By the numbers: A dispassioned evaluation of Hardy (compared to Deal and Wilson)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Basis, Enjoy the few Mann and key students you have while you can. In two years you'll have none.

why? Will Washington Latin have any? Or is it because Hardy's star is on the rise............Which I believe and support.

I have nothing against Hardy. We have STEM kids. For us Basis was an absolute no brainer and our kids are happy and staying through high school.

Washington Latin does Algebra I in 7th and 8th grades. Anyone who is up for that with a kid who is good at math is mad IMO. That is about deceleration, not acceleration. Hardy and Deal don't do that, and neither does NCS. Dear Martha Cutts, take a memo.

I don't see Basis and Hardy as in competition because those who want their kids at Wilson would rather stick with a cohort that is bound for Wilson anyway, whilst Basis kids are bound for Walls, Wilson, private, McKinley Tech, Banneker, and even some stay at Basis..........

I just don't like the Basis bashing going on here by Hardy parents. It started out with the math competition and has escalated from there and is absolutely ridiculous. Why can't we all just get along..........

Basis parents, just stay in your Basis thread , and don't come annoy here with long misplaced rants which end with "don't go to Hardy, come to Basis".

Otherwise this is what you'll get.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm just going to respond to this part:

anonymous wrote: Since this is important, I’ll belabor the point: in DC, “white” is a clean proxy for high income. This does not mean all high income people are white. But what it does mean is that if you’re high income, whether white or AA, the best predictor of your child’s scores is given by the “white” average since this average represents only high income students.

This is not true. In DC "white" is a clean proxy for being the beneficiary of systematic racism. [b]There are so many studies that say that AA kids from highly educated, affluent homes where parents own books, and read to them, and value their education, are not protected from racism. They are subjected to disproportionate discipline, and low expectations, which leads to achievement gaps that continue to exist even when income, parental education, time spent reading, and other factors are taken into account.

Similarly, there are plenty of white kids growing up in DC whose parents don't take them to the library, or have homes full of books, or give a shit about their education. But because of their skin color, teachers and others treat them as if they were growing up in households that do these things, and hold them to the same high expectations.
[/b]

this is spot on!

In DC they are perhaps more frequently taunted, bullied and intimidated by other black kids who deride their academic interests, study and work efforts as "acting white."

Thats ALWAYS been an EXAGGERATION and sometimes an outright lie. Even the guy who first brought up this theory has said its been way overstated for DECADES now

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Basis, Enjoy the few Mann and key students you have while you can. In two years you'll have none.

why? Will Washington Latin have any? Or is it because Hardy's star is on the rise............Which I believe and support.

I have nothing against Hardy. We have STEM kids. For us Basis was an absolute no brainer and our kids are happy and staying through high school.

Washington Latin does Algebra I in 7th and 8th grades. Anyone who is up for that with a kid who is good at math is mad IMO. That is about deceleration, not acceleration. Hardy and Deal don't do that, and neither does NCS. Dear Martha Cutts, take a memo.

I don't see Basis and Hardy as in competition because those who want their kids at Wilson would rather stick with a cohort that is bound for Wilson anyway, whilst Basis kids are bound for Walls, Wilson, private, McKinley Tech, Banneker, and even some stay at Basis..........

I just don't like the Basis bashing going on here by Hardy parents. It started out with the math competition and has escalated from there and is absolutely ridiculous. Why can't we all just get along..........

Basis parents, just stay in your Basis thread , and don't come annoy here with long misplaced rants which end with "don't go to Hardy, come to Basis".

Otherwise this is what you'll get.

And by the way, enjoy the few Mann and Key students while you can. In two years you'll have none.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here.

Quick reply as I'm heading out the door.

To the previous poster: in a word, no. You're misunderstanding the stag hunt. Coordination is needed for Hardy, not for the privates.

But anyway, we're not talking about the 1% here. The highest income neighborhood (with sufficient people) is probably Spring Valley (or WH or Foxhall). The median household income here is about 300k. When talking about the "top 1%," realize the numbers you're actually saying. The top 3% starts at 310k and the top 2% starts at 330k (if I recall correctly).

There's plenty of income and wealth feeding into Hardy. This makes private school attainable for many families, but it remains the case that private school tuition (let alone for multiple kids) is not affordable for even more families.

The previous poster (with the long post) makes several misstatements and, frankly, I doubt whether he/she has actually read this thread. I will not offer a detailed retort.

As someone else pointed out, the wealthiest families are in-bounds for Mann, not Key. Honestly, this isn't really even close and people from these areas would surely know it.

I don't think the recession was that large of a deal in these neighborhoods, so I'm hesitant to ascribe much meaning to it. Incomes remained fairly stable, housing prices didn't decline, and retirement accounts cratered. I imagine -- and this is purely conjecture -- that people sending their kids to private finance this from income, not savings. Anyone with a sufficiently long horizon before retirement (say, greater than 7 years) could be very confident their retirement accounts would recover.

I think a bigger issue is the international institutions. The IMF still pays 75% of private school tuitions (up to a generous cap). But they're the main outlier. World Bankers starting after 1998 (or 1996, I forget) no longer get this education benefit. The last of these people probably have kids near Hardy-age right now. That means that there is about to be a much larger pool of potential public school kids looking at middle school. (The IADB pays up to 12k a year, so I don't view this as enough for the top privates.)

Anyway, I'll try to check in periodically when killing time.

Housing prices DID decline, even in Spring Valley. Many people ascribe the Deal renaissance to the stock market crash. What say you to that? They did coincide timing wise, and once it started it became a force of nature. In fact, word at some of the middling privates who hiked their tuition back in the good old days when everyone would NEVER send their kids to Deal and Wilson is that they are really truly suffering. All it took was a critical mass there.

I did in fact read your entire thread. Sorry I was wrong that the wealth is concentrated in Mann not Key, and we are in fact at Mann so that makes sense. People there still mostly go private - always have, always will. I think to a large degree you are right that we are recession proof in a way that the Janney Deal folks were not, between the subsidized international tuitions and parents paying tuitions for tax reasons.

But what you are forgetting is the effect that economic uncertainty can have on a herd. If it pushes them all to Deal, Deal becomes an "in" school. We were here, we saw it. People stopped going private after Janney, and they all decided to do it at once. They talked together at church and at coctail parties and those with older children talked to those with younger children and Melissa Kim was there. It was quite incredible and it was revolutionary. And then they all decided to go to Wilson, and Wilson made room for them. The academies no longer existed, but Honor classes do, the same way they are creating them at Hardy. And now that some of the other schools have been rezoned for Hardy who knows.

But one thing these people are spot on about is although you tried, because your sample size is so small, you had to use proficient and proficient is not a measure any of us respect. And neither is improvement. If you look at the Janney kids, look at how many of them are scoring advanced before they set foot into Deal. THAT is the real issue. THAT is the real problem.

And then take a look at Mann. Even if we came to Hardy, we would not necessarily help you with advanced - many are ELL. And to be honest, some of the Mann kids are not that smart. But they already have an in due to sibling preference, and because they are international many go to WIS for the IB program because they will not necessarily be here - we always have people moving in and out of Mann, back to their home countries. And people go to Mann to get into private school. Mann is just a creature unto itself. It is very much like a private school.

Hardy needs kids who COME prepared, not just kids who they need to prepare while they are there...... kids who need to move from proficient to advanced. That is why many kids at Deal don't move I wager - they stay advanced.

It will be very interesting to see what the PARCC does to all of this.

PS I don't think you have the time, but someone said that back in the early 2000 (before our time here) Hardy used to be a neighborhood school. I find that hard to believe, but it would be interesting to find out........

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm just going to respond to this part:

anonymous wrote: Since this is important, I’ll belabor the point: in DC, “white” is a clean proxy for high income. This does not mean all high income people are white. But what it does mean is that if you’re high income, whether white or AA, the best predictor of your child’s scores is given by the “white” average since this average represents only high income students.

This is not true. In DC "white" is a clean proxy for being the beneficiary of systematic racism. There are so many studies that say that AA kids from highly educated, affluent homes where parents own books, and read to them, and value their education, are not protected from racism. They are subjected to disproportionate discipline, and low expectations, which leads to achievement gaps that continue to exist even when income, parental education, time spent reading, and other factors are taken into account.

Similarly, there are plenty of white kids growing up in DC whose parents don't take them to the library, or have homes full of books, or give a shit about their education. But because of their skin color, teachers and others treat them as if they were growing up in households that do these things, and hold them to the same high expectations.

this is spot on!

OP -- your use of the adjective "white" to convey a virtue suggests to bias in your assessment. With the deep racial default lines in DC, your choice of words is truly unfortunate. I don't agree that everyone who meets your so-called virtuous category is the beneficiary of systematic racism, because doing so would suggest that academic achievement is a zero sum game, which it clearly is not. There's room for everyone to succeed but great challenges for many, not the least of which related to race and poverty. My child doesn't succeed because others are impoverished or because higher expectations based on skin color, but a socially just society would work to remove obstacles related to race and poverty so the expectations and outcomes are less disparate across demographics.

OP here.

No, no it doesn't. You clearly did not read the preamble of the initial post, or, if you did, you failed to understand what those words meant.

"White" is a category for which we have DCCAS data. While it literally refers to race, in DC we can use "white" to proxy for other, non-racial characteristics. That is exactly what I did.

+100. You explained it very clearly in the opening post. (Where I disagree is on the need to analyze Proficient outcomes to validate, or not, your main conclusions)

OP here.

You mean "advanced-only" outcomes, but I hear you. I have looked at the numbers but I don't believe much can be concluded from them. The sample sizes are just too small for reliable inference. The variability in performance is large year-to-year. (This is what happens with small samples. You need larger samples for things to settle down.)

For example, the percentage of 8th grade white students testing advanced in math at Hardy goes from 27% one year (11 students) to 60% the following year. This is not atypical. This suggests that any conclusions based on averages that haven't settled down are problematic without also considering the variance.

Since people seem to desire some analysis even if it isn't robust, I'll provide something as long as everyone acknowledges at the outset that it may be meaningless.

We care about kids improving over time. Since the data are a panel (many students each tested in three separate years), we can track scores over time for Deal and Hardy. Students' 6th grade scores likely represent their stock of testing-proficiency when they arrive at the school. So, let's see how these same students do in 8th grade. The same caveat about small sample sizes applies here, so I'll just say that I don't know the worth of this type of analysis.

So, what the following numbers calculate is the difference in %advanced for white students between 8th grade and these same students in 6th grade. For example, we look at the %advanced for 8th graders in 2014 and the %advanced for 6th graders in 2012. We can only do three cohorts at each school since some 8th grade data is unreported at Hardy (because the samples are too small (not enough white students)) and some 6th grade data are missing at Deal.

In reading, the schools are pretty similar. For three years in which Deal numbers can be calculated, there were 18%, 28% and 19% more advanced scorers in 8th grade than there were in 6th grade. (These are the same students, modulo joining or leaving the school.) For Hardy, the improvements were 15%, 21% and 15%.

For math, at Deal there were 1%, 1% and 12% more advanced scorers in 8th grade than in the same cohort at 6th. For Hardy, there were 7%, 7% and 10% more advanced scorers in 8th.

I don't know what, if anything, can be concluded from these numbers. But they paint a somewhat different picture than simply looking at the %advanced by themselves. (I'll post another point in a separate reply now.)

OP -- you're blind to optics. DCPS provides that data but you go a step further and draw dubious conclusions from it. Plenty of racially white kids in DC are not academically proficient. Many parents of all color have expectations that "proficient" is not much of a goal.

However, if you were an actual parent with a child at this school or any other you'd also know that the DCCAS is a highly flawed measurement tool and that many parents do not evaluate a school or its students based on standardized test scores. There are many other ways to evaluate schools -- consider that most children enter elementary school well before testing grades and that some other factors must account for why parents opt for a school where no such evaluation is performed on younger students.

OP here:

I'll take that as a compliment. I don't care about optics. I'm not trying to sell an agenda here.

As for your statement, I have the data: more than 9 out of 10 white students in DCPS are proficient or advanced in both math and reading. Greater than 90%. In both subjects. For the most recent year, it was 92% in reading and 92% in math. Your "plenty" is actually 165 or so out of almost 2100 white students in DCPS. Try again.

but you have to actually look at schools where 1) white students are actually in attendance, and 2) where they are in testing grades. That's a false assumption to distribute that across a system so heavily bifurcated on racial lines.

[Anonymous]

Did Washington Latin show up? Those are the top 3 MS by DC CAS right there for the last 2 years.

OP here,

Can you point me towards Latin and Basis DCCAS scores? As disaggregated as possible.

I've never seen these data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Not true that I was the one who could not resist. It was the PP of 04/06/2015 17:08 was intervened in this Hardy thread recommending "don't go to Hardy, come to Basis".

I just stated why we did not follow her advice.

Not that I needed that, but your post confirmed my view, Basis has a teaching and monitoring culture based on individual, rather than social, performance, and zero room for creativity development.

I have reason and knowledge to believe that factors beyond metrics measuring individual academic performance play a fundamental role in being accepted and succeed in top colleges and jobs.

our dc (in 5th at Basis) has done some incredible art projects, is actually learning how to write, and learned how to play "Ode to Joy" on the recorder in addition to doing a performance which included what he did in the Children's Chorus of Washington the preceding year with all the hand motions (and the Basis kids were better at it with less practice!) We are newbies, but I have no idea what you are talking about........ I think the other Basis parent was saying perhaps that s/he wanted more kids from their neighborhood? We have a lot from ours, but then we don't live WOTP

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Did Washington Latin show up? Those are the top 3 MS by DC CAS right there for the last 2 years.

OP here,

Can you point me towards Latin and Basis DCCAS scores? As disaggregated as possible.

I've never seen these data.

PCSB does not provide disaggregate data unfortunately.

http://www.dcpcsb.org/sites/default/files/34_BASIS_DC_PCS.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Did Washington Latin show up? Those are the top 3 MS by DC CAS right there for the last 2 years.

OP here,

Can you point me towards Latin and Basis DCCAS scores? As disaggregated as possible.

I've never seen these data.

PCSB does not provide disaggregate data unfortunately.

http://www.dcpcsb.org/sites/default/files/34_BASIS_DC_PCS.pdf

School by school summary for 2014 here
http://www.dcpcsb.org/sites/default/files/2014%20DC%20CAS%20proficiency%20by%20campus%20%20July%2031%202014_final-2.pdf

Looks liek this may be some disaggregated Charter data - but is 2013, not 2014. I'm not a data geek so please forgive me if I'm wrong.
https://data.dcpcsb.org/Student-Performance-/DC-CAS-Subgroup-Performance-By-School-2013-/256k-xjca

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Did Washington Latin show up? Those are the top 3 MS by DC CAS right there for the last 2 years.

OP here,

Can you point me towards Latin and Basis DCCAS scores? As disaggregated as possible.

I've never seen these data.

if you go to the OSSE website they have the 2014 DC CAS scores (and 2013, and 2012)
not sure if they ranked them but they do it by subgroup
FARMS
white
black
latino
other

the other place to go to compare is the DCPCSB DC charter school board but OSSE is the best
the charter school board has equity reports and includes public schools
very very interesting

PS as an economist, one thing you should know from the NAEP ('which is the only national achievement test we have, where they test 4th and 8th graders, where DC kids test the highest in the country when you look at states) is there is an article I think by someone from the 21st century fund aboou the achievement gaps

2003 vs 2013 blacks and latinos did not change vs whites - shocking but 50 point gap across the board
FARMS vs non FARMS doubled to look exactly like the racial divide except that a lot of these states don't have as many minorities in them - so now it really is about economics

sorry don't know how to post links Luddite here

[Anonymous]

sorry white DC kids test the highest in the country - and it is only a public school test

[Anonymous]

OP here.

Thanks.

Again, earlier posters are being unfair regarding my use of proficient+advanced. That is what everyone uses to assess schools, inluding the Charter Board in the links provided above.

[Anonymous]

http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/About+DCPS/DCPS+Data/DCPS+Data+Sets

[Anonymous]

that gives you the breakdown for DCPS going back to 2007 working on charters

[Anonymous]

OP here,

Based on the charter school DCCAS performance scores at the linked database, I see no ability to conclude that Latin or Basis are statistically different than Hardy. I don't have remote access to my DCPS data file, but off-hand, Latin, Basis and Hardy all exhibit similar scores. (Overall numbers are different, but that's because Basis is 34% white and Latin is 42%. Hardy is 11% in the relevant comparison year. That explains the overall differences.)