Data Analysts - Where are you? (CAPE)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that many high fliers in math have left DCPS by middle or high school.

The top students are not staying in the system and even less now.

That's not "the reality"? I'm sure you can find high fliers in math at Walls, JR, BASIS and McKinley Tech.

The point is the majority have left. Of course there are a few but overall percentage is low in DCPS.

It’s common knowledge that families with high performing kids leave and this has trended higher in the past few years as “equity” issues dominate. That is why the data is so bad for high school. PP above is correct. It’s not because there are so many high performing kids are not taking the PARCC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The reality is that many high fliers in math have left DCPS by middle or high school.

The top students are not staying in the system and even less now.

That's not "the reality"? I'm sure you can find high fliers in math at Walls, JR, BASIS and McKinley Tech.

The point is the majority have left. Of course there are a few but overall percentage is low in DCPS.

It’s common knowledge that families with high performing kids leave and this has trended higher in the past few years as “equity” issues dominate. That is why the data is so bad for high school. PP above is correct. It’s not because there are so many high performing kids are not taking the PARCC.

These are two very different conversations. Standardized tests in high school do not capture all students at each level and provide a very skewed picture of how the school is doing. This has been discussed ad nauseum on this forum and you can find a lot of information about this elsewhere as well. Lots of families do leave the public system by high school so that is also true but there are a lot of high achieving children who remain in the system as well. Believe it or not, one test score per year is not the full description of all of the students in our school system.

[Anonymous]

It’s a canard that high-performing kids leave DCPS for suburban or private schools. The average SAT math score for white kids in DCPS (601) is actually higher than the average SAT math score for (demographically very similar) white kids in FCPS (591). The average SAT math score for all white kids in DC, including charter and private school kids as well as DCPS, is 602.

Data:
DCPS, https://dcps.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dcps/publication/attachments/School%20Year%202022-2023%20SAT%20Scores.xlsx.
FCPS, https://www.fcps.edu/news/fairfax-county-students-continue-outperform-sat-state-and-global-averages.
All DC, https://reports.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/2023-district-of-columbia-sat-suite-of-assessments-annual-report.pdf.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For anyone interested, here are the percentages at select DCPS high schools of students who tested above grade level in the CAPE ELA and math tests:

ELA

Walls 66.11
Banneker 36.87
J-R 26.59
McA 5.53

Math

Walls 8.43
Banneker 5.8
J-R 1.68
McA 0.00

Wow-these schools don't have a lot of higher fliers in math. And MacArthur has a lot of room to improve.

High fliers in math would have taken the math Parcc in middle school and not show up in a high school's numbers. It's not surprising to me that if kids taking algebra I or geometry in high school, few would score a 5.

We've been through this. Very few students aren't taking the math PARCC in 9th grade. There were 22 9th graders at JR who took ELA but not math, 13 at SWW, and ZERO at Banneker.

We can also look at middle school geometry scores in the state-wide data. They do very well in terms of passage rates, but fewer than 20% of them get a 5.

Assign 20% of the missing kids a 5 (assign somewhat more if you assume some of the kids who do less-well in geometry retake it) and those school numbers are not changing much. (At Banneker, they're not changing at all!)

30% of kids aren't taking the test...

[Anonymous]

MacArthur has enrolled 238, but only 172 took the math CAPE. So about 30% of kids don't take it. Are these high achieving or low achieving students?

Regardless this is 4x the non-test rate of the rest of DCPS.

[Anonymous]

You have to look at the proportion who also aren't taking the ELA. If you just take ELA but not math in high school, you likely are ahead in math. If you take neither, that's not the issue.

What is the issue? Probably mostly students opting out. Severely cognitively disabled kids also don't take it, but that's not a high number of kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You have to look at the proportion who also aren't taking the ELA. If you just take ELA but not math in high school, you likely are ahead in math. If you take neither, that's not the issue.

What is the issue? Probably mostly students opting out. Severely cognitively disabled kids also don't take it, but that's not a high number of kids.

Kids who are chronically absent (a huge percentage of kids who are not a random selection of the student body) mostly don’t show up for enough days to have their tests count.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You have to look at the proportion who also aren't taking the ELA. If you just take ELA but not math in high school, you likely are ahead in math. If you take neither, that's not the issue.

What is the issue? Probably mostly students opting out. Severely cognitively disabled kids also don't take it, but that's not a high number of kids.

You can use the OSSE spreadsheets to see how many kids took the MSAA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s a canard that high-performing kids leave DCPS for suburban or private schools. The average SAT math score for white kids in DCPS (601) is actually higher than the average SAT math score for (demographically very similar) white kids in FCPS (591). The average SAT math score for all white kids in DC, including charter and private school kids as well as DCPS, is 602.

Data:
DCPS, https://dcps.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dcps/publication/attachments/School%20Year%202022-2023%20SAT%20Scores.xlsx.
FCPS, https://www.fcps.edu/news/fairfax-county-students-continue-outperform-sat-state-and-global-averages.
All DC, https://reports.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/2023-district-of-columbia-sat-suite-of-assessments-annual-report.pdf.

Thank you. So very much prejudice from parents who have uprooted their lives to make sure that their kids can attend the precious perfect suburban DC area schools when this bias does not reflect the reality of white students who stay in DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It’s a canard that high-performing kids leave DCPS for suburban or private schools. The average SAT math score for white kids in DCPS (601) is actually higher than the average SAT math score for (demographically very similar) white kids in FCPS (591). The average SAT math score for all white kids in DC, including charter and private school kids as well as DCPS, is 602.

Data:
DCPS, https://dcps.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dcps/publication/attachments/School%20Year%202022-2023%20SAT%20Scores.xlsx.
FCPS, https://www.fcps.edu/news/fairfax-county-students-continue-outperform-sat-state-and-global-averages.
All DC, https://reports.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/2023-district-of-columbia-sat-suite-of-assessments-annual-report.pdf.

If your kid is great in math, probably the best strategy is to move to Fairfax and try for TJ.

Otherwise, there isn't much difference between Walt Whitman (best high school in MoCo) and BASIS/Walls.

The problem is that your kid may not get into BASIS for 5th in the lottery and may flame out for Walls given the current admission requirements (e.g., GPA over a certain threshold, teacher recs, and short interview).

Note that 22% of Asians get a 750 or higher on the math SAT but only 4% of whites. So, average math SAT scores will be a lot higher at schools with a lot of Asian kids (e.g., TJ).

Average SAT math score for selected schools:

TJ 780
BASIS DC 660
Whitman 659
Walls 650

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You have to look at the proportion who also aren't taking the ELA. If you just take ELA but not math in high school, you likely are ahead in math. If you take neither, that's not the issue.

What is the issue? Probably mostly students opting out. Severely cognitively disabled kids also don't take it, but that's not a high number of kids.

You can use the OSSE spreadsheets to see how many kids took the MSAA.

No one in grades 9 and 10, since it's for 3-8 and 11. But sure, you can ballpark it with the 11th graders.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a canard that high-performing kids leave DCPS for suburban or private schools. The average SAT math score for white kids in DCPS (601) is actually higher than the average SAT math score for (demographically very similar) white kids in FCPS (591). The average SAT math score for all white kids in DC, including charter and private school kids as well as DCPS, is 602.

Data:
DCPS, https://dcps.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dcps/publication/attachments/School%20Year%202022-2023%20SAT%20Scores.xlsx.
FCPS, https://www.fcps.edu/news/fairfax-county-students-continue-outperform-sat-state-and-global-averages.
All DC, https://reports.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/2023-district-of-columbia-sat-suite-of-assessments-annual-report.pdf.

If your kid is great in math, probably the best strategy is to move to Fairfax and try for TJ.

Otherwise, there isn't much difference between Walt Whitman (best high school in MoCo) and BASIS/Walls.

The problem is that your kid may not get into BASIS for 5th in the lottery and may flame out for Walls given the current admission requirements (e.g., GPA over a certain threshold, teacher recs, and short interview).

Note that 22% of Asians get a 750 or higher on the math SAT but only 4% of whites. So, average math SAT scores will be a lot higher at schools with a lot of Asian kids (e.g., TJ).

Average SAT math score for selected schools:

TJ 780
BASIS DC 660
Whitman 659
Walls 650

Highly unlikely that you make it into TJ and your kid will probably struggle to have a decent class rank coming out of TJ even if you did.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It’s a canard that high-performing kids leave DCPS for suburban or private schools. The average SAT math score for white kids in DCPS (601) is actually higher than the average SAT math score for (demographically very similar) white kids in FCPS (591). The average SAT math score for all white kids in DC, including charter and private school kids as well as DCPS, is 602.

Data:
DCPS, https://dcps.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/dcps/publication/attachments/School%20Year%202022-2023%20SAT%20Scores.xlsx.
FCPS, https://www.fcps.edu/news/fairfax-county-students-continue-outperform-sat-state-and-global-averages.
All DC, https://reports.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/2023-district-of-columbia-sat-suite-of-assessments-annual-report.pdf.

If your kid is great in math, probably the best strategy is to move to Fairfax and try for TJ.

Otherwise, there isn't much difference between Walt Whitman (best high school in MoCo) and BASIS/Walls.

The problem is that your kid may not get into BASIS for 5th in the lottery and may flame out for Walls given the current admission requirements (e.g., GPA over a certain threshold, teacher recs, and short interview).

Note that 22% of Asians get a 750 or higher on the math SAT but only 4% of whites. So, average math SAT scores will be a lot higher at schools with a lot of Asian kids (e.g., TJ).

Average SAT math score for selected schools:

TJ 780
BASIS DC 660
Whitman 659
Walls 650

Highly unlikely that you make it into TJ and your kid will probably struggle to have a decent class rank coming out of TJ even if you did.

"Highly unlikely"? Based on what?

If you have a 4.0 kid from an underrepresented FCPS middle school, your chances are very good.

For the class of 2028:

-550 admitted out of 2627 applications (21%)
-average MS GPA 3.911
-advantage given to kids applying from underrepresented middle schools
-there is at least one student from every FCPS middle school

Who cares about class rank? TJ has the best college admissions of any public high school in the DMV

[Anonymous]

Anyone have any insight into when to expect individual scores this year? I don't dare to hope that transitioning to an explicitly DC-only branding will make it any faster?

Archives of this site suggest individual scores have been mailed in September some years and December others... It's a bit annoying.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Anyone have any insight into when to expect individual scores this year? I don't dare to hope that transitioning to an explicitly DC-only branding will make it any faster?

Archives of this site suggest individual scores have been mailed in September some years and December others... It's a bit annoying.

It seems to vary a lot depending on your school.