New DC School Report Cards have been posted to OSSE’s website

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12/03/2023 22:02

Subject: Re:New DC School Report Cards have been posted to OSSE’s website

quote

Anonymous

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is the methodology for these DC school “report cards”:

https://osse.dc.gov/blog/everything-you-need-know-about-summative-school-scores

For example, for elementary and middle school, they weight PARCC “median growth percentile” as 25% of the score and PARCC “growth to proficiency” as 25% of the score with 4-5 on PARCC being 20% of score and 3, 4, or 5 on PARCC being 10% of the score. So, in other words, a school where a lot of kids get their scores up from 1, 2, or 3 on the PARCC is worth much more than where kids score 4-5 on PARCC from the beginning and maintain those high scores. The other 20% of the score includes English learning, absenteeism, attendance growth, and reenrollment.

The high school scoring rubric is a bit different. Here PARCC “growth to proficiency” is only 12.5% of the score with 4-5 on PARCC being 15% of score and 3, 4, or 5 on PARCC being 10% of the score. Graduation rate is 20% of the score, DE/AP/IB participation is 7.5%, AP/IB performance is 5%, and college preparedness is 5%. The other 25% includes English learning, absenteeism, attendance growth, and reenrollment.

As a result, you get some perhaps perverse results. Here is an example:

DC Prep Edgewood significantly outranks Deal with a 83.3% score compared to Deal’s paltry 77.1.

However, if you look at PARCC proficiency scores for Deal, 77.9% are grade level in ELA and 63.7% are grade level in math. Deal’s chronic absence rate is 15.7%

In contrast, at DC Prep Edgewood, only 37.9% are grade level at in ELA and only 31.7 % are grade level in math. The chronic absence rate at DC Prep Edgewood is 30.5%.

However, because DC Prep Edgewood showed more PARCC “growth” than Deal (that is, more kids raised their PARCC scores up from 1, 2, or 3.), the DC school report card ranks DC Prep Edgewood ahead of Deal.

In short, at least with elementary and middle school, the DC school “score cards” prioritize improvement of academic performance over actual academic results. In other words, a school where a lot of kids improve their below-grade-level work or move from below grade level to grade level is considered “better” than a school where kids consistently do grade-level and above-grade-level work.

By this logic, actual DC report cards should give As to kids that move from C-level work to B-level and Bs to kids that consistently do A-level work.

Bingo.

+1 million

Disagree, 68% of students approached, met or exceeded expectations in ELA and 63.4% in math.
Deal certainly is higher in the category of meeting expectations and above.However to me Deal falls short because they aren't able to raise kids scores as much as DC prep middle did. They receive kids on a higher level academically but fail to get them even higher.

Deal also failed to raise the scores of students with disabilities, ELL, and the ones who are economically disadvantaged.

You have to look at the big picture, cool Deal does well teaching bon bons with tutors, parental help, or who have just experienced less trauma, and have more resources.

This raises the question of what the purpose of these scores is. If the purpose of the scores is for central admin to evaluate what schools have the best teachers/staff/learning model, I think the stats are reasonably calibrated for this aim, for the reasons you state above. But if the purpose of the scores is to help parents make an individual decision about what school to send their kid to, I think the scores are pretty useless. Parents should drill down in the data to figure it out - particularly if the child has an IEP or is economically disadvantaged.