PARCC results: how will they be communicated to families?

[Anonymous]

Do BASIS students ever leave for academic or social reasons? If so, where do they go?

[Anonymous]

I think the BASIS data likely has a selection bias problem - kids who score well on PARCC persist at the school between 6ht and 8th grade, while those who score poorly in 6th grade leave by 8th. You can see this in the data (or at least speculate about it) if they test substantially fewer kids in 8th compared to 6th.

So the test is not measuring increasing PROFICIENCY among the same group of students due to BASIS's high-quality teaching. It's reflecting a change in the student population as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the BASIS data likely has a selection bias problem - kids who score well on PARCC persist at the school between 6ht and 8th grade, while those who score poorly in 6th grade leave by 8th. You can see this in the data (or at least speculate about it) if they test substantially fewer kids in 8th compared to 6th.

So the test is not measuring increasing PROFICIENCY among the same group of students due to BASIS's high-quality teaching. It's reflecting a change in the student population as well.

This somewhat but not entirely true, looking more deeply into the data.

BASIS had 63/110 kids score a 4 or 5 in ELA in 6th grade, and 75/88 kids score a 4 or 5 in 8th grade. So, from 6th - 8th grade, a net 12 kids moved from not proficient to proficient but at the same time, the cohort got 20% smaller. (obviously, these are different cohorts so we have to assume they are representative to do this analysis)

For Deal, 303/425 kids scored a 4 or 5 in ELA in 6th grade, and 296/445 kids scored a 4 or 5 in 8th grade. Given the size of the sample, that change is probably statistically insignificant but also, the cohort got bigger.

[Anonymous]

I just love all the reasoning and justifications to why scores are what they are. How about we just accept the scores. They are what they are. It looks like kids at BASIS score very high. Let's move on and see what can be done to help other students/schools score better.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Do BASIS students ever leave for academic or social reasons? If so, where do they go?

Serious question?! BASIS has been admitting more than 120 5th graders annually for more than a decade and graduating fewer than 70 seniors.

Is BASIS the only acceptable middle school in the DC Metropolitan area for UMC families EotP? Of course not. We know kids who left BASIS after 1-4 years for non-sectarian privates, parochial schools, suburban schools, homeschooling, schools abroad, Stuart Hobson, DCI, Two Rivers, Inspired Teaching etc.

[Anonymous]

Why don't you BASIS folks start your own thread. Just start a "Fall 2022 BASIS thread". You can have all your talks there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:


PP has some serious issues regarding BASIS. BASIS does not control what students come through its doors. Complaining that a school is a great example and has high scores sounds ironic and desperate in a city lacking quality MS and HS. When my in-boundary MS and HS reach BASIS proficiency levels I'll do a rethink. Remember jealousy is a curse.

Actually, if you look at 6th grade scores across schools, Basis doesn't seem all that great, especially for ELA. Our kid was in Basis through 6th, and we decided to leave for a variety of reasons, one of which was the English curriculum (with an extreme focus on grammar and very little writing or reading). It's harder to compare Basis to other schools after 6th, given that many kids get weeded out due to the comps. Kids who are still at Basis by 8th or 9th are probably pretty good at taking tests.

6th grade ELA:
Deal 71
Hardy 67
Oyster 62
Inspired 61
Latin 60
Basis 57

6th grade Math:
Deal 62
Latin 56
Basis 55
Hardy 49
Inspired 43

Basis is a 100% lottery school that draws from all of DC. Deal is mostly in-bounds and draws from wealthy upper NW. And if you look at 6th grade, you are missing the point—the kids haven’t been at middle school that long. Also, you are looking at proficiency rather than looking at what percentage of kids are testing above grade level.

Take a look the 8th grade numbers, which you probably looked at but didn’t bother to cite.

For example, compare Basis to Deal, your top-listed school. This is after most kids have been at both schools for almost 4 years.

8th grade ELA (4 or 5):

Basis 85.22
Deal 71.81

8th grade math (4 or 5):

Basis 73.03
Deal 53.33

As you can see, 8th grade Basis students are far ahead of Deal students in both ELA and math. The fact is that Basis does a far better job teaching advanced English and math than Deal and other schools in DCPS.

If you think that these results are just because older Basis students are “probably pretty good at taking tests,” that is a dumb take. I would also add that there is not much grammar after 6th grade, so your point about English classes is based on an incorrect assumption as well.

The bottom line is that your kid didn’t do well at Basis and dropped out after 6th grade, and is probably at Deal. So, you need to rationalize your decision by citing misleading numbers.

Basis has its faults. But it is by far the best choice for parents in DC with academically minded kids.

except numerically, the Deal students earning 5s far outnumber Basis students. Assuming 100 Basis 8th graders, that’s 73 5s, vs Deal with 500 8th graders and 250 5s. Deal wins!
So.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just love all the reasoning and justifications to why scores are what they are. How about we just accept the scores. They are what they are. It looks like kids at BASIS score very high. Let's move on and see what can be done to help other students/schools score better.

It is clear that Basis students (at least in middle school and in ELA) score quite well in PARCC compared to Deal and Hardy, albeit for a far smaller student population. However, the data is really confusing (or perhaps the Excel sheets are not well organized) for Math. It seems that 85 out of 89 students at Deal scored 4/5 in Geometry and ~60% scored 4/5 in Algebra 1, which is objectively good. However, of the remaining 180 odd students taking Grade 8 Math PARCC, only 36 scored 4/5, which is worrying as the "grade level" kids are not being served well. No such figures are available for Hardy.

I could not find equivalent figures for Basis, which only lists performance levels for Alg/Geo only for high schoolers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I just love all the reasoning and justifications to why scores are what they are. How about we just accept the scores. They are what they are. It looks like kids at BASIS score very high. Let's move on and see what can be done to help other students/schools score better.

Look, no one is saying that BASIS is a bad school or that the scores of its kids aren't real. However, there is no such thing as interpreting data in a vacuum or in "the scores are what they are."

I'm pretty sure your BASIS kid would understand that, and perhaps your kid can teach you a thing or two about statistics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do BASIS students ever leave for academic or social reasons? If so, where do they go?

Serious question?! BASIS has been admitting more than 120 5th graders annually for more than a decade and graduating fewer than 70 seniors.

Is BASIS the only acceptable middle school in the DC Metropolitan area for UMC families EotP? Of course not. We know kids who left BASIS after 1-4 years for non-sectarian privates, parochial schools, suburban schools, homeschooling, schools abroad, Stuart Hobson, DCI, Two Rivers, Inspired Teaching etc.

So BASIS regularly loses a large percent of its students from fifth to 12th grade? Currently, the fifth grade has 143 students and the 12th grade has 50. They have 1% ELL students and 4% students with disabilities. And they do not backfill or have to take any new students no matter how well those students may test.

Why wouldn’t they score well on PARCC?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do BASIS students ever leave for academic or social reasons? If so, where do they go?

Serious question?! BASIS has been admitting more than 120 5th graders annually for more than a decade and graduating fewer than 70 seniors.

Is BASIS the only acceptable middle school in the DC Metropolitan area for UMC families EotP? Of course not. We know kids who left BASIS after 1-4 years for non-sectarian privates, parochial schools, suburban schools, homeschooling, schools abroad, Stuart Hobson, DCI, Two Rivers, Inspired Teaching etc.

So BASIS regularly loses a large percent of its students from fifth to 12th grade? Currently, the fifth grade has 143 students and the 12th grade has 50. They have 1% ELL students and 4% students with disabilities. And they do not backfill or have to take any new students no matter how well those students may test.

Why wouldn’t they score well on PARCC?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do BASIS students ever leave for academic or social reasons? If so, where do they go?

Serious question?! BASIS has been admitting more than 120 5th graders annually for more than a decade and graduating fewer than 70 seniors.

Is BASIS the only acceptable middle school in the DC Metropolitan area for UMC families EotP? Of course not. We know kids who left BASIS after 1-4 years for non-sectarian privates, parochial schools, suburban schools, homeschooling, schools abroad, Stuart Hobson, DCI, Two Rivers, Inspired Teaching etc.

So BASIS regularly loses a large percent of its students from fifth to 12th grade? Currently, the fifth grade has 143 students and the 12th grade has 50. They have 1% ELL students and 4% students with disabilities. And they do not backfill or have to take any new students no matter how well those students may test.

Why wouldn’t they score well on PARCC?

BASIS comes under almost no pressure to serve ELL students and those with the disabilities in the absence of other equally high-performing middle schools East of the Park. BASIS requires ELL students to study either their language spoken at home at the beginning level from 8th grade (yes, the beginning level even if a student is fully bilingual and biliterate), or a second foreign language, a tall order for a kid who already faces challenges learning English. This policy turns many ELL families off, never mind that it's defended tooth and nail by admins and the parent community.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do BASIS students ever leave for academic or social reasons? If so, where do they go?

Serious question?! BASIS has been admitting more than 120 5th graders annually for more than a decade and graduating fewer than 70 seniors.

Is BASIS the only acceptable middle school in the DC Metropolitan area for UMC families EotP? Of course not. We know kids who left BASIS after 1-4 years for non-sectarian privates, parochial schools, suburban schools, homeschooling, schools abroad, Stuart Hobson, DCI, Two Rivers, Inspired Teaching etc.

So BASIS regularly loses a large percent of its students from fifth to 12th grade? Currently, the fifth grade has 143 students and the 12th grade has 50. They have 1% ELL students and 4% students with disabilities. And they do not backfill or have to take any new students no matter how well those students may test.

Why wouldn’t they score well on PARCC?

BASIS comes under almost no pressure to serve ELL students and those with the disabilities in the absence of other equally high-performing middle schools East of the Park. BASIS requires ELL students to study either their language spoken at home at the beginning level from 8th grade (yes, the beginning level even if a student is fully bilingual and biliterate), or a second foreign language, a tall order for a kid who already faces challenges learning English. This policy turns many ELL families off, never mind that it's defended tooth and nail by admins and the parent community.

What on earth is the justification for this? Neither option makes sense -- it is not academically sensible to force a fluent speaker into an entry-level course, but most ELL students, while fluent, are often not as fully literate in their first language as they would be were they attending school in that language, so it is more appropriate to take high level language courses in their first language than to start a third language at that age.

It also makes no sense to me because as a school with a MS and HS, it's not like they don't have the high level language courses available, which is the main reason I can think of for doing this.

BASIS sounds like a great school for the right kid but, even though we have an extremely academic child, there are enough little details like this that just confound me that we are likely going to preference ITS and Stuart Hobson over BASIS in the lottery (Latin being our first choice but of course it's a crapshoot). I think our child would do well there academically but I think it would be a tough fit for our family.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Do BASIS students ever leave for academic or social reasons? If so, where do they go?

Serious question?! BASIS has been admitting more than 120 5th graders annually for more than a decade and graduating fewer than 70 seniors.

Is BASIS the only acceptable middle school in the DC Metropolitan area for UMC families EotP? Of course not. We know kids who left BASIS after 1-4 years for non-sectarian privates, parochial schools, suburban schools, homeschooling, schools abroad, Stuart Hobson, DCI, Two Rivers, Inspired Teaching etc.

So BASIS regularly loses a large percent of its students from fifth to 12th grade? Currently, the fifth grade has 143 students and the 12th grade has 50. They have 1% ELL students and 4% students with disabilities. And they do not backfill or have to take any new students no matter how well those students may test.

Why wouldn’t they score well on PARCC?

BASIS comes under almost no pressure to serve ELL students and those with the disabilities in the absence of other equally high-performing middle schools East of the Park. BASIS requires ELL students to study either their language spoken at home at the beginning level from 8th grade (yes, the beginning level even if a student is fully bilingual and biliterate), or a second foreign language, a tall order for a kid who already faces challenges learning English. This policy turns many ELL families off, never mind that it's defended tooth and nail by admins and the parent community.

What on earth is the justification for this? Neither option makes sense -- it is not academically sensible to force a fluent speaker into an entry-level course, but most ELL students, while fluent, are often not as fully literate in their first language as they would be were they attending school in that language, so it is more appropriate to take high level language courses in their first language than to start a third language at that age.

It also makes no sense to me because as a school with a MS and HS, it's not like they don't have the high level language courses available, which is the main reason I can think of for doing this.

BASIS sounds like a great school for the right kid but, even though we have an extremely academic child, there are enough little details like this that just confound me that we are likely going to preference ITS and Stuart Hobson over BASIS in the lottery (Latin being our first choice but of course it's a crapshoot). I think our child would do well there academically but I think it would be a tough fit for our family.

It really is (a great school if it fits for your kid). But that is the gamble - will it be a good fit for your kid? It is a great fit for my kid so we are super happy there (currently in 8th grade). I understand that could change, but for now, I am really hoping my kid stays for high school.

[Anonymous]

9th grade is natural exit point even at basis. but, if there is a huge drop and poor retention of students between 5th and 8th and/or between 9th and 12th, that is interesting