' cohorts test much better than the PARCC scores would make you think.

[Anonymous]

OSSE = 2 stars

[Anonymous]

I'm the PP.

What I was trying to say is that self-contained classrooms are pretty evenly distributed but no, not all schools with self-contained classrooms house the same programs or have children with the same level of support.

These are the schools with specialized programs or classrooms for students with disabilities. https://dcps.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dcps/publication/attachments/FTP%20Vertical.pdf

Level 1-4 corresponds to the number of specialized instruction hours on the IEP, not the diagnosis. You can find the percent of SN students at each level on the learndc.org student profiles (go to equity report, students with disabilities and drill down).

26% of students at Langley have IEPs. Of those students:

36% are level 1
2.6% are level 2
4.1% are level 3
56.8 are level 4

Of course not all of those children are in testing grades either.

[Anonymous]

If you look at Langley's STAR framework by student group, the students with disabilities look to be outperforming relative to the at-risk and Black students.

There are not enough white or Latino students for those student groups' performance on the framework to be broken out.

See page below, scroll down
https://dcschoolreportcard.org/schools/1-0370/star-overall