How to read school CAS data

[Anonymous]

I am trying to better understand how to read my IB elementary school's CAS data. Since my child is not yet in school, I don't have any expeirence with it and I haven't been able to find good info online.

My understanding is that CAS rankings are below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced. I assume this correlates with the red, yellow, green, and blue colors on the DC profiles page. If I want to know, "what % of kids in this elementary school are at or above grade level for reading?" do I just add the proficient and advanced together? Or is "basic" considered at grade level?

Either way, my IB school is depressing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am trying to better understand how to read my IB elementary school's CAS data. Since my child is not yet in school, I don't have any expeirence with it and I haven't been able to find good info online.

My understanding is that CAS rankings are below basic, basic, proficient, and advanced. I assume this correlates with the red, yellow, green, and blue colors on the DC profiles page. If I want to know, "what % of kids in this elementary school are at or above grade level for reading?" do I just add the proficient and advanced together? Or is "basic" considered at grade level?

Either way, my IB school is depressing.

This. And that.

[Anonymous]

Yes, you have the basics right. Adding up the % of kids who scored "proficient" with the % or kids who scored "advanced" you get the total % of kids at or above what is considered "grade level" in any given year. "Basics" doesn't cut it. But here are some things you need to take into account while 'reading' those stats:
- The students actually score on a scale, not into four categories. Say, one could have 267 points out of, say, a total of 340, whereby 268 might be considered "advanced" but 267 is considered only "proficient". So you're looking at much simplified data. I personally would much rather see the distribution because it matters on what end of the "basics" or the "proficient" scale the students are.
- It's important to recognize that the DC-CAS has had something of a life of its own, changing the type of questions and the scope of what's being tested every year and unpredictably. So a school could be teaching great things, just not exactly what's going to be tested. Charter schools deplore that most because it takes away their freedom of what kids should know in any given year. (E.g. there is much debate on when to introduce fractions or do long divisions. If the DC-CAS tests for that at, say end of 3rd grade but a school has been set to do much of that in the beginning of 4th grade, it's not like those kids are stupid. They just haven't had the material yet. The Common Core Standards, at last, has at least eliminated the guesswork that teachers and principals have had to do up until now. It'll take a while for lesson plans to finally catch up with that.
- DC made it a point to set the bar very high. So "proficient" (btw a term many school advocates deplore) is actually, contrary to what the term may imply, quite good and difficult to get.
- Lastly, how other children score on the DC-CAS says nothing about how your child will score on the DC-CAS and really nothing either about how much your child will learn. My child went into a school that had no children recorded as "advanced" and very few as "proficient" but by the time s/he got to the testing grades (3rd and above), s/he scored "advanced" nevertheless, barely in the first couple of years but solidly thereafter, but never feeling "this is a piece of cake".

[Anonymous]

Thank you PPs for your very helpful responses!

[Anonymous]

Oh, and another thing (to complement my lengthy post above), look at the total number of students and whether roughly the same students are being tested. In small elementary schools, there are often very few children who are actually subject to the DC-CAS because the number of students in 3rd, 4th and 5th grade is only a small portion of the school population. Not only is that a shaky basis for prognosis for the other students, and of course especially so if the student body changes, but it also means the results fluctuate from year to year. Say, if the number of students tested is 50, then one single student scoring "proficient" vs. "basic", means a fluctuation of 2%. Five scoring into a different category makes the overall percentage go up/down by 10% etc.
Along similar lines, make sure you look at various "groups", especially how many special needs children there are. If there are a lot, then it may not be surprising to see many low scores. Although with accommodations, they're taking the same test.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, you have the basics right. Adding up the % of kids who scored "proficient" with the % or kids who scored "advanced" you get the total % of kids at or above what is considered "grade level" in any given year. "Basics" doesn't cut it. But here are some things you need to take into account while 'reading' those stats:
- The students actually score on a scale, not into four categories. Say, one could have 267 points out of, say, a total of 340, whereby 268 might be considered "advanced" but 267 is considered only "proficient". So you're looking at much simplified data. I personally would much rather see the distribution because it matters on what end of the "basics" or the "proficient" scale the students are.
- It's important to recognize that the DC-CAS has had something of a life of its own, changing the type of questions and the scope of what's being tested every year and unpredictably. So a school could be teaching great things, just not exactly what's going to be tested. Charter schools deplore that most because it takes away their freedom of what kids should know in any given year. (E.g. there is much debate on when to introduce fractions or do long divisions. If the DC-CAS tests for that at, say end of 3rd grade but a school has been set to do much of that in the beginning of 4th grade, it's not like those kids are stupid. They just haven't had the material yet. The Common Core Standards, at last, has at least eliminated the guesswork that teachers and principals have had to do up until now. It'll take a while for lesson plans to finally catch up with that.
- DC made it a point to set the bar very high. So "proficient" (btw a term many school advocates deplore) is actually, contrary to what the term may imply, quite good and difficult to get.
- Lastly, how other children score on the DC-CAS says nothing about how your child will score on the DC-CAS and really nothing either about how much your child will learn. My child went into a school that had no children recorded as "advanced" and very few as "proficient" but by the time s/he got to the testing grades (3rd and above), s/he scored "advanced" nevertheless, barely in the first couple of years but solidly thereafter, but never feeling "this is a piece of cake".

You're joking aren't you? The DC CAS is not at all hard, nor is it aligned with the common core, which is precisely why DCPS is getting rid of it and replacing it. DCPS hasn't got a full curricula and DCPS has been rolling it out month by month, staff at central will work on perfecting it this summer so that it is fully aligned with the core next year. Schools have now started using PIAs (Paced interim assessments) as formative assessments throughout the year to assess hopefully what students are actually learning. We'll see how things progress.

[dcmom]

Anonymous wrote:

You're joking aren't you? The DC CAS is not at all hard, nor is it aligned with the common core, which is precisely why DCPS is getting rid of it and replacing it. DCPS hasn't got a full curricula and DCPS has been rolling it out month by month, staff at central will work on perfecting it this summer so that it is fully aligned with the core next year. Schools have now started using PIAs (Paced interim assessments) as formative assessments throughout the year to assess hopefully what students are actually learning. We'll see how things progress.

Is DC replacing the CAS with something else?

[Anonymous]

Yeah the Parcc assesment.

[Anonymous]

Form the DCPS Website http://dc.gov/DCPS/In+the+Classroom/What+Students+Are+Learning/DCPS+Common+Core+State+Standards


"if you’re a DC student who just makes proficiency on the DC CAS, that level of proficiency translates to only a 16th percentile score on the SAT."

That is not a high bar. Shouldn't 50th percentile be the minimum required for proficient? 16 percentile seems weak.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah the Parcc assesment.

The PARCC doesn't even exist, yet. It's just an idea. We'll see if it actually comes to fruition as promised.

[Anonymous]

OP,

You can see data related to citywide test scores in 2011-12 at public and charter schools here http://focusdc.org/data

Since your child is not school-aged yet, try not to assume too much from the tests since they are only for 3rd grade and up across the city.

DCPS can use whatever tests they want in addition to DC CAS, but the 40% (and climbing) students in charters will be using DC CAS.

The best advice from BTDT parents is don't put all your school eggs in one boundary basket. Apply to every charter and OOB DCPS you can based, see what you get and then decide. Bear in mind that some people make school choices on a year-by-year basis in DC. School reputations and enrollment can change drastically in less than 2 years.

Try not to stress too much. Research shows that you are the most important factor in your child's academic success.

[Anonymous]

what i looked at in scores this year as we were contemplating charter versus IB, etc., is score gaps--if there is a big gap between rich and poor, black and white, boys and girls, that is a red flag to me. A good school, esp. in elementary school, should have less of a gap.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Form the DCPS Website http://dc.gov/DCPS/In+the+Classroom/What+Students+Are+Learning/DCPS+Common+Core+State+Standards


"if you’re a DC student who just makes proficiency on the DC CAS, that level of proficiency translates to only a 16th percentile score on the SAT."

That is not a high bar. Shouldn't 50th percentile be the minimum required for proficient? 16 percentile seems weak.

Exactly. And it's not mentioned on the link you provided, and I don't have a link, but I recall hearing that "advanced" translates to the 50th percentile. So if you're school isn't scoring 50% advanced or higher, it's below average nationwide. Pretty sobering.

I have a degree in applied mathematics, studied a lot of statistics, and I have to say if you were to design a system for reporting results to be as uninformative as possible and to make meaningful comparisons impossible, you'd come up with something like the way the DCCAS results are reported. Can you think of anything that's measured this way, where you make four buckets and count how many go in each bucket? As a PP noted, they have the raw scores as numbers. They could easily report results using time-honored statistics like average, median, standard deviation. Clearly, they don't want to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
The best advice from BTDT parents is don't put all your school eggs in one boundary basket. Apply to every charter and OOB DCPS you can based, see what you get and then decide. Bear in mind that some people make school choices on a year-by-year basis in DC..

This is such a great idea and so good for the kids! Have them change schools every year or so.

I wish my parents would've yanked me out of my school environment every year when I was growing up -- that sounds so supportive and health.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
This is such a great idea and so good for the kids! Have them change schools every year or so.

I wish my parents would've yanked me out of my school environment every year when I was growing up -- that sounds so supportive and health.

You can't blame parents for trying to do the best they can with the basket case they've been handed.