New ESSA Star Framework for DC Public and Charter Schools

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think actually there has been quite a lot of discussion of growth scores on here.

Thing that bothers me is when I see PARCC a bit over valued. I wish we had other metrics as well aside from things like attendance, re-enrollment. We're really putting a lot of weight on this one metric.

Such as?

I'm honestly not sure, I was hoping one of the education wonks had an idea.

At the least, I think the scores should be broken down by not only growth but things like number of at-risk and FARM students, so that the raw PARCC score is used in conjunction with these factors. It's like someone said - we're just going to end up with a list that tracks perfectly with the socioeconomic background of the students.

I have a friend whose heart is set on one particular school, and because of PARCC won't consider even any charter schools. I've had a hard time explaining why I think this is misguided.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Nonetheless, there will be some surprises and some off a star from expectations.

Example:
CMI - 2 stars
Bridges - 2 stars
Shining stars - 3 stars
Deal - 4 stars
Janney - 5 stars
Stoddert - 5 stars
Mundo Verde - 3 stars
Burroughs - 3 stars
Shepherd - 4 stars
Stokes - 3 stars
ITS - 4 stars
Hearst - 4 stars
DC prep - 4 stars

Shining Stars, Mundi, Stokes= 3 stars? Never
ITS, DC Prep = 4 stars. I don’t think so.

We will see in time.

ITS has same test scores (better if you compare 3rd-5th grade and not their middle school) as Brent, Hearst, and Shepherd but you don’t have an issue with guessing they’ll be a 4? Are you just a charter hater? Wondering if you think MV should be a 4 or a 2?

Waiting for anti charter lady to respond. Does she really think “Mundi” will get 2 stars? I’d love to make a bet.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think actually there has been quite a lot of discussion of growth scores on here.

Thing that bothers me is when I see PARCC a bit over valued. I wish we had other metrics as well aside from things like attendance, re-enrollment. We're really putting a lot of weight on this one metric.

Such as?

I'm honestly not sure, I was hoping one of the education wonks had an idea.

At the least, I think the scores should be broken down by not only growth but things like number of at-risk and FARM students, so that the raw PARCC score is used in conjunction with these factors. It's like someone said - we're just going to end up with a list that tracks perfectly with the socioeconomic background of the students.

I have a friend whose heart is set on one particular school, and because of PARCC won't consider even any charter schools. I've had a hard time explaining why I think this is misguided.

The demographic data will be on the report card in the student Population section: Shares the school’s overall enrollment, percentage of students from each racial/ ethnic group as well as six other student groups, including students with disabilities, English learners,
and students who are at risk.

It won't be factored into the STAR rating though. To do so would also be problematic since there are some schools with high at-risk / economically disadvantaged populations that are doing well on PARCC, especially when growth is taken into account. They just aren't ones that are discussed all the time on this board.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think actually there has been quite a lot of discussion of growth scores on here.

Thing that bothers me is when I see PARCC a bit over valued. I wish we had other metrics as well aside from things like attendance, re-enrollment. We're really putting a lot of weight on this one metric.

Such as?

I'm honestly not sure, I was hoping one of the education wonks had an idea.

At the least, I think the scores should be broken down by not only growth but things like number of at-risk and FARM students, so that the raw PARCC score is used in conjunction with these factors. It's like someone said - we're just going to end up with a list that tracks perfectly with the socioeconomic background of the students.

I have a friend whose heart is set on one particular school, and because of PARCC won't consider even any charter schools. I've had a hard time explaining why I think this is misguided.

What if you could see things like:

“School A is really good at teaching kids with special needs, but only average at teaching ELL students.”
“School B has really high growth at bringing kids from way behind grade to grade level.”
“School C has really high growth with students who are starting the year at or above grade level.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think actually there has been quite a lot of discussion of growth scores on here.

Thing that bothers me is when I see PARCC a bit over valued. I wish we had other metrics as well aside from things like attendance, re-enrollment. We're really putting a lot of weight on this one metric.

Such as?

I'm honestly not sure, I was hoping one of the education wonks had an idea.

At the least, I think the scores should be broken down by not only growth but things like number of at-risk and FARM students, so that the raw PARCC score is used in conjunction with these factors. It's like someone said - we're just going to end up with a list that tracks perfectly with the socioeconomic background of the students.

I have a friend whose heart is set on one particular school, and because of PARCC won't consider even any charter schools. I've had a hard time explaining why I think this is misguided.

Wonder what school your friend is looking for? I wonder if your friend, that’s only into PARCC, will apply to Bannker when the time comes (if it had the same demographics as today).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think actually there has been quite a lot of discussion of growth scores on here.

Thing that bothers me is when I see PARCC a bit over valued. I wish we had other metrics as well aside from things like attendance, re-enrollment. We're really putting a lot of weight on this one metric.

Such as?

I'm honestly not sure, I was hoping one of the education wonks had an idea.

At the least, I think the scores should be broken down by not only growth but things like number of at-risk and FARM students, so that the raw PARCC score is used in conjunction with these factors. It's like someone said - we're just going to end up with a list that tracks perfectly with the socioeconomic background of the students.

I have a friend whose heart is set on one particular school, and because of PARCC won't consider even any charter schools. I've had a hard time explaining why I think this is misguided.

What if you could see things like:

“School A is really good at teaching kids with special needs, but only average at teaching ELL students.”
“School B has really high growth at bringing kids from way behind grade to grade level.”
“School C has really high growth with students who are starting the year at or above grade level.”

Wouldn't that be so great! That is what parents seem to want - to know what school is ideal for THEIR kid.

What about a short narrative:

School A teachers SN kids particularly well, is very diverse, has high re-enrollment, and uses an alternative or nontraditional teaching method. Staff turnover is high, but parent re-enrollment also high. Compared to other schools it has better than average growth scores for students who score 4 or 5 on PARCC. However, it had very few students score 5 in math on PARCC.

I guess this is what a parent is supposed to piece together themselves from the card, but, instead I bet they basically look at the star rating and then maybe the race and at risk, then move on.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think actually there has been quite a lot of discussion of growth scores on here.

Thing that bothers me is when I see PARCC a bit over valued. I wish we had other metrics as well aside from things like attendance, re-enrollment. We're really putting a lot of weight on this one metric.

Such as?

I'm honestly not sure, I was hoping one of the education wonks had an idea.

At the least, I think the scores should be broken down by not only growth but things like number of at-risk and FARM students, so that the raw PARCC score is used in conjunction with these factors. It's like someone said - we're just going to end up with a list that tracks perfectly with the socioeconomic background of the students.

I have a friend whose heart is set on one particular school, and because of PARCC won't consider even any charter schools. I've had a hard time explaining why I think this is misguided.

Wonder what school your friend is looking for? I wonder if your friend, that’s only into PARCC, will apply to Bannker when the time comes (if it had the same demographics as today).

No because....Wilson...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think actually there has been quite a lot of discussion of growth scores on here.

Thing that bothers me is when I see PARCC a bit over valued. I wish we had other metrics as well aside from things like attendance, re-enrollment. We're really putting a lot of weight on this one metric.

Such as?

I'm honestly not sure, I was hoping one of the education wonks had an idea.

At the least, I think the scores should be broken down by not only growth but things like number of at-risk and FARM students, so that the raw PARCC score is used in conjunction with these factors. It's like someone said - we're just going to end up with a list that tracks perfectly with the socioeconomic background of the students.

I have a friend whose heart is set on one particular school, and because of PARCC won't consider even any charter schools. I've had a hard time explaining why I think this is misguided.

What if you could see things like:

“School A is really good at teaching kids with special needs, but only average at teaching ELL students.”
“School B has really high growth at bringing kids from way behind grade to grade level.”
“School C has really high growth with students who are starting the year at or above grade level.”

Wouldn't that be so great! That is what parents seem to want - to know what school is ideal for THEIR kid.

What about a short narrative:

School A teachers SN kids particularly well, is very diverse, has high re-enrollment, and uses an alternative or nontraditional teaching method. Staff turnover is high, but parent re-enrollment also high. Compared to other schools it has better than average growth scores for students who score 4 or 5 on PARCC. However, it had very few students score 5 in math on PARCC.

I guess this is what a parent is supposed to piece together themselves from the card, but, instead I bet they basically look at the star rating and then maybe the race and at risk, then move on.

But what entity would be in charge of writing that narrative? And who gets to edit it?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think actually there has been quite a lot of discussion of growth scores on here.

Thing that bothers me is when I see PARCC a bit over valued. I wish we had other metrics as well aside from things like attendance, re-enrollment. We're really putting a lot of weight on this one metric.

Such as?

I'm honestly not sure, I was hoping one of the education wonks had an idea.

At the least, I think the scores should be broken down by not only growth but things like number of at-risk and FARM students, so that the raw PARCC score is used in conjunction with these factors. It's like someone said - we're just going to end up with a list that tracks perfectly with the socioeconomic background of the students.

I have a friend whose heart is set on one particular school, and because of PARCC won't consider even any charter schools. I've had a hard time explaining why I think this is misguided.

What if you could see things like:

“School A is really good at teaching kids with special needs, but only average at teaching ELL students.”
“School B has really high growth at bringing kids from way behind grade to grade level.”
“School C has really high growth with students who are starting the year at or above grade level.”

Wouldn't that be so great! That is what parents seem to want - to know what school is ideal for THEIR kid.

What about a short narrative:

School A teachers SN kids particularly well, is very diverse, has high re-enrollment, and uses an alternative or nontraditional teaching method. Staff turnover is high, but parent re-enrollment also high. Compared to other schools it has better than average growth scores for students who score 4 or 5 on PARCC. However, it had very few students score 5 in math on PARCC.

I guess this is what a parent is supposed to piece together themselves from the card, but, instead I bet they basically look at the star rating and then maybe the race and at risk, then move on.

But what entity would be in charge of writing that narrative? And who gets to edit it?

I think it could include things that are in the data, so would not require editing and could even be automated. In fact in some ways it's just a different way to present the same information and highlight pros and cons better of individual schools....

[Anonymous]

But highlighting pros and cons (at least how 11:17 sketched it out) requires subjectivity and there's no way that any government entity is going to do that.

What would be refreshing and maybe more possible is for schools used these report cards as a springboard to talk about what they are doing well and what they are not.

Some do - but most don't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:But highlighting pros and cons (at least how 11:17 sketched it out) requires subjectivity and there's no way that any government entity is going to do that.

What would be refreshing and maybe more possible is for schools used these report cards as a springboard to talk about what they are doing well and what they are not.

Some do - but most don't.

Most don't because schools liek to pretend they are good for every students. And by law they have to be good for every student, so saying things like, we do a great job with at risk students and high achievers but our special ed population doesn't thrive here, is a no go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think actually there has been quite a lot of discussion of growth scores on here.

Thing that bothers me is when I see PARCC a bit over valued. I wish we had other metrics as well aside from things like attendance, re-enrollment. We're really putting a lot of weight on this one metric.

Such as?

I'm honestly not sure, I was hoping one of the education wonks had an idea.

At the least, I think the scores should be broken down by not only growth but things like number of at-risk and FARM students, so that the raw PARCC score is used in conjunction with these factors. It's like someone said - we're just going to end up with a list that tracks perfectly with the socioeconomic background of the students.

I have a friend whose heart is set on one particular school, and because of PARCC won't consider even any charter schools. I've had a hard time explaining why I think this is misguided.

What if you could see things like:

“School A is really good at teaching kids with special needs, but only average at teaching ELL students.”
“School B has really high growth at bringing kids from way behind grade to grade level.”
“School C has really high growth with students who are starting the year at or above grade level.”

Wouldn't that be so great! That is what parents seem to want - to know what school is ideal for THEIR kid.

What about a short narrative:

School A teachers SN kids particularly well, is very diverse, has high re-enrollment, and uses an alternative or nontraditional teaching method. Staff turnover is high, but parent re-enrollment also high. Compared to other schools it has better than average growth scores for students who score 4 or 5 on PARCC. However, it had very few students score 5 in math on PARCC.

I guess this is what a parent is supposed to piece together themselves from the card, but, instead I bet they basically look at the star rating and then maybe the race and at risk, then move on.

But what entity would be in charge of writing that narrative? And who gets to edit it?

I think it could include things that are in the data, so would not require editing and could even be automated. In fact in some ways it's just a different way to present the same information and highlight pros and cons better of individual schools....

10:16 here

The point is to present data in an understandable form, although I think that having a subjective explanation from the school could be useful too.

So, for example, if the data shows that kids grow on average one grade level per year, you could call that normal growth. If kids grow on average 1.5 grade levels per year, it would be showing strong growth. Or, that could be compared to average growth in DC.

All that is to say that a single star rating is the opposite of helpful. What parent wants to send their kid to a 2 star school even if the data shows they would do well there?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think actually there has been quite a lot of discussion of growth scores on here.

Thing that bothers me is when I see PARCC a bit over valued. I wish we had other metrics as well aside from things like attendance, re-enrollment. We're really putting a lot of weight on this one metric.

Such as?

I'm honestly not sure, I was hoping one of the education wonks had an idea.

At the least, I think the scores should be broken down by not only growth but things like number of at-risk and FARM students, so that the raw PARCC score is used in conjunction with these factors. It's like someone said - we're just going to end up with a list that tracks perfectly with the socioeconomic background of the students.

I have a friend whose heart is set on one particular school, and because of PARCC won't consider even any charter schools. I've had a hard time explaining why I think this is misguided.

What if you could see things like:

“School A is really good at teaching kids with special needs, but only average at teaching ELL students.”
“School B has really high growth at bringing kids from way behind grade to grade level.”
“School C has really high growth with students who are starting the year at or above grade level.”

Wouldn't that be so great! That is what parents seem to want - to know what school is ideal for THEIR kid.

What about a short narrative:

School A teachers SN kids particularly well, is very diverse, has high re-enrollment, and uses an alternative or nontraditional teaching method. Staff turnover is high, but parent re-enrollment also high. Compared to other schools it has better than average growth scores for students who score 4 or 5 on PARCC. However, it had very few students score 5 in math on PARCC.

I guess this is what a parent is supposed to piece together themselves from the card, but, instead I bet they basically look at the star rating and then maybe the race and at risk, then move on.

But what entity would be in charge of writing that narrative? And who gets to edit it?

What if someone on this thread took on that project?!

[Anonymous]

I'm less pessimistic than 12:36 because of what has happened with the PCSB's Tier system.

People do enroll in Tier 2 and Tier 3 schools every year, and administrators do try to contextualize the ratings for parents (we know they do because when a rating dips down from one year to the next parents bring those talking points here to push back on criticism).

Just like now some parents will see the star and go no further. And others will.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think actually there has been quite a lot of discussion of growth scores on here.

Thing that bothers me is when I see PARCC a bit over valued. I wish we had other metrics as well aside from things like attendance, re-enrollment. We're really putting a lot of weight on this one metric.

Such as?

I'm honestly not sure, I was hoping one of the education wonks had an idea.

At the least, I think the scores should be broken down by not only growth but things like number of at-risk and FARM students, so that the raw PARCC score is used in conjunction with these factors. It's like someone said - we're just going to end up with a list that tracks perfectly with the socioeconomic background of the students.

I have a friend whose heart is set on one particular school, and because of PARCC won't consider even any charter schools. I've had a hard time explaining why I think this is misguided.

What if you could see things like:

“School A is really good at teaching kids with special needs, but only average at teaching ELL students.”
“School B has really high growth at bringing kids from way behind grade to grade level.”
“School C has really high growth with students who are starting the year at or above grade level.”

Wouldn't that be so great! That is what parents seem to want - to know what school is ideal for THEIR kid.

What about a short narrative:

School A teachers SN kids particularly well, is very diverse, has high re-enrollment, and uses an alternative or nontraditional teaching method. Staff turnover is high, but parent re-enrollment also high. Compared to other schools it has better than average growth scores for students who score 4 or 5 on PARCC. However, it had very few students score 5 in math on PARCC.

I guess this is what a parent is supposed to piece together themselves from the card, but, instead I bet they basically look at the star rating and then maybe the race and at risk, then move on.

But what entity would be in charge of writing that narrative? And who gets to edit it?

What if someone on this thread took on that project?!

What I'd rather see is an open data source that allows many different groups serving different constituencies in the city be able to create meaningful and helpful resources in the way that they'd like (with support from OSSE in using the data correctly). I'm unclear on whether the OSSE STAR ratings will do that or not.