What a bizarre statement. Sorry for your clear trauma. Be well. |
I don't know what SSS means but if white Jefferson students are doing better than white students at Deal, SH, or WL, it should help parents of white kids IB for Jefferson feel more confident enrolling their kids there. I often hear people in various parts of the city say their IB school is "not an option" because of concerns that the school is too focused on bringing up the scores of at-risk kids and won't serve their kid well, or because they're worried their kid won't have any high-performing peers. Jefferson's test results should help dispel both of those concerns (I'll be curious to see the MGP scores as well), though I know there are still plenty of families that will make other middle school choices. |
No trauma here. I am rooting for Sela. However, they should not be a school that should be revered until they show they are established and have a decent population size. But you knew that. |
Sela has 16% more students than Ross. (202 vs. 174). So if one isn't a "real size school" and can't take pride in its accomplishments, than neither should the other. |
| What is wrong with 200? |
I don't have a dog in this fight but I just went and looked at both schools and Ross seems to be doing better than Sela in every conceivable way - signficantly higher scores and almost no achievement gap. Is the only thing that made you mention Ross that it's a small school, or am I missing some other obvious correlation? I agree that being a small school doesn't mean there's nothing to be proud of, but not sure why a Sela booster would compare it to a school that is so clearly outperforming it. |
I'm not a Sela booster. I just don't think that Sela is too small to have its accomplishments disregarded. Or, if it is, there are other schools that should have their accomplishments disregarded too. Ross and Sela have very different demographics (Sela is 17% white, Ross is 17% black; Sela is 22% at risk, Ross is 6%) not to mention the differences between DCPA and charters and language immersion vs. monolingual schools. Neither school is right for everyone (and it's not like most people can get into Ross anyway) but both seem to be doing well in their own ways--they both get 4 stars--and it seems silly for someone to think we can applaud one school and not the other. |
Wait, where are you seeing 4 stars? Is that on the OSSE page? I don't care about Sela or Ross (had to google Ross to see where it was in the city and only know about Sela because it's oddly controversial on these boards) but if schools with scores that disparate can both get 4 stars I want to do some reading on what a star even means. |
Not really - I actually went a small rural elementary school ( much smaller than Sela) with a lot of at-risk kids including me - I usually credit my professional success to be fourth grade teacher who changed the trajectory of my life on fundamental levels - but now from your oozing smug privilege I know my school was a non-school, my teachers were unworthy of mention, and my experience is of zero import. Surely it cannot be that multiple people looking at the raw data will try to divine its significance? It is interesting, for example, that Whittier’s at risk students are doing better on ELA, than not at risk students. Why is that? Why can’t we similarly ask about Sela or Shepherd or other small schools who seem to be doing some things well or at least in a positive direction? Weird. |
https://osse.dc.gov/publication/dc-school-report-card-and-star-framework-technical-guide will give you lots of info about the star framework. Basically, it's not just how kids score on PARCC (though that's one factor) but also median growth percentiles (how a kid who scored in the Xth percentile on PARCC one year scores the following year) and several other metrics. A school whose students have more growth can score as well as a school where kids come in high and stay that way. |
Jefferson is 1% white. How many students is that? It’s easy to reach 100% proficient if you’re only talking about a couple of children. |
Thank you! |
may need a fact check but if not 1% it's not much higher. thus small sample size (SSS) |
It's 2% on the OSSE report card. Given the 91% for math, I'd guess there were 11 white students tested. I don't think it's easy to get proficiency rates that high, and if it were so easy, why aren't other schools doing it? More importantly, JA is outperforming DC averages in ELA for both at-risk and non-at-risk kids. That's a good thing. I'm optimistic that with Dohmann (a former math teacher at the school) back as principal they can make some progress on the math scores without losing ground on ELA. |
As I YY parent, I can assure you that there are many families there that are stretching to call themselves middle class. |