Latin

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^Why don't you start with the DC-CAS? Nearly one-quarter of Latin students fail, meaning that they can barely read or do arithmatic, although they land in the same MS classes as kids working at a college level. Are one-quarter of the 6th graders, those failing the CAS, prevented from advancing to 7th grade? Hardly, my sources tell me that the kept-back rate is not even 5%. My kid, no genius or nose to the grindstone type either, scored 95% and 100% on the 3rd and 4th grade CAS tests respectively. We checked out both Latin and BASIS but are heading to a private for 6th. No confidence in the system past elementary, where uber educated parents virtually run the best schools.

Oh, so the DCCAS results are the proof of "social promotion"? Whatever, my child is not an advanced learner, so Latin is fine for us. The HS does have Honors classes which will be sufficient.

[Anonymous]

Call the parents who run JKLM, Stoddert, Brent and Maury uber educated, Ivy Leaguers, gentrifiers, residents of Upper/Lower Caucasia or what you will. They have the moxie, smarts and will to effectively run fine elementary schools. It's all downhill from there, other than maybe KIPP and SEED for poor kids. Life is too short to have my somewhat lazy but, by DC public school standards, high-flying middle schooler in class with the illiterate, however well intentioned the school may be. Wish it were different, privates are hardly my ideal.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Oh, so the DCCAS results are the proof of "social promotion"? Whatever, my child is not an advanced learner, so Latin is fine for us. The HS does have Honors classes which will be sufficient.

Pretty reasonable proof - kids who can barely read go up a grade, and another, and another. I never thought of my kid as terribly advanced, and still don't. The CAS now seems easy as pie. What an eye-opener. Yes HS honors classes, too little, too late.

[Anonymous]

I'm not convinced that the DCCAS scores tell the entire story and is the "smoking gun" that proves social promotion. My DD has consistently missed advanced by 1 or 2 points in both the reading and math portions. It's possible that some of the students that are Below Basic or whatever the terminology used are missing the next level by 1 or 2 points also. It doesn't mean they are illiterate. Geez... I'm not suggesting that all the students that score poorly are in this category, but it's possible for a few. There is also the case of the poor test takers. I'm not trying to make excuses for the less than great DCCAS scores for Latin. The poor scores bother me too, but I believe my DD is getting a good well-rounded education. The DCCAS scores don't tell the entire story.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Call the parents who run JKLM, Stoddert, Brent and Maury uber educated, Ivy Leaguers, gentrifiers, residents of Upper/Lower Caucasia or what you will. They have the moxie, smarts and will to effectively run fine elementary schools. It's all downhill from there, other than maybe KIPP and SEED for poor kids. Life is too short to have my somewhat lazy but, by DC public school standards, high-flying middle schooler in class with the illiterate, however well intentioned the school may be. Wish it were different, privates are hardly my ideal.

The parents run these schools??? Interesting...... So why can't they run the MS too?

[Anonymous]

I decided to look at the DC CAS reading scores for one cohort of Latin students (i.e., those who started 5th grade in 2008). I even graphed in Excel, but couldn't find a way to paste the graphic here. In any case, to me the data suggest that kids' scores are improving as they move through the grades. Naturally, these data don't account for kids who are repeating grades or leaving the school for a variety of reasons.

below basic, basic, proficient, advanced
5th (2008) 2.74, 20.55, 54.79, 21.92
6th (2009) 1.41, 14.08, 64.79, 19.72
7th (2010) 1.14, 18.18, 42.05, 38.64
8th (2011) 0, 11.45, 45.83, 42.71

[Anonymous]

Compelling numbers - students are improving overall - that may be a combination of many things - students finally getting a more robust education to bring them up to speed, but it may also include some here and there that wash out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

The parents run these schools??? Interesting...... So why can't they run the MS too?

They practically run them in DCPS. They find and screen faculty. They hire staff outside DCPS and pay their salaries. They raise grant money for specials. They do all sorts of things that MoCo and Fairfax wouldn't allow.

But they can't run middle schools in the same way because the catchment areas and schools are too big, and diverse, meaning the the requisite PTA cohesion isn't there and political battles eclipse common sense. You shouldn't have kids (mostly poor and black) who can hardly read in the same middle school classes as kids working several years above grade level at any of the DCPS or DCPC middle schools, let alone all of them (yes, even at Deal and BASIS). If well-heeled parents had the same kind of clout they have at the ES level in middle schools, this short-sighted practice would have ended long ago.

[Anonymous]

One big issue at the middle school level is that there are multiple elementary schools feeding in, some providing 6th graders academically well prepared and used to a positive, disciplined school culture and others....not so much. Just talk to some parents at Stuart Hobson to see what that looks like on the ground.

[Anonymous]

And without excellent leadership and educational practices, it is hard to get them all on the same page at ages 11-14.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I decided to look at the DC CAS reading scores for one cohort of Latin students (i.e., those who started 5th grade in 2008). I even graphed in Excel, but couldn't find a way to paste the graphic here. In any case, to me the data suggest that kids' scores are improving as they move through the grades. Naturally, these data don't account for kids who are repeating grades or leaving the school for a variety of reasons.

below basic, basic, proficient, advanced
5th (2008) 2.74, 20.55, 54.79, 21.92
6th (2009) 1.41, 14.08, 64.79, 19.72
7th (2010) 1.14, 18.18, 42.05, 38.64
8th (2011) 0, 11.45, 45.83, 42.71

Thanks for posting this PP. Very interesting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:One big issue at the middle school level is that there are multiple elementary schools feeding in, some providing 6th graders academically well prepared and used to a positive, disciplined school culture and others....not so much. Just talk to some parents at Stuart Hobson to see what that looks like on the ground.

The problem of some kids not arriving well prepared wouldn't be much of an issue if two things were happening in most city middle schools: a range of tough honors classes for the well-prepared, disciplined and exceptionally bright were being offered, and; appropriate summer prep courses were being offered to on-grade level and advanced kids, not just those needing remedial work. I would much rather be taking advantage of a city prep program appropriate for my kid than paying nearly $3,000 for Johns Hopkins CTY every summer.

Only BASIS preps above grade level kids in the summers through its BOSS and STARS programs.

Tracking only works well if it's done in the modern "dynamic" way, without poor minority kids being trapped in lower level classes, no matter how hard they are trying, or how well they're performing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm not convinced that the DCCAS scores tell the entire story and is the "smoking gun" that proves social promotion. My DD has consistently missed advanced by 1 or 2 points in both the reading and math portions. It's possible that some of the students that are Below Basic or whatever the terminology used are missing the next level by 1 or 2 points also. It doesn't mean they are illiterate. Geez... I'm not suggesting that all the students that score poorly are in this category, but it's possible for a few. There is also the case of the poor test takers. I'm not trying to make excuses for the less than great DCCAS scores for Latin. The poor scores bother me too, but I believe my DD is getting a good well-rounded education. The DCCAS scores don't tell the entire story.

OK, so if the CAS is so tough, how could my kid, who is lazy, score 100%? He hasn't touched a flash card in his young life and isn't particularly enamored of reading (he'd rather play sports). Test results don't tell the entire story of course, but if this particular kid can get a perfect score (his younger sister, who hasn't taken the CAS yet, seems far more academic) and one-quarter of Latin kids still fail, I'm not impressed. Not remotely. What I am is envious of friends in NYC with kids the same age, kid heading to test-in middle schools.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm not convinced that the DCCAS scores tell the entire story and is the "smoking gun" that proves social promotion. My DD has consistently missed advanced by 1 or 2 points in both the reading and math portions. It's possible that some of the students that are Below Basic or whatever the terminology used are missing the next level by 1 or 2 points also. It doesn't mean they are illiterate. Geez... I'm not suggesting that all the students that score poorly are in this category, but it's possible for a few. There is also the case of the poor test takers. I'm not trying to make excuses for the less than great DCCAS scores for Latin. The poor scores bother me too, but I believe my DD is getting a good well-rounded education. The DCCAS scores don't tell the entire story.

OK, so if the CAS is so tough, how could my kid, who is lazy, score 100%? He hasn't touched a flash card in his young life and isn't particularly enamored of reading (he'd rather play sports). Test results don't tell the entire story of course, but if this particular kid can get a perfect score (his younger sister, who hasn't taken the CAS yet, seems far more academic) and one-quarter of Latin kids still fail, I'm not impressed. Not remotely. What I am is envious of friends in NYC with kids the same age, kid heading to test-in middle schools.

But based on PP's data, it doesn't appear that 1/4 fail (and is that below basic that you equate to fail)?

[Anonymous]

^ We can see that nearly a quarter of the 5th graders aren't scoring proficient.

If my above average seeming kid hadn't scored 100% on his latest CAS, I'd be heartened to learn that the percentage failing at Latin drops steadily between 5th and 8th. Instead, I'm unhappy with the idea of my high-scoring kid being in class with any kid who would fail. The bar seems set absurdly low, even for scoring advanced. Sounds like we belong in MoCo at a Center for the Highly Gifted or something.