LT loses high performing kids in the upper grades in 4th and 5th. In fact, stats at the school are not good, much worst then Maury. Only 1 out of 10 kids above grade level in math. That’s only 10% which is then diluted with kids leaving in upper grades so really the percentages of high performing kids going to SH is likely in the low single percentages. |
So…genuine question. If you look at parcc scores for white kids at EH they do tremendously well. How do you square that? |
The CAPE is not a good enough test for the difference between 4 and 5 to be meaningful. I’d look at the 4 + 5 data and, yes, LT has much better ELA stats than math stats consistently. |
Is the way this poster who keeps talking about 'on grade level' determining grade level by using CAPE scores? While not an entirely useless metric, it is also not the best, for many reasons. And yes, if you divide the sub groups out at the various middle schools, the results are pretty stark, which I would argue is not a good thing in the big picture, but it does reassure parents who are worried there is not a cohort of high achieving kids. I am sure there are a lot of kids above grade level who leave for charters or privates, but as somebody who is in a DCPS middle school, I can confirm there are a lot of kids in that cohort at the public schools as well. The number of kids in middle and high school in DC public schools is higher now than it has been in awhile. There is not only one spot for kids who want to work/try hard in school, which is a good thing! |
i think the above poster is defining only 5s as good above grade level scores in math. 5 in math is reasonably hard to achieve. kids scoring high 4s are also good at math. |
What is so hard to understand? 4 is on grade level and 5 is above. It’s written in black and white. There are lots of students who get 5’s, just not at the middle schools we are talking about. It’s unbelievable that many on here exemplify the typical low standards in DC. Just own it. |
I think the point is that a PARCC/CAPE test taken once/year is not the best way to get a full picture of a school, or the students at the school. General trends, sure - if a school has no students performing above a 3 that is a red flag. But the high performing kids you are talking about - lots of kids don't see the point in stressing over a test that has no impact on them directly and may get a range of scores. I wish DC would publish MAP or iReady data that actually shows real time growth and achievement to demonstrate what the kids are learning. |
Think of it this way -- if you have a kid who is capable of it, would you rather have them at a school that can get them to a 5, or a school that can get them to a 4? For me there is no question I would be more comfortable sending them to a school that has a track record of getting the best students to a 5. They exist. |
Maury has very high stats, so saying LT's stats are "worse than Maury" is not the same as saying LT's stats are bad. LT is one of the highest performing schools on the Hill, Maury is just higher performing. My sense is that for a time, more LT families were sending kids to SH than Maury kids were sending their kids to EH. Plus SH was getting more kids from Brent for proximity reasons. So SH's reputation seems to have risen faster than EH's. But I'm enthusiastic to see more Maury families sending their kids to EH as well. The more UMC families on the Hill continue to invest in their in-boundary public schools into MS, the better for the neighborhood and the schools, IMO. What I am not getting is your tone. Just because a school's test scores are not quite as high as another school's doesn't mean it's a bad school. LT has a slightly higher at-risk percentage than Maury, and I don't know how that shakes out by grade, but that alone could account for the differences in scores because, unfortunately, the strongest predictor of test scores at the elementary level is parents' income and education level. LT is a well liked school with a lot of IB buy in and a good school culture. That's to be celebrated. |
+1 Not sure if it is the same person repeatedly posting about test scores, and I appreciate different perspectives. But I would rather evaluate how my child is doing by seeing how many grade levels ahead they are in their reading, what advanced math classes they are taking, what type of writing/narratives they are completing, etc. All of which is not possible to capture in one standardized test score. Also will add that LT and Maury are great schools with lots of bright kids, but there are also high achieving cohorts of kids coming from other feeder schools at both of those middle schools. I know the enrollment has jumped significantly at EH since COVID, and it may have at SH and other middle schools as well. |
+1. There are significant demographic differences between LT and Maury, including that LT has a much larger OOB population. The subgroup population scores at LT are very good in ELA (e.g., 100% of white 3rd & 5th graders score 4 or 5 on PARCC last year; you can't quite tell for 4th, but likely 1 single kid didn't; also, it has at-risk scores way above the city average) and decent but not great for math. But LT has kids that excel in all sort of other academic adjacent fora (as I have no doubt Maury does too). It had 6 of the top 15 debate teams at the recent DC elementary school debate tournament, including 1st, 2nd & 4th, and that event had teams from Janney, Mann, and YY among others. It had the 2nd place team at the recent DCPS 3rd-5th grade Math team tournament. It was the only DCPS school in the city to host Math Kangaroo this year and had a bunch of kids place nationally (as well as in DC). It hosts a big science fair with impressive projects. It has an actual printed HS-style newspaper that comes out 3 times a year. It has a super impressive musical that over 60 kids participate in. All of which is to say, it has tons of indicia of smart, high achieving kids with involved parents and teachers. Maury is a fabulous school with excellent test results (among the best in the city). I would be thrilled to send my kid there too. |
Wow. I have always heard on DCUM that LT has good extracurricular options, but I really hadn’t made the connection in my mind to them being so substantive. At my school, kids attend a $$ math competition afterschool program to take Math Kangaroo, so I love that LT brought it to the school. |
Wow. Very impressed by the extracurricular offerings at LT (and the test scores, so the curriculum). What a great school! |
SY22-23 meeting or exceeding for 4th grade math compared to SY23-24 meeting or exceeding for 5th grade math: JO Wilson went from 8 to 15 students (16% to 32%) Ludlow went from 27 to 19 students (50% to 40%) Maury went from 52 to 29 students (68% to 55%) Miner went from data suppressed to 6 students (DS to 15%) Payne went from 13 to 12 students (34% to 29%) SWS went from 28 to 9 students (68% to 39%) Watkins went from 31 to 18 students (41% to 27%) Note this includes 4s and 5s. 5s alone would include too much data suppression at the individual school/grade level. |
I don't think anyone is suggesting that the kids who leave after *4th* aren't disproportionately high achievers. Of course they are, Basis is a self-selecting pool and just entering the charter lottery at all tilts a certain way. This thread was talking about the kids who left the feeder pattern after *5th*, since those are the ones the OP's kids would befriend. Those kids, at LT at least, are not disproportionately to high achievers. But also, look at your numbers. SH is getting 19 kids + 18 kids + 15 kids... That's a pretty big cohort of 52 kids. If 70% of them head to SH, which seems about right across the schools, that's 36ish kids. That's enough for two truly on grade level math classes and math is tracked. Also, the numbers of ELA are even higher and that matters more for the untracked classes. |