Brent, Maury & Watkins Trend-lines

[Anonymous]

Brent, Maury and Watkins are cited as the strongest DCPS elementary schools on Capitol Hill, yet since 2008 their DC-CAS trend-lines are headed in different directions:

MAURY proficiency rates are headed down.
WATKINS proficiency rates are stagnating.
BRENT proficiency rates are headed up.

Why?

[Anonymous]

How have their IB to OOB ratios trended over the same time-lines? In the testing grades of course. Getting upper middle-class parents to enroll in Pre-K does little good if they bail by 1st and are replaced by students from worse schools who haven't had the equivalent prep to do well on the tests.

Just curious.

[Anonymous]

I think Maury used to test stronGer than Brent, but that strength was subsequently called into question because of suspicious erasures. LUckily I didn't place much weight on the scores and went with our inboundry. Brent's been great for us! Eldest is 3rd Grader, so I guess he will be part the growing inboundry testers at Brent.

[Anonymous]

I should add that Maury looks like a great school and I have several friends that love it. However their kids aren't at testing grades yet, so Who knows where this all shakes out?

[Anonymous]

The IB Maury influx hasn't hit the testing grades yet. I don't know what the case is at Watkins or Brent....

[Anonymous]

Comparing AYP between schools is fraught with all kinds of caveats:
1) Although these are of course standardized tests and despite efforts to make sure every school administers them in the same manner, there are often significant differences between schools, for example in how they approach special ed children to be tested. Some schools have relied more heavily on portfolios than others, the latter score lower as a result. And some just have more declared special ed children.
2) Also to be kept in mind very much, is that some of these schools have very few actual numbers the tests rely on, simply because the testing grades (3, 4, 5) are small and few. The results are therefore volatile, making trends difficult to interpret.
3) Add a little school choice to that, with sometimes a significant number of children returning from poorly run charters or leaving to other destinations, the trends aren't even trends about schools but simply about year-to-year student composition. Given the low numbers of testers in some of the hill schools, you can see scores move up and down based on just a hand full of particularly good or particularly bad students. The same goes for a random teacher turn-over or two.
4) Oh yes, and let's not forget that the AYP% is about the roughest measure anyone could have come up with (as it's the total of those in the 3rd and 4th quartile). Say, someone scores 375 in reading, whereby the span of what's called "proficient runs from 343 to 375, that student is declared "proficient". The one scoring 376 is declared "advanced". If a school has a lot of kids on those cut-offs, especially when they're between what's called "basic" (2nd quartile) and "proficient" (3rd quartile), then a school's scores can go from "made it" to "didn't make it" with just a few strokes of a pen.
5) Not to mention that test scores in elementary schools do not reflect the current status but past successes and failures (when those kids were in K, 1st, 2nd etc.).

Beyond these caveats, what you're looking at is essentially a correlation between the % of students from socio-economically weaker backgrounds and that really rough AYP %. What's interesting if you care to look a little more deeply (and you'll have to do a little calculations yourself because the scores for groups that are two small will not be reported), then you'll see that socio-economically well off (esp. white) children, will likely score well no matter the context. By contrast, the average less well-off child will score better in an environment that has fewer than about 50% of economically challenged children. This applies to all the three schools that are listed at the outset of this thread. And what that composition looks like at any given grade level is as much a factor of a particular neighborhood as it is of a school's year-to-year history. For example, in the late 1990s and early 2000, Maury attracted economically well of children from all over the city, then hit a leadership road-bump in about 2000, which subsequently left it with but the comparatively poorer neighborhood children and the very real prospect of a school closure. I'm sure you can look back at Brent and maybe to a lesser extent Watkins, which has seen more continuity and also has a much bigger and less volatile body of testing students, and see similar random impacts on its student body. In the early 2000, all three mentioned here suffered from the head-start charter schools got in dipping into the educationally involved parent pool by enrolling 3 year-olds while DCPS continued to only take them at age 4 for a few more years.

So now that you're probably left scratching your head to know what to do with the data, especially if you were hoping to draw any conclusions about choosing schools, let me say that there is really no way around going to check things out first hand in those grades. And what you may find is that they're really very similar and all really quite good. They've all been doing well, especially if you focus your attention on the average child from an socio-economically well off (and often educationally involved) background and children who've been with that one and the same school for years, something that unfortunately the AYP scores say little about.

[Anonymous]

I think the in boundary kids haven't reached the testing grades at Maury - And Watkins has kids leave in 3rd or before.

[Anonymous]

I think what you are seeing on Capitol Hill is that the parents who really banded together to make Brent and Maury great are realizing that their middle school options are limited and (again) are bleeding off to other schools where the kids can continue on in DCPS. Watkins has had that issue for years. While some Cluster School parents think Stuart-Hobson is acceptable many leave and have for a long time. Brent and Maury and just beginning to experience that now.

[Anonymous]

I don't see hoards leaving Brent - although the middle school options aren't good

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Comparing AYP between schools is fraught with all kinds of caveats:
1) Although these are of course standardized tests and despite efforts to make sure every school administers them in the same manner, there are often significant differences between schools, for example in how they approach special ed children to be tested. Some schools have relied more heavily on portfolios than others, the latter score lower as a result. And some just have more declared special ed children.
2) Also to be kept in mind very much, is that some of these schools have very few actual numbers the tests rely on, simply because the testing grades (3, 4, 5) are small and few. The results are therefore volatile, making trends difficult to interpret.
3) Add a little school choice to that, with sometimes a significant number of children returning from poorly run charters or leaving to other destinations, the trends aren't even trends about schools but simply about year-to-year student composition. Given the low numbers of testers in some of the hill schools, you can see scores move up and down based on just a hand full of particularly good or particularly bad students. The same goes for a random teacher turn-over or two.
4) Oh yes, and let's not forget that the AYP% is about the roughest measure anyone could have come up with (as it's the total of those in the 3rd and 4th quartile). Say, someone scores 375 in reading, whereby the span of what's called "proficient runs from 343 to 375, that student is declared "proficient". The one scoring 376 is declared "advanced". If a school has a lot of kids on those cut-offs, especially when they're between what's called "basic" (2nd quartile) and "proficient" (3rd quartile), then a school's scores can go from "made it" to "didn't make it" with just a few strokes of a pen.
5) Not to mention that test scores in elementary schools do not reflect the current status but past successes and failures (when those kids were in K, 1st, 2nd etc.).

Beyond these caveats, what you're looking at is essentially a correlation between the % of students from socio-economically weaker backgrounds and that really rough AYP %. What's interesting if you care to look a little more deeply (and you'll have to do a little calculations yourself because the scores for groups that are two small will not be reported), then you'll see that socio-economically well off (esp. white) children, will likely score well no matter the context. By contrast, the average less well-off child will score better in an environment that has fewer than about 50% of economically challenged children. This applies to all the three schools that are listed at the outset of this thread. And what that composition looks like at any given grade level is as much a factor of a particular neighborhood as it is of a school's year-to-year history. For example, in the late 1990s and early 2000, Maury attracted economically well of children from all over the city, then hit a leadership road-bump in about 2000, which subsequently left it with but the comparatively poorer neighborhood children and the very real prospect of a school closure. I'm sure you can look back at Brent and maybe to a lesser extent Watkins, which has seen more continuity and also has a much bigger and less volatile body of testing students, and see similar random impacts on its student body. In the early 2000, all three mentioned here suffered from the head-start charter schools got in dipping into the educationally involved parent pool by enrolling 3 year-olds while DCPS continued to only take them at age 4 for a few more years.

So now that you're probably left scratching your head to know what to do with the data, especially if you were hoping to draw any conclusions about choosing schools, let me say that there is really no way around going to check things out first hand in those grades. And what you may find is that they're really very similar and all really quite good. They've all been doing well, especially if you focus your attention on the average child from an socioeconomically well off (and often educationally involved) background and children who've been with that one and the same school for years, something that unfortunately the AYP scores say little about.

This is a great analysis. I read it a few times and appreciate the thought that went into it. But . . .

The caveats you offer belie one crucial point. Maury was in the mid 50s four years ago, and now they are in the high 30s. That goes beyond a statistical anomaly. Brent was in the mid 40s four years ago, and now they are in the mid 60s. Again, this movement goes beyond the caveats you offer. Also, the groups tested at Maury and Brent have similar demographics.

Watkins, on the other hand, should have seen improved test scores due to gentrification, but it didn't happen. In fact, Stuart Hobson's scores are going down.

There are other factors at work here. What they are, I don't know.

[Anonymous]

There are other factors at work here. What they are, I don't know.

Too much teaching to the test. Too much focus on skills rather than content knowledge. Dumbed down text-books. Poorer, more stressed out kids due to more parents having financial issues. More stressed out teachers given accountability measures. Educational system that cannot decide what its purpose is. Lots more to choose from. What makes it so hard to fix is none of them will change the trajectory individually and all will take several years.

[Anonymous]

All the criticisms of DC CAS and other tests are generally valid. But . . .

When one school is at 38% proficient and another is at 72% proficient, even with the imperfect standardized test one is able to make general conclusions.

Also, if a parent was offered a spot in third grade for their child in a school that was 38% proficient or one that was 72% proficient - I would guess that most of the time parents would choose 72% - even after adjusting for other considerations.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't see hoards leaving Brent - although the middle school options aren't good

No because the parents who fought for Brent are just reaching the Middle School age. How many Brent kids to you see at Jefferson? As that trickles down the leaving will start happening earlier.

[Anonymous]

Looking at the data for 2011. Data order total, non econ dis, white

Brent: tested 87 students, 56 non econ dis (64%), 16 white (18%)
Reading pass rate: 75.87%, 78.57%, 93.75%
Math pass rate: 62.07, 66.07, 81.25

Maury: tested 64 students, 25 non econ dis (39%), 2 white (3%)
Reading pass rate: 37.51, 53.85, white not reported
Math pass rate: 45.31, 40.00, white not reported

Watkins: tested 212 students, 146 (69%) non econ, 59 (28%) white.
Reading pass rate: 62.73%, 73.97, 86.44
Math pass rate: 61.32, 73.97, 84.74

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Comparing AYP between schools is fraught with all kinds of caveats:
1) Although these are of course standardized tests and despite efforts to make sure every school administers them in the same manner, there are often significant differences between schools, for example in how they approach special ed children to be tested. Some schools have relied more heavily on portfolios than others, the latter score lower as a result. And some just have more declared special ed children. .

Aren't SpEd students calculated in a different bucket anyway?

Methinks you've spent at least half an hour over-compensating. Who are you - the Maury Principal? Or else a Real Estate Agent with a bunch of listings in the Maury catchment.