Fleeing APS schools for FFX County

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:West Springfield is more diverse than Yorktown and has a GS score of 8.

The only sense in which it's more diverse is that it has more asian students, who don't tend to be disadvantaged from an academic performance standpoint. West Springfield has a lower percentage of low-income students and a lower percentages of hispanic students than Yorktown (both are under 1% for black students).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:West Springfield is more diverse than Yorktown and has a GS score of 8.

GS is measuring performance gap, not performance.

+1. People still aren't getting it. You have to think of it like an inverse bell curve. At the extremes, either highly diverse (which tends to result in all students being clustered roughly together on the advantage scale) and almost completely homogenous (where there are too few disadvantaged students to be counted), GS scores will be higher because of the equity measurement. For those schools in between that are diverse enough for the impact to be measurable but where there's a significant advantage gap within the student body, equity scores will dip and will drag down the overall score. For school systems that care about GS scores, this provides an incentive to create zone schools to concentrate the affluent in some schools with no more than a handful of disadvantaged students to be measured and drag down the rating, and then cluster all of the less-affluent students together so that their lower test scores will be closer together. Gives the appearance of equity when really it's highly segregated.

Well don’t you worry. They’ve kicked all those poor kids out of Yorktown for the next boundary shift.
So your scores will be back up in no time.

I don't care about the GS scores because I know they're a flawed methodology. If the scores start to climb as the boundary shift rolls out, I'm indifferent to that. I'm simply pointing out to the FCPS boosters the flaws in their arguments.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:West Springfield is more diverse than Yorktown and has a GS score of 8.

The only sense in which it's more diverse is that it has more asian students, who don't tend to be disadvantaged from an academic performance standpoint. West Springfield has a lower percentage of low-income students and a lower percentages of hispanic students than Yorktown (both are under 1% for black students).

They both have 11 % low income students

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:West Springfield is more diverse than Yorktown and has a GS score of 8.

GS is measuring performance gap, not performance.

+1. People still aren't getting it. You have to think of it like an inverse bell curve. At the extremes, either highly diverse (which tends to result in all students being clustered roughly together on the advantage scale) and almost completely homogenous (where there are too few disadvantaged students to be counted), GS scores will be higher because of the equity measurement. For those schools in between that are diverse enough for the impact to be measurable but where there's a significant advantage gap within the student body, equity scores will dip and will drag down the overall score. For school systems that care about GS scores, this provides an incentive to create zone schools to concentrate the affluent in some schools with no more than a handful of disadvantaged students to be measured and drag down the rating, and then cluster all of the less-affluent students together so that their lower test scores will be closer together. Gives the appearance of equity when really it's highly segregated.

It is a ridiculous incentivization structure where no good deed goes unpunished.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:West Springfield is more diverse than Yorktown and has a GS score of 8.

The only sense in which it's more diverse is that it has more asian students, who don't tend to be disadvantaged from an academic performance standpoint. West Springfield has a lower percentage of low-income students and a lower percentages of hispanic students than Yorktown (both are under 1% for black students).

They both have 11 % low income students

GS doesn't look at current data and stats, they're using 2015 data, at which point Yorktown was 13% and West Springfield was 11%. You can't look at current demographic stats and use them to judge historical test scores because as demographics shift, test scores likely will as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:West Springfield is more diverse than Yorktown and has a GS score of 8.

The only sense in which it's more diverse is that it has more asian students, who don't tend to be disadvantaged from an academic performance standpoint. West Springfield has a lower percentage of low-income students and a lower percentages of hispanic students than Yorktown (both are under 1% for black students).

WS Black students 8%
Hispanic students 15%
Asian 14%
White 55%
FARMS 12%

Yorktown Black students 6%
Hispanic 16%
Asian 7%
White 64%
FARMS 14%

Why isn't Ytown's score higher? Is it because of SOL scores?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:West Springfield is more diverse than Yorktown and has a GS score of 8.

The only sense in which it's more diverse is that it has more asian students, who don't tend to be disadvantaged from an academic performance standpoint. West Springfield has a lower percentage of low-income students and a lower percentages of hispanic students than Yorktown (both are under 1% for black students).

WS Black students 8%
Hispanic students 15%
Asian 14%
White 55%
FARMS 12%

Yorktown Black students 6%
Hispanic 16%
Asian 7%
White 64%
FARMS 14%

Why isn't Ytown's score higher? Is it because of SOL scores?

See 10:50.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It depends on whether you can afford to buy into one of the better schools. FCPS has done a much better job than APS at pushing the worst of those issues into the schools people can least afford to leave.

How so? APS is very segregated and avoids demographic balance by claiming walk zones are a priority.

Right, but at least they're not (in most cases) making the overcrowded poor schools remain overcrowded without a boundary change, and they're not talking about doing split shifts only at Wakefield.

In FFX, they let Bailey's ES look like a favela for a very long time, only to relive them by moving half the kids into a foreclosed office building with no playground or gymnasium and calling it an "upper ES." They would not have dared propose such a solution at Chesterbrook.

Yes, this is what I’m talking about. A school system can’t do much about housing demographics. But if APS did what FCPS does, you wouldn’t see a trailer anywhere north of Route 50 even though they’d have all of the choice schools because the neighborhoods closest to Route 50 would be bused south to make more room for the north of Lee Highway folks.

Huh? If FCPS had issues similar to APS, they’d expand HB Woodlawn and convert it to a normal school, not spend a ton of money so a few hundred kids could have a private-school experience.

Whereas APS is moving HB to a site the surrounding neighborhoods rejected as inferior for a neighborhood school (because no one has to send their kid to HB if they don’t like the location) so they could maintain the program while turning the better site into an expanded neighborhood school.

I'm sorry -- that's not what happened, or at least what I perceived as having happened as a resident near the Wilson school site. My neighbors and I wanted that to be a neighborhood school. It was people from outside the neighrborhood that lobbied against it.
Albeit I didn't have kids in school at the time, so I didn't watch school board meetings, so maybe there were people outside of our civic association/neighborhood that were actively lobbying one way or the other.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:West Springfield is more diverse than Yorktown and has a GS score of 8.

The only sense in which it's more diverse is that it has more asian students, who don't tend to be disadvantaged from an academic performance standpoint. West Springfield has a lower percentage of low-income students and a lower percentages of hispanic students than Yorktown (both are under 1% for black students).

WS Black students 8%
Hispanic students 15%
Asian 14%
White 55%
FARMS 12%

Yorktown Black students 6%
Hispanic 16%
Asian 7%
White 64%
FARMS 14%

Why isn't Ytown's score higher? Is it because of SOL scores?

See 10:50.

Please. The schools didn't change that much. It's because of test scores, not GS equity chicanery.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It depends on whether you can afford to buy into one of the better schools. FCPS has done a much better job than APS at pushing the worst of those issues into the schools people can least afford to leave.

How so? APS is very segregated and avoids demographic balance by claiming walk zones are a priority.

Right, but at least they're not (in most cases) making the overcrowded poor schools remain overcrowded without a boundary change, and they're not talking about doing split shifts only at Wakefield.

In FFX, they let Bailey's ES look like a favela for a very long time, only to relive them by moving half the kids into a foreclosed office building with no playground or gymnasium and calling it an "upper ES." They would not have dared propose such a solution at Chesterbrook.

Yes, this is what I’m talking about. A school system can’t do much about housing demographics. But if APS did what FCPS does, you wouldn’t see a trailer anywhere north of Route 50 even though they’d have all of the choice schools because the neighborhoods closest to Route 50 would be bused south to make more room for the north of Lee Highway folks.

Huh? If FCPS had issues similar to APS, they’d expand HB Woodlawn and convert it to a normal school, not spend a ton of money so a few hundred kids could have a private-school experience.

Whereas APS is moving HB to a site the surrounding neighborhoods rejected as inferior for a neighborhood school (because no one has to send their kid to HB if they don’t like the location) so they could maintain the program while turning the better site into an expanded neighborhood school.

I'm sorry -- that's not what happened, or at least what I perceived as having happened as a resident near the Wilson school site. My neighbors and I wanted that to be a neighborhood school. It was people from outside the neighrborhood that lobbied against it.
Albeit I didn't have kids in school at the time, so I didn't watch school board meetings, so maybe there were people outside of our civic association/neighborhood that were actively lobbying one way or the other.

There was substantial contingent of families who would have been within the Wilson site zone who protested making it a neighborhood school because it wasn't going to have the same kind of green space and other amenities the other neighborhood high schools had given that it was on a more compact site in a more urban location.

The debate about the Wilson site as a neighborhood school was nearly identical to the current debate about the Career Center site. Given that we keep coming back to this same issue, I think at some point we need to accept that the nature of our schools has to change as the county becomes more densely populated, and will have to more closely resemble urban schools than sprawling suburban ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:West Springfield is more diverse than Yorktown and has a GS score of 8.

The only sense in which it's more diverse is that it has more asian students, who don't tend to be disadvantaged from an academic performance standpoint. West Springfield has a lower percentage of low-income students and a lower percentages of hispanic students than Yorktown (both are under 1% for black students).

They both have 11 % low income students

GS doesn't look at current data and stats, they're using 2015 data, at which point Yorktown was 13% and West Springfield was 11%. You can't look at current demographic stats and use them to judge historical test scores because as demographics shift, test scores likely will as well.

Hilarious! Classic Arlington!
Adding 2 percent to the f/RL rate at Wakefield ( pushing it to almost 50 %) is statistically insignificant.
But 2 percent at Yorktown to THIRTEEN PERCENT? Well that is just unbelievable pressure on performance!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:West Springfield is more diverse than Yorktown and has a GS score of 8.

The only sense in which it's more diverse is that it has more asian students, who don't tend to be disadvantaged from an academic performance standpoint. West Springfield has a lower percentage of low-income students and a lower percentages of hispanic students than Yorktown (both are under 1% for black students).

They both have 11 % low income students

GS doesn't look at current data and stats, they're using 2015 data, at which point Yorktown was 13% and West Springfield was 11%. You can't look at current demographic stats and use them to judge historical test scores because as demographics shift, test scores likely will as well.

Hilarious! Classic Arlington!
Adding 2 percent to the f/RL rate at Wakefield ( pushing it to almost 50 %) is statistically insignificant.
But 2 percent at Yorktown to THIRTEEN PERCENT? Well that is just unbelievable pressure on performance!

Reading comprehension is an important skill. I was responding to pp's assertion that West Springfield is more diverse than Yorktown to point out that it's not more diverse. I did not make an assertion about the degree of the gap beyond that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:West Springfield is more diverse than Yorktown and has a GS score of 8.

The only sense in which it's more diverse is that it has more asian students, who don't tend to be disadvantaged from an academic performance standpoint. West Springfield has a lower percentage of low-income students and a lower percentages of hispanic students than Yorktown (both are under 1% for black students).

WS Black students 8%
Hispanic students 15%
Asian 14%
White 55%
FARMS 12%

Yorktown Black students 6%
Hispanic 16%
Asian 7%
White 64%
FARMS 14%

Why isn't Ytown's score higher? Is it because of SOL scores?

Because the gap between Yorktown's high and low performers is larger than the same gap at WS. The low performers may very well be the same at both schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:West Springfield is more diverse than Yorktown and has a GS score of 8.

The only sense in which it's more diverse is that it has more asian students, who don't tend to be disadvantaged from an academic performance standpoint. West Springfield has a lower percentage of low-income students and a lower percentages of hispanic students than Yorktown (both are under 1% for black students).

WS Black students 8%
Hispanic students 15%
Asian 14%
White 55%
FARMS 12%

Yorktown Black students 6%
Hispanic 16%
Asian 7%
White 64%
FARMS 14%

Why isn't Ytown's score higher? Is it because of SOL scores?

Because the gap between Yorktown's high and low performers is larger than the same gap at WS. The low performers may very well be the same at both schools.

It's the other way around. But yes, that's the answer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:West Springfield is more diverse than Yorktown and has a GS score of 8.

The only sense in which it's more diverse is that it has more asian students, who don't tend to be disadvantaged from an academic performance standpoint. West Springfield has a lower percentage of low-income students and a lower percentages of hispanic students than Yorktown (both are under 1% for black students).

WS Black students 8%
Hispanic students 15%
Asian 14%
White 55%
FARMS 12%

Yorktown Black students 6%
Hispanic 16%
Asian 7%
White 64%
FARMS 14%

Why isn't Ytown's score higher? Is it because of SOL scores?

Because the gap between Yorktown's high and low performers is larger than the same gap at WS. The low performers may very well be the same at both schools.

It's the other way around. But yes, that's the answer.

Yorktown's performance may also take a hit because some high-achievers leave Yorktown to go to W-L for the IB program. There is no equivalent program that pulls high-achievers to Yorktown from the other HS's.