PARCC Scores for Grades 3-8

[Anonymous]

Im not going to read every page of this thread but looked at scores and two things are clear:
1) all that really matters to bring up scores is the SES of your family. Should more schools be doing more to recruit high SES families?
2) holy crap, we need tracking of students starting in second grade like most jurisidictions. there is just no way a teacher can differentiate for such huge academic disparities. NO WAY. we need to stop kidding ourselves on this folks. The smart kids will continue to flee DCPS unless their parents are rich enough to move WoTP.

[Anonymous]

One last thought, should we abolish class grades, just bascially keep kids where they are until they master the subject. These scores confirmed what I already see everyday with our DCPS interns. They may be in HS but they are functionally illiterate. Whats the point of them even graduating. Ballou should become one giant vocational school. We need to get real. DCPS is promoting and eventually graduating kids who aren't qualified to do anything except take out loans for a shitty degree from Strayer who is happy to take their money.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I love these District Measured folks!!
https://public.tableau.com/profile/kevin.lang#!/vizhome/PARCC3through8TestScores-School/Dashboard3

The comparative visual presentation of the percentages is really helpful. You'll find that, for the most part, the math and ELA % match up with some really striking exceptions. The most striking exception is Latin PCS middle school, where the math proficiency is that of a completely different school from its ELA proficiency.

Having said that, let's keep in mind that this was a trial run, schools could be off for any number of reasons, most notably including because they experienced technical problems. In truth, many schools were told that this is a trial run and not to get students wall worked up about it.

What's interesting to me here is that for white students, the achievement between DCPS and DCPCS is almost nil, while for black students there is a significant difference.

It's interesting to me, too. I think the primary difference is that DCPS are more segregated than charters.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think MV would very much like to impose a cutoff entry year for these very reasons. My impression is that the charter board hasn't OK'ed it? Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Why not? The board approved YY and LAMB, and they both have cutoff entry years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Seriously? That sounds irresponsible. Do they just assume that 3rd graders will catch up on the target language, and speak it as well as the students who have been in the school since PreK? Do they take ownership of that goal or is it all on the families?

Or is it a little bit of backwards sorting? "No-one who doesn't speak Spanish in the home would be foolish enough to risk their child's education by enrolling him/her several years behind their peers."

YY would probably love to be able to pull off that hat trick.

What are you talking about YY and MV have the same procedures. Only LAMB has charter board permission to cut off access after certain grade.

YY cuts off at second grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC Prep really stands out.

So does Eaton

Except DC Prep is almost exclusively black. That's the part that stands out.

I was looking at black only performance. Eaton does almost equally well and they aren't known for being as strict/rigorous as DC prep. Not knocking Prep, but giving kudos to Eaton!

Right, but Eaton benefits from 1) the higher SES of the overall school and 2) a large proportion of higher achieving kids. So those things help to lift all boats. Not saying it's not good, but it's apples to oranges with the DC Prep and Kipp populations.

Sure but the other schools WOTP and Shepherd have the same thing (I am AA and IB for Shepherd fwiw) offer the same thing but their AA performance is not as good.

Shepherd has more than twice the number of FARMS as Eaton (34 vs. 15%) and almost three times the number of "at risk" students (15 vs. 6%):

http://atriskfunds.ourdcschools.org/

Not to knock Eaton at all--I have both neighbors and colleagues with kids there, and it seems like a great school--but I'd say Shepherd is doing a reasonable job with its population. Of course, there is definitely room for improvement. Based on what I know of the younger cohorts, I'd predict there will be improvement in coming years--assuming there is not much attrition in these cohorts in the upper grades (many IB at Shepherd have gone private in upper grades in years past). (Full disclosure: I'm also AA and IB for Shepherd with a child currently enrolled).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What stands out to me is that Janney is not all it's cracked up to be. Sure, it has the highest overall scores, but that is because they have zero minority or low income students testing. If you drill down to white only performance, Janney has 69% on math, a whole 13-15 points below Eaton, Oyster, Stoddert, Yu Ying, even 9-11 points below Watkins and Hearst. In fact, they rank 14 out of 16th of elementary schools with White student performance in math and 6th out of 16th in ELA.

You don't need to drill down, look at Math/All:

Ross 74.5
Lafayette 72.9
Stoddert 72.4
Murch 68.8
Eaton 67.3
Janney 66.9
Key 65.1
Mann 60.8

(Two of the KIPP schools are in this range too, but they don't have 5th grade.)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One last thought, should we abolish class grades, just bascially keep kids where they are until they master the subject. These scores confirmed what I already see everyday with our DCPS interns. They may be in HS but they are functionally illiterate. Whats the point of them even graduating. Ballou should become one giant vocational school. We need to get real. DCPS is promoting and eventually graduating kids who aren't qualified to do anything except take out loans for a shitty degree from Strayer who is happy to take their money.

This would be the best education reform.

[Anonymous]

Something else interesting is to see the % of white kids increase. From 4% of 4th graders 10 years ago to 12% now.

No other group has shown such an increase.

https://public.tableau.com/profile/kevin.lang#!/vizhome/DemographicsofTestTakers/Demographics

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:One last thought, should we abolish class grades, just bascially keep kids where they are until they master the subject. These scores confirmed what I already see everyday with our DCPS interns. They may be in HS but they are functionally illiterate. Whats the point of them even graduating. Ballou should become one giant vocational school. We need to get real. DCPS is promoting and eventually graduating kids who aren't qualified to do anything except take out loans for a shitty degree from Strayer who is happy to take their money.

This would be the best education reform.

Problem is that you need math to do a lot of trades. That is one of the reasons so many construction firms resist local hire mandates.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What stands out to me is that Janney is not all it's cracked up to be. Sure, it has the highest overall scores, but that is because they have zero minority or low income students testing. If you drill down to white only performance, Janney has 69% on math, a whole 13-15 points below Eaton, Oyster, Stoddert, Yu Ying, even 9-11 points below Watkins and Hearst. In fact, they rank 14 out of 16th of elementary schools with White student performance in math and 6th out of 16th in ELA.

You don't need to drill down, look at Math/All:

Ross 74.5
Lafayette 72.9
Stoddert 72.4
Murch 68.8
Eaton 67.3
Janney 66.9
Key 65.1
Mann 60.8

(Two of the KIPP schools are in this range too, but they don't have 5th grade.)

The takeaway is quite different. It's that at schools like Key, Mann and Janney, there are English-as-a-second-language white kids. The ELL don't come from the black or hispanic student populations, but from the white populations (owing to the embassy folk attending those schools).

[Anonymous]

The takeaway is quite different. It's that at schools like Key, Mann and Janney, there are English-as-a-second-language white kids. The ELL don't come from the black or hispanic student populations, but from the white populations (owing to the embassy folk attending those schools).

That may be true for Key and Stoddert, but Janney and Mann have fewer than 25 ELL kids in the testing grades.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC Prep really stands out.

So does Eaton

Except DC Prep is almost exclusively black. That's the part that stands out.

I was looking at black only performance. Eaton does almost equally well and they aren't known for being as strict/rigorous as DC prep. Not knocking Prep, but giving kudos to Eaton!

Right, but Eaton benefits from 1) the higher SES of the overall school and 2) a large proportion of higher achieving kids. So those things help to lift all boats. Not saying it's not good, but it's apples to oranges with the DC Prep and Kipp populations.

Sure but the other schools WOTP and Shepherd have the same thing (I am AA and IB for Shepherd fwiw) offer the same thing but their AA performance is not as good.

Shepherd has more than twice the number of FARMS as Eaton (34 vs. 15%) and almost three times the number of "at risk" students (15 vs. 6%):

http://atriskfunds.ourdcschools.org/

Not to knock Eaton at all--I have both neighbors and colleagues with kids there, and it seems like a great school--but I'd say Shepherd is doing a reasonable job with its population. Of course, there is definitely room for improvement. Based on what I know of the younger cohorts, I'd predict there will be improvement in coming years--assuming there is not much attrition in these cohorts in the upper grades (many IB at Shepherd have gone private in upper grades in years past). (Full disclosure: I'm also AA and IB for Shepherd with a child currently enrolled).

You can't look at the overall school demographics and make that assumption (i.e. Eaton 15% vs Shepherd 34%). You have to look at the data of the kids tested.

Eaton had
67 AA test takers
33 of which were FARM (assuming there are no hispanic, asian or white FARM because data says there weren't)
49% of the AA that took the test were FARM

Shepherd had
111 AA test takers
43 of which were FARM
39% of the AA that took the test were FARM (maybe fewer as there were 24 kids that were not AA that took test out of the 111)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Something else interesting is to see the % of white kids increase. From 4% of 4th graders 10 years ago to 12% now.

No other group has shown such an increase.

https://public.tableau.com/profile/kevin.lang#!/vizhome/DemographicsofTestTakers/Demographics

Thanks for pointing that out. That is interesting and several things can be broadly extrapolated such as more high SES families sticking it out in DCPS than ever before. And also the rise of charter middle school options (Latin and Basis) give more high SES (most of them are white) confidence that their kid has a real "pathway to middle school"--if we got rid of Basis and Latin I think we see that 4 grade white percentage drop back down to 4% very very quickly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What stands out to me is that Janney is not all it's cracked up to be. Sure, it has the highest overall scores, but that is because they have zero minority or low income students testing. If you drill down to white only performance, Janney has 69% on math, a whole 13-15 points below Eaton, Oyster, Stoddert, Yu Ying, even 9-11 points below Watkins and Hearst. In fact, they rank 14 out of 16th of elementary schools with White student performance in math and 6th out of 16th in ELA.

You don't need to drill down, look at Math/All:

Ross 74.5
Lafayette 72.9
Stoddert 72.4
Murch 68.8
Eaton 67.3
Janney 66.9
Key 65.1
Mann 60.8

(Two of the KIPP schools are in this range too, but they don't have 5th grade.)

The takeaway is quite different. It's that at schools like Key, Mann and Janney, there are English-as-a-second-language white kids. The ELL don't come from the black or hispanic student populations, but from the white populations (owing to the embassy folk attending those schools).

I think you misunderstood. This is Math/ALL not Math/ELL (LOL!)