DC CAS Subgroup Data

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:...and Deal beats all Charters, not all other charters.

Deal didn't score "a lot better" than Basis. Deal came in only a few points higher on reading and was actually one point lower than Basis on math. But consider also that Deal has a very different demographic - mostly Ward 3 high-SES white, and they manage to keep out a huge number of FARMS students. Basis on the other hand has a much more diverse student body drawing from all across the city, with twice the percentage of FARMS students, to the point of qualifying as Title I. Deal also has more resources and funding per student than Basis. Yet Basis, as promised, still did quite well - I wouldn't at all be surprised if their scores surpass Deal's next year. Also, unlike most DCPS schools, Basis does not spend anywhere near as much time working on DC-CAS test prep. Their philosophy is to have a strong curriculum in the first place, rather than teaching to the test the way DCPS does.

I don't have a child in either school, but I will look at both when the time comes for DCs, and we are fortunate to be IB for Deal. What matters to me is the number of students scoring Advanced. I would have expected BASIS to have more based on its philosophy, or Latin based on what parents say about it, but Deal does.

Latin Advanced Math 31% Reading 22%

BASIS Advanced Math 44%, Reading 23%

Deal Advanced Math 53% Reading 36%

So Deal is a very big school, but more than half of the students are scoring Advanced in math. I realize that DC CAS is not really a marker of what the advanced kids know (my second grader got 100% on the DC CAS math, and said it was all review, so I get that it is not a hard test for an advanced kid - and they do not do much, if any, prep before the test). But it does give a sense of the cohort. DC1 is in a grade that had even higher percentages of advanced-scoring students than Deal, and nearly all of that cohort will go on to Deal. It is a strong grade in the other feeder schools I've looked at as well, so when these kids all come together at Deal, they will be among a very strong group of learners. BASIS seems like a great school, but given the drawbacks (commute, sports), it would have be far superior to our neighborhood school for us to consider it. That's not bashing BASIS or Latin, they both certainly have aspects to recommend them and friends with kids at each speak highly of them, this is just one more factor in the balance like size, commute, activities, class choices, high school options, etc. If Deal were not an option, or if we feel the need for a smaller school, these would be very attractive options.

[Anonymous]

Nothing to special about Basis. The school just happened to be populated by students who were proficient/advanced students from other schools. Ask any parent who enrolled their student at Basis from Watkins, SH, LT, or any other school whether their child was proficient/advanced prior to Basis, and the answer is likely to be yes. A true test of Basis is how well they move students from basic to proficient/advanced. From what I hear, parents are asked to find another school if their child can't cut it. What is left is essentially the cream of the crop. Saying that Basis is extraordinary because test scores are high is like claiming Harvard is great because the have a lot of students who score high on the SAT/ACT. To put it in local terms, look at the DC-CAS results for Banneker. No doubt Banneker graduates the most academically prepared students from DCPS. However, Banneker only accepts proficient and advanced students. Despite the quality of education and caliber of rigor at Banneker, you be hard pressed to find white parents willing to consider Banneker as an option for their DC.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Nothing to special about Basis. The school just happened to be populated by students who were proficient/advanced students from other schools. Ask any parent who enrolled their student at Basis from Watkins, SH, LT, or any other school whether their child was proficient/advanced prior to Basis, and the answer is likely to be yes. A true test of Basis is how well they move students from basic to proficient/advanced. From what I hear, parents are asked to find another school if their child can't cut it. What is left is essentially the cream of the crop. Saying that Basis is extraordinary because test scores are high is like claiming Harvard is great because the have a lot of students who score high on the SAT/ACT. To put it in local terms, look at the DC-CAS results for Banneker. No doubt Banneker graduates the most academically prepared students from DCPS. However, Banneker only accepts proficient and advanced students. Despite the quality of education and caliber of rigor at Banneker, you be hard pressed to find white parents willing to consider Banneker as an option for their DC.

Oh, for god's sake. The people at Basis wouldn't consider it if it didn't provide a unique service. Basis provides badly needed acceleration and challenge, no matter what it's detractors say, and it has proven itself. I'm sorry if it threatens your school, but Basis is here to stay, and is extraordinary because of its achievements, challenge, and help in educating kids who would be ignored in DCPS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:...and Deal beats all Charters, not all other charters.

Deal didn't score "a lot better" than Basis. Deal came in only a few points higher on reading and was actually one point lower than Basis on math. But consider also that Deal has a very different demographic - mostly Ward 3 high-SES white, and they manage to keep out a huge number of FARMS students. Basis on the other hand has a much more diverse student body drawing from all across the city, with twice the percentage of FARMS students, to the point of qualifying as Title I. Deal also has more resources and funding per student than Basis. Yet Basis, as promised, still did quite well - I wouldn't at all be surprised if their scores surpass Deal's next year. Also, unlike most DCPS schools, Basis does not spend anywhere near as much time working on DC-CAS test prep. Their philosophy is to have a strong curriculum in the first place, rather than teaching to the test the way DCPS does.

I don't have a child in either school, but I will look at both when the time comes for DCs, and we are fortunate to be IB for Deal. What matters to me is the number of students scoring Advanced. I would have expected BASIS to have more based on its philosophy, or Latin based on what parents say about it, but Deal does.

Latin Advanced Math 31% Reading 22%

BASIS Advanced Math 44%, Reading 23%

Deal Advanced Math 53% Reading 36%

So Deal is a very big school, but more than half of the students are scoring Advanced in math. I realize that DC CAS is not really a marker of what the advanced kids know (my second grader got 100% on the DC CAS math, and said it was all review, so I get that it is not a hard test for an advanced kid - and they do not do much, if any, prep before the test). But it does give a sense of the cohort. DC1 is in a grade that had even higher percentages of advanced-scoring students than Deal, and nearly all of that cohort will go on to Deal. It is a strong grade in the other feeder schools I've looked at as well, so when these kids all come together at Deal, they will be among a very strong group of learners. BASIS seems like a great school, but given the drawbacks (commute, sports), it would have be far superior to our neighborhood school for us to consider it. That's not bashing BASIS or Latin, they both certainly have aspects to recommend them and friends with kids at each speak highly of them, this is just one more factor in the balance like size, commute, activities, class choices, high school options, etc. If Deal were not an option, or if we feel the need for a smaller school, these would be very attractive options.

This is an misreading of the stats and I wish I had the time to break them down more. For example, when you compare Deal's sixth graders with BASIS sixth graders, the advanced scorers are 49% at BASIS and 53% at Deal. To me, the only class that will begin to show anything about BASIS is the graduating class of 2020, since that will be the first class to get full BASIS instruction from 5th grade on.

When you compare all of Deal with all of BASIS, you are comparing grades 6-8 out that were fed from the highest SES families in DC to grades 5-8 from a cohort of all different types of schools and SES. For BASIS to even come close to Deal says a lot in favor of BASIS.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:...and Deal beats all Charters, not all other charters.

When you compare all of Deal with all of BASIS, you are comparing grades 6-8 out that were fed from the highest SES families in DC to grades 5-8 from a cohort of all different types of schools and SES. For BASIS to even come close to Deal says a lot in favor of BASIS.

Umm, Deal gets kids from BOTH sides of the park and ALL SORTS of schools, not just the "highest SES families in DC"-the highest SES kid in Deal district probably go private, to be perfectly honest.

[Anonymous]

Time to stop allowing this Basis booster to take over another thread about public and public charter schools in general and instead make it about Basis-what say you?

[Anonymous]

16:32 here, and that was my only post, so please don't think I'm some crazy booster. I'm just sick of the incorrect comparisons.

PLEASE let's make this an internecine battle over which JKLM school had the best scores. Or get it back to seeing which immersion school can't teach math

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Umm, Deal gets kids from BOTH sides of the park and ALL SORTS of schools, not just the "highest SES families in DC"-the highest SES kid in Deal district probably go private, to be perfectly honest.

At some point higher SES doesn't really translate into better academics. I mean are the kids of lawyer-lobbyists really smarter/better prepared than the kids of high ranking civil servants and think tank types?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nothing to special about Basis. The school just happened to be populated by students who were proficient/advanced students from other schools. Ask any parent who enrolled their student at Basis from Watkins, SH, LT, or any other school whether their child was proficient/advanced prior to Basis, and the answer is likely to be yes. A true test of Basis is how well they move students from basic to proficient/advanced. From what I hear, parents are asked to find another school if their child can't cut it. What is left is essentially the cream of the crop. Saying that Basis is extraordinary because test scores are high is like claiming Harvard is great because the have a lot of students who score high on the SAT/ACT. To put it in local terms, look at the DC-CAS results for Banneker. No doubt Banneker graduates the most academically prepared students from DCPS. However, Banneker only accepts proficient and advanced students. Despite the quality of education and caliber of rigor at Banneker, you be hard pressed to find white parents willing to consider Banneker as an option for their DC.

Oh, for god's sake. The people at Basis wouldn't consider it if it didn't provide a unique service. Basis provides badly needed acceleration and challenge, no matter what it's detractors say, and it has proven itself. I'm sorry if it threatens your school, but Basis is here to stay, and is extraordinary because of its achievements, challenge, and help in educating kids who would be ignored in DCPS.

There is a statistic that OSSE computes, the Median Growth Percentile, which claims to capture the individual student growth. This tells how well the school raises the achievement of each student rather. It attempts to isolate the teaching quality of the school and capture how well teachers are able to advance their students regardless of where the student starts in their classroom.

Basis does not show any MGP numbers this year. Deal's MGP is impressive.

Median Growth Percentile (Math)
Deal 57 Basis - Latin 48 Hardy 45.5

Median Growth Percentile (Reading)
Deal 60 Basis - Latin 51 Hardy 48

It is a shame that OSSE doesn't provide a download capability or a spreadsheet with all the numbers and breakdowns by subgroups.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Nothing to special about Basis. The school just happened to be populated by students who were proficient/advanced students from other schools. Ask any parent who enrolled their student at Basis from Watkins, SH, LT, or any other school whether their child was proficient/advanced prior to Basis, and the answer is likely to be yes. A true test of Basis is how well they move students from basic to proficient/advanced. From what I hear, parents are asked to find another school if their child can't cut it. What is left is essentially the cream of the crop. Saying that Basis is extraordinary because test scores are high is like claiming Harvard is great because the have a lot of students who score high on the SAT/ACT. To put it in local terms, look at the DC-CAS results for Banneker. No doubt Banneker graduates the most academically prepared students from DCPS. However, Banneker only accepts proficient and advanced students. Despite the quality of education and caliber of rigor at Banneker, you be hard pressed to find white parents willing to consider Banneker as an option for their DC.

Oh, for god's sake. The people at Basis wouldn't consider it if it didn't provide a unique service. Basis provides badly needed acceleration and challenge, no matter what it's detractors say, and it has proven itself. I'm sorry if it threatens your school, but Basis is here to stay, and is extraordinary because of its achievements, challenge, and help in educating kids who would be ignored in DCPS.

There is a statistic that OSSE computes, the Median Growth Percentile, which claims to capture the individual student growth. This tells how well the school raises the achievement of each student rather. It attempts to isolate the teaching quality of the school and capture how well teachers are able to advance their students regardless of where the student starts in their classroom.

Basis does not show any MGP numbers this year. Deal's MGP is impressive.

Median Growth Percentile (Math)
Deal 57 Basis - Latin 48 Hardy 45.5

Median Growth Percentile (Reading)
Deal 60 Basis - Latin 51 Hardy 48

It is a shame that OSSE doesn't provide a download capability or a spreadsheet with all the numbers and breakdowns by subgroups.

Basis has only had two years. I know that deal is a good school; PP was denying that Basis was.

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Nothing to special about Basis. The school just happened to be populated by students who were proficient/advanced students from other schools. Ask any parent who enrolled their student at Basis from Watkins, SH, LT, or any other school whether their child was proficient/advanced prior to Basis, and the answer is likely to be yes. A true test of Basis is how well they move students from basic to proficient/advanced. From what I hear, parents are asked to find another school if their child can't cut it. What is left is essentially the cream of the crop. Saying that Basis is extraordinary because test scores are high is like claiming Harvard is great because the have a lot of students who score high on the SAT/ACT. To put it in local terms, look at the DC-CAS results for Banneker. No doubt Banneker graduates the most academically prepared students from DCPS. However, Banneker only accepts proficient and advanced students. Despite the quality of education and caliber of rigor at Banneker, you be hard pressed to find white parents willing to consider Banneker as an option for their DC.[/quote]
Oh, for god's sake. The people at Basis wouldn't consider it if it didn't provide a unique service. Basis provides badly needed acceleration and challenge, no matter what it's detractors say, and it has proven itself. I'm sorry if it threatens your school, but Basis is here to stay, and is extraordinary because of its achievements, challenge, and help in educating kids who would be ignored in DCPS. [/quote]

PP here. You prove my point. Parents with "advanced" students send their kids to Basis. I'm not bashing the school. I'm only saying that you say that Basis test scores are the result of the accelerated program, which from what I understand teaching children several math and science courses.

[Anonymous]

I am a Basis parent and am SICk of hearing about Basis! I am so much more interested in what our CITY is going to do to narrow the racial proficiency gap-44% AA proficiency vs 92% Caucasian is just despicable and it needs to be dealt with now!

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Nothing to special about Basis. The school just happened to be populated by students who were proficient/advanced students from other schools. Ask any parent who enrolled their student at Basis from Watkins, SH, LT, or any other school whether their child was proficient/advanced prior to Basis, and the answer is likely to be yes. A true test of Basis is how well they move students from basic to proficient/advanced. From what I hear, parents are asked to find another school if their child can't cut it. What is left is essentially the cream of the crop. Saying that Basis is extraordinary because test scores are high is like claiming Harvard is great because the have a lot of students who score high on the SAT/ACT. To put it in local terms, look at the DC-CAS results for Banneker. No doubt Banneker graduates the most academically prepared students from DCPS. However, Banneker only accepts proficient and advanced students. Despite the quality of education and caliber of rigor at Banneker, you be hard pressed to find white parents willing to consider Banneker as an option for their DC.[/quote]
Oh, for god's sake. The people at Basis wouldn't consider it if it didn't provide a unique service. Basis provides badly needed acceleration and challenge, no matter what it's detractors say, and it has proven itself. I'm sorry if it threatens your school, but Basis is here to stay, and is extraordinary because of its achievements, challenge, and help in educating kids who would be ignored in DCPS. [/quote]

PP here. You prove my point. Parents with "advanced" students send their kids to Basis. I'm not bashing the school. I'm only saying that you say that Basis test scores are the result of the accelerated program, which from what I understand teaching children several math and science courses.[/quote]
Not all of them do. Basis is lottery-based, and many people who are not advanced, but just badly want an alternative to their in-boundary middle school apply for it. As for growth, Basis test scores have gone up considerably this year, and before it got their CAS results, people said Basis' test would be it's CAS results. Also, the fact that BASIS gets above-average results in many of its subgroups which normally perform worse than average shows that the accelerated program has worked. Also, counseling out happens a lot less than is claimed by some on this forum, and is done only when the kid would almost certainly fail and have to repeat the grade at every school, not just Basis.

[Anonymous]

Methinks the booster doth protest too much!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Methinks the booster doth protest too much!

"The booster"? I'm not the only pro-Basis poster in this thread (I didn't even bring up Basis in the first place), and am just refuting points by other posters. There isn't just one person who disagrees with you, so please use actual reasoning.