2024 DCPS Lottery

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Via Standardized test score results, absolutely Brent is doing much better than most schools in D.C. and is doing much better than my son's current school. Almost three times better.

On the zero bullying you are right. It is why my son has been in martial arts for a while. However, what I noticed was the general teacher's lack of response to the bullying. That was what I found worrying.

To echo what the prior poster said, make sure to actually talk to folks to get a comparison before you change your kids school setting. Worst case scenario is you would have to change again. There have been a lot of posts on here about Brent families feeling like they need to use mathnasium or beast academy to supplement. I have also met people who have shared that same concern about other schools in the upper grades. Again, not saying that it is 100% accurate for all families but it is worth looking into depending on what you need. Standardized tests correlate to a lot of things, including the education level of the parents and how often they are able to supplement. The quality of instruction is part of it but by no means the only piece. There was another thread a week or so ago talking about how some of the strongest instruction happens in schools that don't have the highest test scores, because those teachers are working twice as hard to help bring kids from behind up to grade level. So if a higher achieving kid ends up with one of those teachers they really excel.
I read that post (of course, I can't remember what thread it was on now) It really resonated because my kids are now in upper elementary an middle school, having gone through a title 1 school that may not have the best scores. However, the teacher experience and growth the kids show is huge, and our kids have really done well.
Anyway, just food for thought and my regular reminder not to judge schools by test scores alone because there's a lot going on behind the scenes both for high scoring schools, and less high scoring schools.

We have had exactly the same experience at our Title 1. The range of abilities in the classes is enormous, the teachers are superstars, and my own kid scored in the 98th percentile in PARCC (and they let my kids and their cohort work well above grade level -- they small group them and give them appropriate material).

I remember being so worried when my oldest son was little and I thought I was taking a huge risk by staying, but it turned out to be a great decision.

PPs - which schools?

This is often asked on DCUM as a challenge, like 'I don't believe you, name your school!' but I'm genuinely curious because I may want to check them out for our family. I think my kid's Title I, which also has experienced teachers and iffy test scores, would be similar - we may even be at the same place! - but I like to know about other good Title I options that others who read this site tend to avoid.

I'm not the PP, but I'd suggest you look in DC School Report Card for schools with the highest math growth stats. Because that indicates quality teaching.

Yup, completely agree with this. I'm one of the PPs whose kids go to a title 1 where they are really thriving, and the schools has extremely high Math Growth scores... i think a few years ago they had the highest in DC.

NP, but thanks for this! What are good/"extremely high" math growth scores? Our Title 1 is around 65% for math (and ELA) growth to proficiency.

I think that's very good! I took a quick look at a bunch of DCPS and charter schools and most of them seem to sit in the 40s and maybe 50s. The year our school (Seaton) had the highest math growth to proficiency it was almost 80 percent. (It's since dropped down, which is troubling )

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Via Standardized test score results, absolutely Brent is doing much better than most schools in D.C. and is doing much better than my son's current school. Almost three times better.

On the zero bullying you are right. It is why my son has been in martial arts for a while. However, what I noticed was the general teacher's lack of response to the bullying. That was what I found worrying.

To echo what the prior poster said, make sure to actually talk to folks to get a comparison before you change your kids school setting. Worst case scenario is you would have to change again. There have been a lot of posts on here about Brent families feeling like they need to use mathnasium or beast academy to supplement. I have also met people who have shared that same concern about other schools in the upper grades. Again, not saying that it is 100% accurate for all families but it is worth looking into depending on what you need. Standardized tests correlate to a lot of things, including the education level of the parents and how often they are able to supplement. The quality of instruction is part of it but by no means the only piece. There was another thread a week or so ago talking about how some of the strongest instruction happens in schools that don't have the highest test scores, because those teachers are working twice as hard to help bring kids from behind up to grade level. So if a higher achieving kid ends up with one of those teachers they really excel.
I read that post (of course, I can't remember what thread it was on now) It really resonated because my kids are now in upper elementary an middle school, having gone through a title 1 school that may not have the best scores. However, the teacher experience and growth the kids show is huge, and our kids have really done well.
Anyway, just food for thought and my regular reminder not to judge schools by test scores alone because there's a lot going on behind the scenes both for high scoring schools, and less high scoring schools.

We have had exactly the same experience at our Title 1. The range of abilities in the classes is enormous, the teachers are superstars, and my own kid scored in the 98th percentile in PARCC (and they let my kids and their cohort work well above grade level -- they small group them and give them appropriate material).

I remember being so worried when my oldest son was little and I thought I was taking a huge risk by staying, but it turned out to be a great decision.

PPs - which schools?

This is often asked on DCUM as a challenge, like 'I don't believe you, name your school!' but I'm genuinely curious because I may want to check them out for our family. I think my kid's Title I, which also has experienced teachers and iffy test scores, would be similar - we may even be at the same place! - but I like to know about other good Title I options that others who read this site tend to avoid.

Not the PP, but my family has been at Payne since 2015, and has had the same positive experience as described above. I recognize the population at Payne is changing and the percent of at-risk students is less than it once was, but it does still qualify as Title 1. Because we have not done the lottery I don't often go onto the School Report Card page, so that is a good reminder for folks to look at/focus on growth. When people refer to "looking at growth scores", which of the two growth related data points are they referring to? I just pasted a sample from the Payne page.
63% of students met their growth targets in ELA, or The median student grew at the 57 percentile in ELA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Via Standardized test score results, absolutely Brent is doing much better than most schools in D.C. and is doing much better than my son's current school. Almost three times better.

On the zero bullying you are right. It is why my son has been in martial arts for a while. However, what I noticed was the general teacher's lack of response to the bullying. That was what I found worrying.

To echo what the prior poster said, make sure to actually talk to folks to get a comparison before you change your kids school setting. Worst case scenario is you would have to change again. There have been a lot of posts on here about Brent families feeling like they need to use mathnasium or beast academy to supplement. I have also met people who have shared that same concern about other schools in the upper grades. Again, not saying that it is 100% accurate for all families but it is worth looking into depending on what you need. Standardized tests correlate to a lot of things, including the education level of the parents and how often they are able to supplement. The quality of instruction is part of it but by no means the only piece. There was another thread a week or so ago talking about how some of the strongest instruction happens in schools that don't have the highest test scores, because those teachers are working twice as hard to help bring kids from behind up to grade level. So if a higher achieving kid ends up with one of those teachers they really excel.
I read that post (of course, I can't remember what thread it was on now) It really resonated because my kids are now in upper elementary an middle school, having gone through a title 1 school that may not have the best scores. However, the teacher experience and growth the kids show is huge, and our kids have really done well.
Anyway, just food for thought and my regular reminder not to judge schools by test scores alone because there's a lot going on behind the scenes both for high scoring schools, and less high scoring schools.

We have had exactly the same experience at our Title 1. The range of abilities in the classes is enormous, the teachers are superstars, and my own kid scored in the 98th percentile in PARCC (and they let my kids and their cohort work well above grade level -- they small group them and give them appropriate material).

I remember being so worried when my oldest son was little and I thought I was taking a huge risk by staying, but it turned out to be a great decision.

PPs - which schools?

This is often asked on DCUM as a challenge, like 'I don't believe you, name your school!' but I'm genuinely curious because I may want to check them out for our family. I think my kid's Title I, which also has experienced teachers and iffy test scores, would be similar - we may even be at the same place! - but I like to know about other good Title I options that others who read this site tend to avoid.

I'm not the PP, but I'd suggest you look in DC School Report Card for schools with the highest math growth stats. Because that indicates quality teaching.

Yup, completely agree with this. I'm one of the PPs whose kids go to a title 1 where they are really thriving, and the schools has extremely high Math Growth scores... i think a few years ago they had the highest in DC.

NP, but thanks for this! What are good/"extremely high" math growth scores? Our Title 1 is around 65% for math (and ELA) growth to proficiency.

Anything over 50% is good, because 50% means it's right in the middle of DC schools. 65% is a nice score.

As a school does better and better, it's hard to ave high growth scores because kids start topping out the test. If a kid gets a 5 on the PARCC and then a 5 again, that's awesome, and maybe there was growth and they would have gotten a 6 if the PARCC went up to 6. But it doesn't, so it doesn't score as growth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Via Standardized test score results, absolutely Brent is doing much better than most schools in D.C. and is doing much better than my son's current school. Almost three times better.

On the zero bullying you are right. It is why my son has been in martial arts for a while. However, what I noticed was the general teacher's lack of response to the bullying. That was what I found worrying.

To echo what the prior poster said, make sure to actually talk to folks to get a comparison before you change your kids school setting. Worst case scenario is you would have to change again. There have been a lot of posts on here about Brent families feeling like they need to use mathnasium or beast academy to supplement. I have also met people who have shared that same concern about other schools in the upper grades. Again, not saying that it is 100% accurate for all families but it is worth looking into depending on what you need. Standardized tests correlate to a lot of things, including the education level of the parents and how often they are able to supplement. The quality of instruction is part of it but by no means the only piece. There was another thread a week or so ago talking about how some of the strongest instruction happens in schools that don't have the highest test scores, because those teachers are working twice as hard to help bring kids from behind up to grade level. So if a higher achieving kid ends up with one of those teachers they really excel.
I read that post (of course, I can't remember what thread it was on now) It really resonated because my kids are now in upper elementary an middle school, having gone through a title 1 school that may not have the best scores. However, the teacher experience and growth the kids show is huge, and our kids have really done well.
Anyway, just food for thought and my regular reminder not to judge schools by test scores alone because there's a lot going on behind the scenes both for high scoring schools, and less high scoring schools.

We have had exactly the same experience at our Title 1. The range of abilities in the classes is enormous, the teachers are superstars, and my own kid scored in the 98th percentile in PARCC (and they let my kids and their cohort work well above grade level -- they small group them and give them appropriate material).

I remember being so worried when my oldest son was little and I thought I was taking a huge risk by staying, but it turned out to be a great decision.

PPs - which schools?

This is often asked on DCUM as a challenge, like 'I don't believe you, name your school!' but I'm genuinely curious because I may want to check them out for our family. I think my kid's Title I, which also has experienced teachers and iffy test scores, would be similar - we may even be at the same place! - but I like to know about other good Title I options that others who read this site tend to avoid.

I'm not the PP, but I'd suggest you look in DC School Report Card for schools with the highest math growth stats. Because that indicates quality teaching.

Yup, completely agree with this. I'm one of the PPs whose kids go to a title 1 where they are really thriving, and the schools has extremely high Math Growth scores... i think a few years ago they had the highest in DC.

NP, but thanks for this! What are good/"extremely high" math growth scores? Our Title 1 is around 65% for math (and ELA) growth to proficiency.

Anything over 50% is good, because 50% means it's right in the middle of DC schools. 65% is a nice score.

As a school does better and better, it's hard to ave high growth scores because kids start topping out the test. If a kid gets a 5 on the PARCC and then a 5 again, that's awesome, and maybe there was growth and they would have gotten a 6 if the PARCC went up to 6. But it doesn't, so it doesn't score as growth.

How much of the growth scores can be skewed by “teaching to the test”? Just checked and our school’s score is good, but I know that people claim surprising scores at lower income schools are because of test prep. Asking genuinely as a parent of a first grader.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Via Standardized test score results, absolutely Brent is doing much better than most schools in D.C. and is doing much better than my son's current school. Almost three times better.

On the zero bullying you are right. It is why my son has been in martial arts for a while. However, what I noticed was the general teacher's lack of response to the bullying. That was what I found worrying.

To echo what the prior poster said, make sure to actually talk to folks to get a comparison before you change your kids school setting. Worst case scenario is you would have to change again. There have been a lot of posts on here about Brent families feeling like they need to use mathnasium or beast academy to supplement. I have also met people who have shared that same concern about other schools in the upper grades. Again, not saying that it is 100% accurate for all families but it is worth looking into depending on what you need. Standardized tests correlate to a lot of things, including the education level of the parents and how often they are able to supplement. The quality of instruction is part of it but by no means the only piece. There was another thread a week or so ago talking about how some of the strongest instruction happens in schools that don't have the highest test scores, because those teachers are working twice as hard to help bring kids from behind up to grade level. So if a higher achieving kid ends up with one of those teachers they really excel.
I read that post (of course, I can't remember what thread it was on now) It really resonated because my kids are now in upper elementary an middle school, having gone through a title 1 school that may not have the best scores. However, the teacher experience and growth the kids show is huge, and our kids have really done well.
Anyway, just food for thought and my regular reminder not to judge schools by test scores alone because there's a lot going on behind the scenes both for high scoring schools, and less high scoring schools.

We have had exactly the same experience at our Title 1. The range of abilities in the classes is enormous, the teachers are superstars, and my own kid scored in the 98th percentile in PARCC (and they let my kids and their cohort work well above grade level -- they small group them and give them appropriate material).

I remember being so worried when my oldest son was little and I thought I was taking a huge risk by staying, but it turned out to be a great decision.

PPs - which schools?

This is often asked on DCUM as a challenge, like 'I don't believe you, name your school!' but I'm genuinely curious because I may want to check them out for our family. I think my kid's Title I, which also has experienced teachers and iffy test scores, would be similar - we may even be at the same place! - but I like to know about other good Title I options that others who read this site tend to avoid.

I'm not the PP, but I'd suggest you look in DC School Report Card for schools with the highest math growth stats. Because that indicates quality teaching.

Yup, completely agree with this. I'm one of the PPs whose kids go to a title 1 where they are really thriving, and the schools has extremely high Math Growth scores... i think a few years ago they had the highest in DC.

NP, but thanks for this! What are good/"extremely high" math growth scores? Our Title 1 is around 65% for math (and ELA) growth to proficiency.

Anything over 50% is good, because 50% means it's right in the middle of DC schools. 65% is a nice score.

As a school does better and better, it's hard to ave high growth scores because kids start topping out the test. If a kid gets a 5 on the PARCC and then a 5 again, that's awesome, and maybe there was growth and they would have gotten a 6 if the PARCC went up to 6. But it doesn't, so it doesn't score as growth.

How much of the growth scores can be skewed by “teaching to the test”? Just checked and our school’s score is good, but I know that people claim surprising scores at lower income schools are because of test prep. Asking genuinely as a parent of a first grader.

If it were that easy to teach to the test, way more schools would do it! There really is variation in school quality.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Via Standardized test score results, absolutely Brent is doing much better than most schools in D.C. and is doing much better than my son's current school. Almost three times better.

On the zero bullying you are right. It is why my son has been in martial arts for a while. However, what I noticed was the general teacher's lack of response to the bullying. That was what I found worrying.

To echo what the prior poster said, make sure to actually talk to folks to get a comparison before you change your kids school setting. Worst case scenario is you would have to change again. There have been a lot of posts on here about Brent families feeling like they need to use mathnasium or beast academy to supplement. I have also met people who have shared that same concern about other schools in the upper grades. Again, not saying that it is 100% accurate for all families but it is worth looking into depending on what you need. Standardized tests correlate to a lot of things, including the education level of the parents and how often they are able to supplement. The quality of instruction is part of it but by no means the only piece. There was another thread a week or so ago talking about how some of the strongest instruction happens in schools that don't have the highest test scores, because those teachers are working twice as hard to help bring kids from behind up to grade level. So if a higher achieving kid ends up with one of those teachers they really excel.
I read that post (of course, I can't remember what thread it was on now) It really resonated because my kids are now in upper elementary an middle school, having gone through a title 1 school that may not have the best scores. However, the teacher experience and growth the kids show is huge, and our kids have really done well.
Anyway, just food for thought and my regular reminder not to judge schools by test scores alone because there's a lot going on behind the scenes both for high scoring schools, and less high scoring schools.

We have had exactly the same experience at our Title 1. The range of abilities in the classes is enormous, the teachers are superstars, and my own kid scored in the 98th percentile in PARCC (and they let my kids and their cohort work well above grade level -- they small group them and give them appropriate material).

I remember being so worried when my oldest son was little and I thought I was taking a huge risk by staying, but it turned out to be a great decision.

PPs - which schools?

This is often asked on DCUM as a challenge, like 'I don't believe you, name your school!' but I'm genuinely curious because I may want to check them out for our family. I think my kid's Title I, which also has experienced teachers and iffy test scores, would be similar - we may even be at the same place! - but I like to know about other good Title I options that others who read this site tend to avoid.

Not the PP, but my family has been at Payne since 2015, and has had the same positive experience as described above. I recognize the population at Payne is changing and the percent of at-risk students is less than it once was, but it does still qualify as Title 1. Because we have not done the lottery I don't often go onto the School Report Card page, so that is a good reminder for folks to look at/focus on growth. When people refer to "looking at growth scores", which of the two growth related data points are they referring to? I just pasted a sample from the Payne page.
63% of students met their growth targets in ELA, or The median student grew at the 57 percentile in ELA.

I'm the PP who you are responding to, and great to know! Thank you! This jibes with what I've heard about Payne from a couple of current families we are friendly with. We have been very happy with our out-of-boundary, but nearby Title I for early elementary. I'm optimistic about it for the later grades, and we plan to stay. But if things don't pan out like I'm hoping/expecting, Payne is probably my first choice of a backup, even though it's a bit of a hike for us from the center city area.

Did you do Eliot-Hine too? If so, what's been your experience? I've heard positive things about that school too.

[Anonymous]

Here is the thing with growth scores. It’s easy to get points when you are at the bottom of the barrel. When you are already high, there is nowhere else to go, so you get dinged.

My kid consistently scores 95% and higher on standardized testing but his growth scores on the chart are terrible because he hasn’t improved.

So take growth scores with a grain of salt.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Here is the thing with growth scores. It’s easy to get points when you are at the bottom of the barrel. When you are already high, there is nowhere else to go, so you get dinged.

My kid consistently scores 95% and higher on standardized testing but his growth scores on the chart are terrible because he hasn’t improved.

So take growth scores with a grain of salt.

I don't know about that -- a good school will keep pushing your kid even when they exceed grade level. My kid got a 98th percentile score on the PARCCs last year... But he pushed up from the beginning of the year to mid year by 3 grade levels, according to I Ready (from 4th grade to 7th grade level , as a 4th grader). Supported by teachers to keep pushing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is the thing with growth scores. It’s easy to get points when you are at the bottom of the barrel. When you are already high, there is nowhere else to go, so you get dinged.

My kid consistently scores 95% and higher on standardized testing but his growth scores on the chart are terrible because he hasn’t improved.

So take growth scores with a grain of salt.

I don't know about that -- a good school will keep pushing your kid even when they exceed grade level. My kid got a 98th percentile score on the PARCCs last year... But he pushed up from the beginning of the year to mid year by 3 grade levels, according to I Ready (from 4th grade to 7th grade level , as a 4th grader). Supported by teachers to keep pushing.

They will, but it won't show up in the MGP data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is the thing with growth scores. It’s easy to get points when you are at the bottom of the barrel. When you are already high, there is nowhere else to go, so you get dinged.

My kid consistently scores 95% and higher on standardized testing but his growth scores on the chart are terrible because he hasn’t improved.

So take growth scores with a grain of salt.

I don't know about that -- a good school will keep pushing your kid even when they exceed grade level. My kid got a 98th percentile score on the PARCCs last year... But he pushed up from the beginning of the year to mid year by 3 grade levels, according to I Ready (from 4th grade to 7th grade level , as a 4th grader). Supported by teachers to keep pushing.

They will, but it won't show up in the MGP data.

Is MGP just based on PARCC?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here is the thing with growth scores. It’s easy to get points when you are at the bottom of the barrel. When you are already high, there is nowhere else to go, so you get dinged.

My kid consistently scores 95% and higher on standardized testing but his growth scores on the chart are terrible because he hasn’t improved.

So take growth scores with a grain of salt.

I don't know about that -- a good school will keep pushing your kid even when they exceed grade level. My kid got a 98th percentile score on the PARCCs last year... But he pushed up from the beginning of the year to mid year by 3 grade levels, according to I Ready (from 4th grade to 7th grade level , as a 4th grader). Supported by teachers to keep pushing.

They will, but it won't show up in the MGP data.

Is MGP just based on PARCC?

Yes. 100% PARCC, so only counts 3-5 too. It is why even as a data lover, DCPS’ data really doesn’t tell the whole story about which schools are good. Also, they always measure growth data year on year, which means small blips have crazily outsized weight. Would make way more sense to do weighted growth over up-to 3 years.

[Anonymous]

It didn't seem worth starting a new thread, but an interesting anecdata point from our principal: BIG increase in the number of kids on the waiting list after the lottery was initially run last week year-on-year.

Our school is on a bit of an upward trajectory, so some portion of that could be school-specific, but I think a big increase would have to reflect a system-wide increase in numbers. Will be interesting to see.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It didn't seem worth starting a new thread, but an interesting anecdata point from our principal: BIG increase in the number of kids on the waiting list after the lottery was initially run last week year-on-year.

Our school is on a bit of an upward trajectory, so some portion of that could be school-specific, but I think a big increase would have to reflect a system-wide increase in numbers. Will be interesting to see.

Would you mind sharing what school?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It didn't seem worth starting a new thread, but an interesting anecdata point from our principal: BIG increase in the number of kids on the waiting list after the lottery was initially run last week year-on-year.

Our school is on a bit of an upward trajectory, so some portion of that could be school-specific, but I think a big increase would have to reflect a system-wide increase in numbers. Will be interesting to see.

Would you mind sharing what school?

Sorry, don't want to say as I'm sure the principal wasn't supposed to share this with parents and I have no interest in getting them in trouble.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It didn't seem worth starting a new thread, but an interesting anecdata point from our principal: BIG increase in the number of kids on the waiting list after the lottery was initially run last week year-on-year.

Our school is on a bit of an upward trajectory, so some portion of that could be school-specific, but I think a big increase would have to reflect a system-wide increase in numbers. Will be interesting to see.

Would you mind sharing what school?

I was at the launch of this report last week, https://www.dcpolicycenter.org/publications/state-of-dc-schools-2022-23/ - while they did not share any concrete data, they were talking about enrollment trends, and the impression given was that enrollment (based on lottery data) has continued to increase. If you look at page 6, besides the one year in the pandemic, enrollment has been on the rise since 2013. The report breaks it down by age/grade level as well, which is interesting. For example, the last two years, increased enrollment in public high schools (both public and charter) has been what was driving growth.