new insights into what went wrong with Wilson's PARCC scores
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Anonymous
You missed the entire point of school reform (and DCPS's mission) altogether. It's not about raising test scores. The point is to improve education for poor disenfranchised minorities. High test scores are only important in that poor black kids do well on them. A 95% PARCC pass rate with just 90+% of the passers being white= a HUGE FAIL for the school, its teachers and principal. That's why no matter how good some scores may look, they're still considered unimpressive if an achievement gap exists. |
Anonymous
| DD at SWW. She felt like it was a threat to graduation if she did not take test. She showed up but did not stress abt the score. |
Anonymous
"High School kids are old enough to self-advocate. That's why I'm mad online that they did self-advocate." seems to me what you mean. |
Anonymous
In my mind, Wilson's administration completely dropped the ball. As simple as that. New, inexperienced principal completely out of her league. |
Anonymous
the parccs were held the same week as aps-parents complained, weren't taken seriously, so high achieving students either skipped the tests altogether in deference to the aps they got college credit for or blew the tests off and took both, randomly completing the parccs. |
Anonymous
| next time they'll allow opt out! See jow simple this is. |
Anonymous
Ok, let's look at these 3 points 1. PARCC may be only a 3 hr exam per day, but my DC was scheduled for 3 straight days of testing the week before APs. While PARCC testing was ongoing, so were all the regular classes. DC would have been playing catch up in several class assignments, trying to turn in homework after missing the class etc right smack before APs. That was un-neccessary stress, and there's no policy in place to have teachers stop their lesson plans while PARCC is ongoing. 2. There's no free periods in the school day for these reviews, lunch time is a blip. Asking for another review time would either mean moving the reviews further away from the AP test, or persuading teachers to stay after school for the review :/ o a day when the kids had already sat through hours of testing 3. I agree that administration was aware of the testing schedule for PARCC months in advance. MY DC was notified of being in the testing cohort less than 2 weeks before the test I asked admin @ Wilson why DC was in the testing cohort for a middle school math class, the response was "ask central DCPS, they sent us the lists". I emailed central DCPS and the response was "Wilson makes the lists of students, not us" So, once I figured no-one would take responsibility for DC 's presence on the testing roster, I told DC not to alter the normal schedule of classes: go to reviews, go take your APs I think it makes more sense for PARCC to be moved. AP exams are nation-wide, always the same weeks in May. DC can decide when to schedule PARCC, and can avoid conflicts like this |
Anonymous
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The washpo article said it was a similar percentage of students that took the test this year and last year.
so what is the excuse again about the test scores? |
Anonymous
If by "similar" they mean not really the same at all ... |
Anonymous
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From Ruth Wattenberg, the Ward 3 State Board of Education rep, today:
Why did scores drop so dramatically at Wilson and Walls? The release of PARCC (the annual test taken by DC public school students) scores showed small average increases in PARCC scores across most grades and subjects across the city, coupled with dramatic score drops at Wilson, and School Without Walls. Why the drops? As I explain below, these scores cannot and should not be regarded as valid for concluding anything about achievement at either school. Validity requires that there is something constant, known, and relevant about the students taking the test this year and last. In the case of these two schools, these conditions are absent. Reasons Offered... One idea about why the scores dropped--offered by the Chancellor, according to the Washington Post--is that many high- performing students didn’t take the test or didn’t try hard because they and their parents weren’t sufficiently aware of its importance. Another argument, made at the press conference releasing the citywide scores, attributes it to poor handling of administrative issues (artfully worded so that blame is diffuse and no one is held accountable.) A new Post article interviews students who say they were more concerned with doing well on their AP tests, which were scheduled during the same time frame. I’ve also heard it suggested that this is the beginning of an opt-out movement in DC., with parents and students just blowing the test off, as some communities elsewhere have done. Based on what I know, I don’t think any of these, on their own, are the primary cause for the score drop. And some of these reasons sound an awful lot like efforts to shift the accountability for the problem to the students and schools, and away from the agency (ies) that is/are responsible, as explained next. And, based on what I know, a more likely, fuller cause: Students at Wilson and Walls were inexplicably assigned to take exams for courses in which they weren't enrolled. DCPS did not correct the problem, then allowed many exemptions, and problems ensued. Here's what happened and the context for it. First, across the country, where PARCC is used, students are supposed to take the PARCC exams that correspond to the classes they are enrolled in. So, in the upper grades, where students from multiple grades may take the same course (9th, 10,th, and 11th graders may all be enrolled in geometry, for example), students are supposed to take the exam that corresponds to the course they are enrolled in; Algebra 1 students should take the Algebra 1 exam, Geometry students the Geometry exam, English 2 students the English 2 exam, etc. If students aren’t enrolled in a course with a corresponding PARCC test (e.g. an AP English test, statistics, etc.), they aren’t supposed to take a PARCC test. This is how it is done in nearby Maryland and New Jersey--and it’s how PARCC recommends that it should be done. Second, for reasons that remain unclear and unexplained, DCPS did something else: It assigned students to take exams in courses that they were not enrolled in, which struck many people, rightly, as quite nonsensical. How is it useful for a student who took geometry in 8th or 9th grade to take a test in it in 12th grade? Third, school officials asked the central office to re-assign students, so that they weren’t being asked to take an irrelevant test “wrong” test. Parents raised the problem as well. I raised the problem multiple times with DCPS and with the state education agency (OSSE). The concerns of school officials and parents were ignored; DCPS refused to change it. DCPS and OSSE blamed each other for the problem. (DCPS claims that they were required by OSSE to do what they were doing. OSSE claims that DCPS chose to do it this way, despite OSSE’s contrary recommendation, but that OSSE couldn’t prevent it. I can’t say which is actually the case). What I can say is that both agencies understood the problem. Each blamed the other; neither solved the problem. Fourth, in an apparent acknowledgement that the practice was wrong, DCPS made clear (to any parent that asked) that it would exempt from the test any mis-assigned student whose parent asked for such an exemption, further assuring that the testing sample for this year would be so questionable that scores from this year could in no way be used to compare student achievement with the previous year’s. Fifth, DCPS never publicly acknowledged the problem, never reassigned students, and has known since spring that participation would be both low and random. Therefore, it knew that whether the scores were extra high or extra low, they would be invalid. OSSE knew all of this as well. It’s a mystery to me why these scores were reported out at all. As my mother always said: there are reasons--and real reasons. It is true that many students chose not to tae the tests--and that many families supported them. It is also true that DCPS enabled these exemptions. But, it seems like the real reason for the low participation and low effort was an official approach to the tests that was entirely dismissive of good practice, common sense, and reasonable complaints. That led many students and families in these schools to lose their faith in the credibility and usefulness of the city's testing system. If we want families and students to support and participate in the testing program--and I very much do--the authorities need to do their part to make it a credible system worth everyone's time. Take heart in the knowledge that these scores do not in any way indicate that achievement at Walls or Wilson has dropped! Of course, since the scores are in effect meaningless, we don’t now that scores haven’t dropped, either. If folks at the schools have concerns that shifts in programming, budget, or anything else have effected achievement, these issues should be carefully examined. |
Anonymous
| Doesn't sound like a test for which one needs to study. |
Anonymous
| These scores are not meaningless to the teachers whose final evaluation will be based on their students' outcomes. Not sure if they counted this year to IMPACT. |
Anonymous
No IMPACT this year. Next year - it will count for teachers and students. But again only 10th grade English is required for high school and one year of math whenever you take geometry. So not sure what they do for AP teachers etc. Maybe AP exam test scores should be counted if a test score is needed. |
Anonymous
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I get why kids would blow off the PARCC, I really do. Especially with the AP's the same week.
Couple of questions: What percentage of the students take AP exams each year? If the explanation of the smart kids blew off the tests why did english test scores decrease at a much higher rate than english? .... frankly I think there is a bit more going on. |
Anonymous
I actually wouldn't care about it. But my kid won't be on the jail track either. Because we do have the money to supplement and the ability to advocate. Seriously teacher should be sweating this if they are going to be judged on parch scores. No one cares about 5s but shouldn't the school care about "catering" to these families so they will encourage their kids to take these tests. |