Rating Elem Schools by Safety and Teacher Retention

[Anonymous]

I was reading the thread about well-regarded charters versus neighborhood schools. Got me thinking about just how someone evaluates a school and whether it is a good fit for their family. So many different things are important to different people. Decided to take a look at info readily available on DCPS site having to do with ‘unique school indicators.’ Picked school safety and retention of highly rated teachers as things I find interesting – because they are not DCAS scores or demographics – but still important in my book. Safety is described as “student perception of safety and order in the school” on a scale of 1 to 100 as reported by student survey. Retention measures the percentage of teachers rated effective or highly effective who are returning to the school from the previous year. I looked at schools on the Hill; unfortunately charters are not included in the DCPS data. This is what I found:
Payne Watkins Amidon Brent Maury Ludlow-T DCPS Ave.
Safety 75 65 72 86 75 95 70
Retention 94 68 83 92 75 74 83

[Anonymous]

Unfortunately formatting does not hold in paste, but hopefully you get the picture.

[Anonymous]

What source did you use to get this info.? Is the info. current?

[Anonymous]

Yes as current as can be, this is 2013-2014 data posted on dcps.dc.gov under compare schools.

[Anonymous]

So glad they updated the school profiles with this information. I haven't looked yet, but student satisfaction survey results were another item in previous years' data.

[Anonymous]

What is the 7th school on your list OP? It says DCPS Ave.?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is the 7th school on your list OP? It says DCPS Ave.?

Not OP, but pretty sure that's DCPS average.

[Anonymous]

OP here, yes DCPS Average

[Anonymous]

[quote=Anonymous]I was reading the thread about well-regarded charters versus neighborhood schools. Got me thinking about just how someone evaluates a school and whether it is a good fit for their family. So many different things are important to different people. Decided to take a look at info readily available on DCPS site having to do with ‘unique school indicators.’ Picked school safety and retention of highly rated teachers as things I find interesting – because they are not DCAS scores or demographics – but still important in my book. Safety is described as “student perception of safety and order in the school” on a scale of 1 to 100 as reported by student survey. Retention measures the percentage of teachers rated effective or highly effective who are returning to the school from the previous year. I looked at schools on the Hill; unfortunately charters are not included in the DCPS data. This is what I found:
Payne Watkins Amidon Brent Maury Ludlow-T DCPS Ave.
Safety 75 65 72 86 75 95 70
Retention 94 68 83 92 75 74 83

[/quote]

Link to safety stats?

[Anonymous]

IIRC, the safety/order number is based on student satisfaction surveys. I wouldn't put too much stock in what a 10-year old has to say about this topic.

[Anonymous]

PP - unless you actually care that your DC fears for their safety at school. Oh how silly of me.

[Anonymous]

Stop being obtuse. If a child actually and truly feared for his or her safety I would expect that parents would have addressed this proactively with a teacher and school administration. Barring that, it's time to find a new school, not wait for the time to fill out a student survey. As only a few disgruntled students can skew results at some schools you need to drill down into the survey results, not accept them at face value.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:IIRC, the safety/order number is based on student satisfaction surveys. I wouldn't put too much stock in what a 10-year old has to say about this topic.

In the case of Watkins, it might reflect incidents where police were involved or a child (or adult) was injured.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:IIRC, the safety/order number is based on student satisfaction surveys. I wouldn't put too much stock in what a 10-year old has to say about this topic.

Dear Watkins administrator, please stop reading web forums and get back to work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Stop being obtuse. If a child actually and truly feared for his or her safety I would expect that parents would have addressed this proactively with a teacher and school administration. Barring that, it's time to find a new school, not wait for the time to fill out a student survey. As only a few disgruntled students can skew results at some schools you need to drill down into the survey results, not accept them at face value.

A lot of parents don't have the resources/wherewithal to move their kids to a different school--there seems to be some correlation between FARMs rates and safety survey results. Education campuses (PK3-8) have worse safety ratings than elementary schools. I wouldn't get concerned if one school had a safety survey rating 5 percentage points below a neighboring school, but there are some really big differences (think 50% vs. 90%) between schools. I wish there was comparable survey results for charters.