Comparing elementary schools on things that matter

[Anonymous]

did the response feature break on this thread?

[Anonymous]

No

[Anonymous]

OP, different things matter to different people. To me, the most important factor was teacher quality. I assessed this by going to open houses and tours during the school day and watching the lessons in person and by asking about teacher retention and teacher experience at each school. These things vary widely from school to school and, IMO, make an ENORMOUS impact on the educational experience.

[Anonymous]

I also asked the principals/heads about what other staffers support the actual education -- do they have math and reading specialists and what exactly do they do?

Again, this actually varies widely from school to school. Some schools (DCPS) were much more specific in their answers than others (ahem, "highly regarded" charters).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP, different things matter to different people. To me, the most important factor was teacher quality. I assessed this by going to open houses and tours during the school day and watching the lessons in person and by asking about teacher retention and teacher experience at each school. These things vary widely from school to school and, IMO, make an ENORMOUS impact on the educational experience.

Can I ask how you were able to do this? We reached out to our IB school so many times to ask for information, a tour, literally anything they would be willing to tell us and never heard back. The huge webinar they did in December where you were supposed to be able to learn about the schools, was a complete waste of time. It just sent us to a YouTube video. How are people really supposed to assess their public school?

[Anonymous]

At one point I remember seeing a breakdown of how well my children's demographic group (white) was performing at their school relative to where they should be performing, given their demographics. Does anyone remember this? It is different than PARCC scores by demographics bc those don't give the comparison of where their demographic should be performing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP, different things matter to different people. To me, the most important factor was teacher quality. I assessed this by going to open houses and tours during the school day and watching the lessons in person and by asking about teacher retention and teacher experience at each school. These things vary widely from school to school and, IMO, make an ENORMOUS impact on the educational experience.

Can I ask how you were able to do this? We reached out to our IB school so many times to ask for information, a tour, literally anything they would be willing to tell us and never heard back. The huge webinar they did in December where you were supposed to be able to learn about the schools, was a complete waste of time. It just sent us to a YouTube video. How are people really supposed to assess their public school?

Did you go to open houses? These are actually very useful.
After you get in somewhere, they will let you tour again. For our IB school, I talked to the principal and set up a meeting with her, she brought in a bunch of math/reading specialists to talk to and i observed every classroom.

I also think there is data out there about teacher experience, maybe in the STAR reports somewhere.

[Anonymous]

Ed data nerd here. Some of the things you are asking for are data that either are problematic or not collected systematically.

[You can't see test scores by demographics by grade because that would slice the data so thin that you would expose individual kids. (e.g. "how are asian kids in the third grade doing?" means you might be asking about five specific kids at a school).

Hours of screen time -- this is simply not tracked by anyone, ever.

Outdoor time -- you can ask to see a schedule. There's likely not much variation across schools here. (To the person who said it's not a concern past preschool, I disagree. My middle schooler does not have adequate outdoor/exercise time.

Class size & student teacher ratio -- max ratio is dictated by budget. This varies when schools are undersubscribed. You might be able to get it from the website by counting Ts per grade.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Ed data nerd here. Some of the things you are asking for are data that either are problematic or not collected systematically.

[You can't see test scores by demographics by grade because that would slice the data so thin that you would expose individual kids. (e.g. "how are asian kids in the third grade doing?" means you might be asking about five specific kids at a school).

Hours of screen time -- this is simply not tracked by anyone, ever.

Outdoor time -- you can ask to see a schedule. There's likely not much variation across schools here. (To the person who said it's not a concern past preschool, I disagree. My middle schooler does not have adequate outdoor/exercise time.

Class size & student teacher ratio -- max ratio is dictated by budget. This varies when schools are undersubscribed. You might be able to get it from the website by counting Ts per grade.

There is some master excel spreadsheet somewhere that breaks down PARCC scores by demographic group. It suppresses the data for very small datasets (like asian kids in third grade). You can also get information about screen time, outdoor time, and class size by asking at open houses. You can ask, "are there ipads/devices in the classroom? one per student or shared? how are they incorporated into the curriculum for math and ELA?" You can also ask for the average class size per grade and if they try to say "it depends," then just ask what it has been for the last year or two. Ask if there are dedicated or floating aides per grade, and how that changes in upper grades. Outdoor time is what it is for DCPS, but that's another question you could ask directly at charter open houses.

There may not be data for this type of information, but it's definitely information that administrators would know and could roughly quantify if asked. It's also NOT information that other parents would probably know because once you're actually at a school, you don't have a ton of insight to what your kid is doing all day because they're all a bunch of reluctant and unreliable narrators.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ed data nerd here. Some of the things you are asking for are data that either are problematic or not collected systematically.

[You can't see test scores by demographics by grade because that would slice the data so thin that you would expose individual kids. (e.g. "how are asian kids in the third grade doing?" means you might be asking about five specific kids at a school).

Hours of screen time -- this is simply not tracked by anyone, ever.

Outdoor time -- you can ask to see a schedule. There's likely not much variation across schools here. (To the person who said it's not a concern past preschool, I disagree. My middle schooler does not have adequate outdoor/exercise time.

Class size & student teacher ratio -- max ratio is dictated by budget. This varies when schools are undersubscribed. You might be able to get it from the website by counting Ts per grade.

There is some master excel spreadsheet somewhere that breaks down PARCC scores by demographic group. It suppresses the data for very small datasets (like asian kids in third grade). You can also get information about screen time, outdoor time, and class size by asking at open houses. You can ask, "are there ipads/devices in the classroom? one per student or shared? how are they incorporated into the curriculum for math and ELA?" You can also ask for the average class size per grade and if they try to say "it depends," then just ask what it has been for the last year or two. Ask if there are dedicated or floating aides per grade, and how that changes in upper grades. Outdoor time is what it is for DCPS, but that's another question you could ask directly at charter open houses.

There may not be data for this type of information, but it's definitely information that administrators would know and could roughly quantify if asked. It's also NOT information that other parents would probably know because once you're actually at a school, you don't have a ton of insight to what your kid is doing all day because they're all a bunch of reluctant and unreliable narrators.

But it does depend! DCPS schools have to take who lives in the boundary, and their class size is going to depend on how many by-right kids enroll. There's nothing sneaky about it. The correct answer is that they try to be at what DCPS considers best (about 24 kids in upper elementary) but reality doesn't always align. In charters, they have more control, but might have a smaller size if less kids enroll, or slightly bigger if they feel there's a compelling reason.

Similarly, the aides and especially the floating aides are going to be allocated based on need-- class size, special needs, experience level of teacher, maybe something to do with scheduling so that they are always at the proper adult-child ratio. So they don't know in advance exactly how it will be. Don't assume they're being sneaky or trying to conceal something-- maybe they are, but more likely it's a decision they make based on real-time needs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ed data nerd here. Some of the things you are asking for are data that either are problematic or not collected systematically.

[You can't see test scores by demographics by grade because that would slice the data so thin that you would expose individual kids. (e.g. "how are asian kids in the third grade doing?" means you might be asking about five specific kids at a school).

Hours of screen time -- this is simply not tracked by anyone, ever.

Outdoor time -- you can ask to see a schedule. There's likely not much variation across schools here. (To the person who said it's not a concern past preschool, I disagree. My middle schooler does not have adequate outdoor/exercise time.

Class size & student teacher ratio -- max ratio is dictated by budget. This varies when schools are undersubscribed. You might be able to get it from the website by counting Ts per grade.

There is some master excel spreadsheet somewhere that breaks down PARCC scores by demographic group. It suppresses the data for very small datasets (like asian kids in third grade). You can also get information about screen time, outdoor time, and class size by asking at open houses. You can ask, "are there ipads/devices in the classroom? one per student or shared? how are they incorporated into the curriculum for math and ELA?" You can also ask for the average class size per grade and if they try to say "it depends," then just ask what it has been for the last year or two. Ask if there are dedicated or floating aides per grade, and how that changes in upper grades. Outdoor time is what it is for DCPS, but that's another question you could ask directly at charter open houses.

There may not be data for this type of information, but it's definitely information that administrators would know and could roughly quantify if asked. It's also NOT information that other parents would probably know because once you're actually at a school, you don't have a ton of insight to what your kid is doing all day because they're all a bunch of reluctant and unreliable narrators.

But it does depend! DCPS schools have to take who lives in the boundary, and their class size is going to depend on how many by-right kids enroll. There's nothing sneaky about it. The correct answer is that they try to be at what DCPS considers best (about 24 kids in upper elementary) but reality doesn't always align. In charters, they have more control, but might have a smaller size if less kids enroll, or slightly bigger if they feel there's a compelling reason.

Similarly, the aides and especially the floating aides are going to be allocated based on need-- class size, special needs, experience level of teacher, maybe something to do with scheduling so that they are always at the proper adult-child ratio. So they don't know in advance exactly how it will be. Don't assume they're being sneaky or trying to conceal something-- maybe they are, but more likely it's a decision they make based on real-time needs.

Also, right now schools don't know their final budgets for next year. They don't want to tell you "Yes, we have X number of aides" because even if that's what they have this year, they don't know if they'll be allowed to have that next year. Sometimes they've asked for an additional teacher to divide the kids over more classrooms, but they don't know if they'll get that. So they really don't know what their class size will be.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ed data nerd here. Some of the things you are asking for are data that either are problematic or not collected systematically.

[You can't see test scores by demographics by grade because that would slice the data so thin that you would expose individual kids. (e.g. "how are asian kids in the third grade doing?" means you might be asking about five specific kids at a school).

Hours of screen time -- this is simply not tracked by anyone, ever.

Outdoor time -- you can ask to see a schedule. There's likely not much variation across schools here. (To the person who said it's not a concern past preschool, I disagree. My middle schooler does not have adequate outdoor/exercise time.

Class size & student teacher ratio -- max ratio is dictated by budget. This varies when schools are undersubscribed. You might be able to get it from the website by counting Ts per grade.

There is some master excel spreadsheet somewhere that breaks down PARCC scores by demographic group. It suppresses the data for very small datasets (like asian kids in third grade). You can also get information about screen time, outdoor time, and class size by asking at open houses. You can ask, "are there ipads/devices in the classroom? one per student or shared? how are they incorporated into the curriculum for math and ELA?" You can also ask for the average class size per grade and if they try to say "it depends," then just ask what it has been for the last year or two. Ask if there are dedicated or floating aides per grade, and how that changes in upper grades. Outdoor time is what it is for DCPS, but that's another question you could ask directly at charter open houses.

There may not be data for this type of information, but it's definitely information that administrators would know and could roughly quantify if asked. It's also NOT information that other parents would probably know because once you're actually at a school, you don't have a ton of insight to what your kid is doing all day because they're all a bunch of reluctant and unreliable narrators.

But it does depend! DCPS schools have to take who lives in the boundary, and their class size is going to depend on how many by-right kids enroll. There's nothing sneaky about it. The correct answer is that they try to be at what DCPS considers best (about 24 kids in upper elementary) but reality doesn't always align. In charters, they have more control, but might have a smaller size if less kids enroll, or slightly bigger if they feel there's a compelling reason.

Similarly, the aides and especially the floating aides are going to be allocated based on need-- class size, special needs, experience level of teacher, maybe something to do with scheduling so that they are always at the proper adult-child ratio. So they don't know in advance exactly how it will be. Don't assume they're being sneaky or trying to conceal something-- maybe they are, but more likely it's a decision they make based on real-time needs.

Also, right now schools don't know their final budgets for next year. They don't want to tell you "Yes, we have X number of aides" because even if that's what they have this year, they don't know if they'll be allowed to have that next year. Sometimes they've asked for an additional teacher to divide the kids over more classrooms, but they don't know if they'll get that. So they really don't know what their class size will be.

Right, but you can get a general sense by asking about recent sizes. If a school usually has 25+ or >20 per class, that gives you more information than “we don’t know yet.” It’s not useless information if class size is important to you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ed data nerd here. Some of the things you are asking for are data that either are problematic or not collected systematically.

[You can't see test scores by demographics by grade because that would slice the data so thin that you would expose individual kids. (e.g. "how are asian kids in the third grade doing?" means you might be asking about five specific kids at a school).

Hours of screen time -- this is simply not tracked by anyone, ever.

Outdoor time -- you can ask to see a schedule. There's likely not much variation across schools here. (To the person who said it's not a concern past preschool, I disagree. My middle schooler does not have adequate outdoor/exercise time.

Class size & student teacher ratio -- max ratio is dictated by budget. This varies when schools are undersubscribed. You might be able to get it from the website by counting Ts per grade.

There is some master excel spreadsheet somewhere that breaks down PARCC scores by demographic group. It suppresses the data for very small datasets (like asian kids in third grade). You can also get information about screen time, outdoor time, and class size by asking at open houses. You can ask, "are there ipads/devices in the classroom? one per student or shared? how are they incorporated into the curriculum for math and ELA?" You can also ask for the average class size per grade and if they try to say "it depends," then just ask what it has been for the last year or two. Ask if there are dedicated or floating aides per grade, and how that changes in upper grades. Outdoor time is what it is for DCPS, but that's another question you could ask directly at charter open houses.

There may not be data for this type of information, but it's definitely information that administrators would know and could roughly quantify if asked. It's also NOT information that other parents would probably know because once you're actually at a school, you don't have a ton of insight to what your kid is doing all day because they're all a bunch of reluctant and unreliable narrators.

But it does depend! DCPS schools have to take who lives in the boundary, and their class size is going to depend on how many by-right kids enroll. There's nothing sneaky about it. The correct answer is that they try to be at what DCPS considers best (about 24 kids in upper elementary) but reality doesn't always align. In charters, they have more control, but might have a smaller size if less kids enroll, or slightly bigger if they feel there's a compelling reason.

Similarly, the aides and especially the floating aides are going to be allocated based on need-- class size, special needs, experience level of teacher, maybe something to do with scheduling so that they are always at the proper adult-child ratio. So they don't know in advance exactly how it will be. Don't assume they're being sneaky or trying to conceal something-- maybe they are, but more likely it's a decision they make based on real-time needs.

Also, right now schools don't know their final budgets for next year. They don't want to tell you "Yes, we have X number of aides" because even if that's what they have this year, they don't know if they'll be allowed to have that next year. Sometimes they've asked for an additional teacher to divide the kids over more classrooms, but they don't know if they'll get that. So they really don't know what their class size will be.

Right, but you can get a general sense by asking about recent sizes. If a school usually has 25+ or >20 per class, that gives you more information than “we don’t know yet.” It’s not useless information if class size is important to you.

You can ask, just try to manage your expectations. At our school the class sizes vary quite a bit-- some grade cohorts have two classroom teachers and classes are a little too big. Some grade cohorts have three classroom teachers and cohorts are a little too small. Such is life on the bubble.

[Anonymous]

You are digging too deep. Avoid large districts with many under resourced students/families. Also be wary of schools with majority of kids who are from “achievement at all costs” culture. The problem is that it’s often the only two options but try to find something where both are in moderation.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You are digging too deep. Avoid large districts with many under resourced students/families. Also be wary of schools with majority of kids who are from “achievement at all costs” culture. The problem is that it’s often the only two options but try to find something where both are in moderation.

Ma'am, this is the DC school forum. There aren't "large districts" nor lottery options for schools with 'achievement at all costs' culture. It's a spectrum of underperforming to adequately performing schools with higher rates of gentrifier buy-in. OP's questions are spot on for EOTP school choice.