DC Standards question

[Anonymous]

I have seen references in several posts that the DCPS standards are very high. I have also heard this referenced in tours/information sessions for both DCPS schools and charter schools. I tried to read the standards myself on the DCPS website and I admit I do not have the background to know high academic standards when I see them written out. Can anyone explain what this means as a practical matter? Are they higher than or comparable to those used in Montgomery, Arlington and Fairfax Counties? If my child tests advanced at DCPS, is that comparable to testing advanced in these other school districts?

For the record, my child will be entering Pre-K next year so I do not know how she will eventually test. I am just trying to get a handle on context. Thank you in advance.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have seen references in several posts that the DCPS standards are very high. I have also heard this referenced in tours/information sessions for both DCPS schools and charter schools. I tried to read the standards myself on the DCPS website and I admit I do not have the background to know high academic standards when I see them written out. Can anyone explain what this means as a practical matter? Are they higher than or comparable to those used in Montgomery, Arlington and Fairfax Counties? If my child tests advanced at DCPS, is that comparable to testing advanced in these other school districts?

For the record, my child will be entering Pre-K next year so I do not know how she will eventually test. I am just trying to get a handle on context. Thank you in advance.

The DCPS Standards, introduced in a systematic, measured way by Superintendent Janey (not Chancellor Rhee his successor) were part of a national trend to define what children should be able to show they know at the end of a school year. The Standards are targets, and it is not enough for a teacher to teach to them, but to repeatedly evaluate whether the student has demonstrated them in a performance task or assessment. The Standards in DC are considered 'high'--adapted from the Massachusetts Standards,which are the apex of Standards. However, that means nothing of they are not taught and assessed properly. The DC-CAS is very poorly correlated to the Standards. You will see if your child has performed at different levels (advanced, proficient, basic , below basic) in different strands--like number sense. However, this will give you very little of the fine-grained anaylsis provided by a teacher who can both teach to and assess the standards. For example, a teacher can use a class presentation on a topic to assess three different standards at once-- Language Arts --presentation (voice, intonation...), a Social Studies topic like 'transportation West' and a Language Arts Standard like 'compares and contrasts information'. This can never be encapsulated in the report card, which was an attempt to correlate to the standards but only covers power standards that seem randomly selected and cause people to forget that so much more is implemented every day in class. The Standards based report cards, which will assess your child in individual Standards rather than assign a letter grade or percentile for a class. have led to accusations of being 'not real grades'. In some ways, they are more real though than the old A's and B's. In other ways, they are just confusing. Standards in and of themselves are great; they are a target to teacher and student--not how to teach or learn, which still should be free and creative. However, in its drive to be uniform, the District has turned Standards into a burdensome mandate. Teachers are required to 'post' the Standard for every single lesson; DCPS inspectors play a cat and mouse game to come in the classroom and catch teachers without the standards posted. There is a very formulaic script to 'unwrap' the Standard blah blah that (again, the inspectors cruise around to catch people) that has become so lockstep as to obviate the initial beauty of Standards--they are a simple guide to what children should know, and be able to show they know, by year end. The new secretary of education is interested in creating one national set of standards since they are pretty much universals now, though every state has different ones. This will probably then result in one national set of high stakes tests as well for each grade level--and lots and lots of time devoted to prepping for said. Which again, these tests --now matter how well designed--do not always correlate to the fine-grained spirit of the standards and how they can be interwoven in a lesson and assessment.

[Anonymous]

Thank you. That is very helpful, at least in knowing what the standards do not mean. It is also a little depressing for education generally.

Is there information comparing the best in DC public schools and charter schools with what could be expected in the very good public schools in Bethesda or Arlington?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you. That is very helpful, at least in knowing what the standards do not mean. It is also a little depressing for education generally.

Is there information comparing the best in DC public schools and charter schools with what could be expected in the very good public schools in Bethesda or Arlington?

Hi, yes, you put your finger on it. There is quite a bit that is a little depressing for education generally. As a teacher and a parent, I often wish I could not peek behind the curtain . It can keep you up at night!

To answer your second question, the School Report Cards available for both publics and charters in DC may be what you are looking for to quickly evaluate overall school quality, though they have no feature that will allow you to make a direct comparison with MD or VA (see the DCPS website). These Report Cards list each school and break down testing results for students by groups tested as required by NCLB, overall school percentiles, boys, girls, etc. Read the 'key' closely, and you can get a good sense of the school overall. Even though the DC-CAS (the yearly high stakes test) correlates awkwardly to the DC Standards, its results are still a useful yardstick. It is a challenging test like any other state test nationwide, so if a school has a high percentage of advanced or proficient students--it definitely is either drawing from a high performing student population, educating to a high performance level--or both. Be VERY careful though. A school can FAIL to make AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) and still be a very high caliber school. A school can fail AYP if any one of its subset popluations fail, so be careful to look at overall scores, and perhaps the scores that apply to the subset that your child fits. No-one wants any group to not make AYP, but that does not mean the school is not trying strategies to teach said group. In the case of ELL's for example (English Language Learners) this can take time and even the best schools can 'fail' from year to year (this is happening locally a lot in Arlington, despite one of the strongest ELL programs in the country, there is also a huge ELL population whose results 'count' towards school report card after 2nd year in country; many argue the constantly augmenting (year by year) AYP goals for said subsets are unrealistic and set the schools up to 'fail')