How is it possible that Walt Whitman high school has a score of 4 on greatschools.org??

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Do you really not see the distinction? Presumably RHS's scores have been relatively consistent. Maybe 5 one year or 6 another. People would ask the same type of questions if RHS or any other schools had a sudden drop, say from a 5 or 6 to a 1 or 2.

I freely admit that some people might offer different theories on why the drop occurred and maybe those theories would be fair and fact based, maybe they wouldn't. But I hope people would be asking the questions.

And most people acknowledge that test scores and therefore GS scores are heavily correlated to socioeconomic status, a major weakness in using them to measure school quality. Therefore, if there had been a change in the average Whitman students background, that would be another potential explanation. But I don't believe that has been the case.

Rockville HS scores were low because there are lots of poor students. Churchill HS scores were high because there are very few poor students. And Whitman HS scores were low because Whitman parents instilled a sense of right and wrong in their children?

I mean, really.

+1 There's a lot of upper class explaining going on in this thread. If my child told me that he purposefully tanked a test, I would be livid, not congratulating him for not being a sheep.

I haven't said I would congratulate my kid for doing that. To the extent it matters, I don't have a kid at Whitman. I have merely said that tanking seems to be a reasonable explanation for what occurred. That doesn't mean I think the tanking would be appropriate.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

That's not remotely what I have said. I haven't argued at all about a sense of right and wrong in kids and I, in my mind, tanking a test would be a poor way to of demonstrating values, even if you thought the test or an emphasis on testing was misguided.

I have simply argued that students tanking a test strikes me as a plausible explanation for what occurred given the dramatic drop in test scores in a one year period for which I haven't seen many other explanations offered.

Was this you?

I don't have a dog in this fight (yet), but I think it's safe to say that a majority of kids attending Whitman are not pompous ingrates that are oblivious to reality. Sure there are some, but most are being raised by parents that are somewhat intelligent, who are sitting in high-paying jobs and hold advanced degrees. These parents have instilled in their children a sense of what's right and wrong and pushed critical thinking and rocking the boat over a sheep mentality. It is much more likely that these kids purposely tanked the test as a protest/statement against this kind of testing that public school kids are so often forced to endure. And even if they tanked it for more selfish reasons -- i.e. they were told it wouldn't effect their college admissions -- unless the school made it clear to them (in real/digestible terms) why doing well on the test was good for their school and community you can't blame them for not wanting to focus their energy on something they saw held no value for them or their future.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

That's not remotely what I have said. I haven't argued at all about a sense of right and wrong in kids and I, in my mind, tanking a test would be a poor way to of demonstrating values, even if you thought the test or an emphasis on testing was misguided.

I have simply argued that students tanking a test strikes me as a plausible explanation for what occurred given the dramatic drop in test scores in a one year period for which I haven't seen many other explanations offered.

Was this you?

I don't have a dog in this fight (yet), but I think it's safe to say that a majority of kids attending Whitman are not pompous ingrates that are oblivious to reality. Sure there are some, but most are being raised by parents that are somewhat intelligent, who are sitting in high-paying jobs and hold advanced degrees. These parents have instilled in their children a sense of what's right and wrong and pushed critical thinking and rocking the boat over a sheep mentality. It is much more likely that these kids purposely tanked the test as a protest/statement against this kind of testing that public school kids are so often forced to endure. And even if they tanked it for more selfish reasons -- i.e. they were told it wouldn't effect their college admissions -- unless the school made it clear to them (in real/digestible terms) why doing well on the test was good for their school and community you can't blame them for not wanting to focus their energy on something they saw held no value for them or their future.

Nope. DP.

[Anonymous]

How come only the rich Whitman kids tanked the tests and not the rich Churchill or Wootton ones? What's so special about Whitman kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have no dog in this fight but the new PARCC scores are out and Whitman's scores are much, much better this year, so it does appear that last year's scores were an outlier.

Can you link to the new scores? I've only seen 2015-2016 so far.

http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/parcc2017/all-tests/

DP... that site only shows Alg 1 and and ELA10 scores for HS in MCPS. Do 11th and 12th graders not take any state standarized tests?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How come only the rich Whitman kids tanked the tests and not the rich Churchill or Wootton ones? What's so special about Whitman kids?

Evidently Whitman parents, unlike other rich parents, teach their kids not to be sheep. Or something.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have no dog in this fight but the new PARCC scores are out and Whitman's scores are much, much better this year, so it does appear that last year's scores were an outlier.

Can you link to the new scores? I've only seen 2015-2016 so far.

http://data.baltimoresun.com/news/parcc2017/all-tests/

DP... that site only shows Alg 1 and and ELA10 scores for HS in MCPS. Do 11th and 12th graders not take any state standarized tests?

In HS, you are supposed to take one ELA test and one math test.

[Anonymous]

Putting aside the value judgment of whether it's okay to not do your best on a standardized test that has no impact on you personally, it does appear that's likely what happened given that Whitman's passage rate on the English exam went from 20% to 90% from 2016 to 2017.

[Anonymous]

My kid wasn't at Whitman, but the first year of PARCC, she came home saying her teachers TOLD them not to take it seriously--as a sort of protest against what they saw as a dumb test. By the second year, it was required for graduation and they seemed stressed out by how they did on it. So Whitman teachers may have sent out a similar signal...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Putting aside the value judgment of whether it's okay to not do your best on a standardized test that has no impact on you personally, it does appear that's likely what happened given that Whitman's passage rate on the English exam went from 20% to 90% from 2016 to 2017.

So in about a year, Whitman's GS score will presumably be back to around where it was before this year?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Putting aside the value judgment of whether it's okay to not do your best on a standardized test that has no impact on you personally, it does appear that's likely what happened given that Whitman's passage rate on the English exam went from 20% to 90% from 2016 to 2017.

So in about a year, Whitman's GS score will presumably be back to around where it was before this year?

likely

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Putting aside the value judgment of whether it's okay to not do your best on a standardized test that has no impact on you personally, it does appear that's likely what happened given that Whitman's passage rate on the English exam went from 20% to 90% from 2016 to 2017.

So in about a year, Whitman's GS score will presumably be back to around where it was before this year?

likely

I'd be curious to know how many of the posters on this thread are unhappy with Whitman's 2017 results and will be unhappy if its GS score returns to earlier levels? Seems like a lot of people took a whole lot of pleasure in what they saw as the school's downfall.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Putting aside the value judgment of whether it's okay to not do your best on a standardized test that has no impact on you personally, it does appear that's likely what happened given that Whitman's passage rate on the English exam went from 20% to 90% from 2016 to 2017.

Actually 91%. Looks to be among the highest, if not the highest, in the state. What's shocking to me scrolling through the results is how appalling low the pass rates are in so many of the schools (especially outside MCPS).

Is the math test given to all HS kids or just those completing Alg 1 in HS? I'm wondering why the math scores are so much lower than the english scores but if it's only measuring kids taking Alg 1 in high school, who are the weaker math students, that would explain it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Putting aside the value judgment of whether it's okay to not do your best on a standardized test that has no impact on you personally, it does appear that's likely what happened given that Whitman's passage rate on the English exam went from 20% to 90% from 2016 to 2017.

So in about a year, Whitman's GS score will presumably be back to around where it was before this year?

likely

I'd be curious to know how many of the posters on this thread are unhappy with Whitman's 2017 results and will be unhappy if its GS score returns to earlier levels? Seems like a lot of people took a whole lot of pleasure in what they saw as the school's downfall.

I don't think I took pleasure in Whitman's downfall. But there was racism and classism that popped into the threads about how these white upper class parents with strong moral values couldn't possibly have produced students with a GS rating of 4 that was ugly. As someone mentioned upthread: when poor, minority kids test poorly, people say it's because they don't work hard enough, when rich white kids test poorly, it's the fault of the test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Putting aside the value judgment of whether it's okay to not do your best on a standardized test that has no impact on you personally, it does appear that's likely what happened given that Whitman's passage rate on the English exam went from 20% to 90% from 2016 to 2017.

So in about a year, Whitman's GS score will presumably be back to around where it was before this year?

likely

I'd be curious to know how many of the posters on this thread are unhappy with Whitman's 2017 results and will be unhappy if its GS score returns to earlier levels? Seems like a lot of people took a whole lot of pleasure in what they saw as the school's downfall.

I don't think I took pleasure in Whitman's downfall. But there was racism and classism that popped into the threads about how these white upper class parents with strong moral values couldn't possibly have produced students with a GS rating of 4 that was ugly. As someone mentioned upthread: when poor, minority kids test poorly, people say it's because they don't work hard enough, when rich white kids test poorly, it's the fault of the test.

Not sure people said it was the fault of the test. It was the fault of the testees not actually taking the test seriously (or at all). And agreement that that is bad behavior. Obviously the new results show that the test itself was not an issue.