DC's School Report Cards are up. Any surprises?
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Anonymous
But what does it mean to count all of those different groups as "15%"? |
Anonymous
| ^ Oh, sorry. I see now. They divide equally between all racial groups counted equally unless they aren't counted at all. That makes zero sense. |
Anonymous
I agree with this. I've been in the system for 9 years/2 kids and played the lottery twice, and each time I ordered the list and made a choice based on which school had the highest percentage of kids getting 4s and 5s on ELA, Math and Science. Ended up very satisfied and impressed. |
Anonymous
This was always my inclination and then you have folks out there who say test scores don’t matter and are just reflective of the SES of the school. I still have no idea what the best approach to analyzing how well schools do or not in actually teaching kids! |
Anonymous
So, I actually don't agree with this, because I view test scores as a floor, but not the single factor I would use to choose a school above that floor. Even within scores, I actually care more about the percentage of 5s at the margin than 4s + 5s once the latter is over about 50%. |
Anonymous
imo these people are trying to gaslight you into staying at your neighborhood title 1 school. you can't fake high scores. Now that we are in a school with very high test scores (and high proportion of SES families), as one of the PPs said, the teaching is leaps and bounds beyond the other school. This is a sad reality. SES is very related to school quality, but not because the schools are doing nothing and counting on parents to teach their kids, and it's not due to teacher quality -- the Title 1 teachers were incredible. It's because so much time is spent bringing up the bottom that they can't spend a lot of time pushing at the top, or filling out the day with interesting projects. Everyone can be held to a higher standard and pushed harder. |
Anonymous
Look at overall test scores but also look at growth scores and the scores for the demographic that represents your kid. There is a data file on the OSSE site where you can see the performance of students by grade level and subject but also by race, not-economically disadvantaged, etc. I have found that high scores and high/moderate growth are both important. |
Anonymous
If your goal is to get the best school for your kids, find the school that does the best with kids like yours. If I had to recommend a group of schools for a rich white girl, I would not suggest the same ones as I would for an economically disadvantaged black boy. Once you find the schools that do well for the kind of kid you have, think about your other priorities: commute, feeder pattern, diversity (would you prefer a more racially or economically diverse school? are you ok with your kid being one of a few kids like him in the school, given that the other kids like him are doing well?), special curriculum (montessori? bilingual?), and any other factors you care about (outdoor time? aftercare?). If you don't have kids and are generally looking for schools to support or emulate, that's a different process. I like Empower's BOLD performance framework for finding schools that do well educating economically disadvantaged kids. |
Anonymous
This is a great response. I really don't get what OSSE is trying to accomplish with the overall accountability score. It certainly doesn't seem to be useful for families. |
Anonymous
Is BASIS really a lottery if they kick kids out who don’t pass their many tests? Walls can’t do that… |
Anonymous
What does that have to do with Brent? Their scores were fine and will be even if some parents leave. More will come after the renovation is complete. |
Anonymous
And tell me where should the rich little white girl go vs. the poor little black boy? 
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Anonymous
Are you a teacher at a title 1 school? What is this weird generalization? I do special projects all the time with my 3rd graders but I also love project based learning. The problem is DCPS and the lack of things schools can do about tardies and students being absent a lot. If you start out missing 40-59% of pre-k and continue a similar trend of course the child is behind by mid K/1st grade. Many schools also don’t allow intense differentiation (small groups) or hire people to do reading and math interventions. And yes, they do have the money -they choose to spend it somewhere else. However one thing is true, there are only a handful of great T1 schools and I understand why some would not want their child to go to one. And non T1 schools are actually not pushing kids harder. It’s the opposite, they allow more play in Pre-K and K than T1 schools. They develop better critical thinking skills and executive functioning- which is the key to learning. So kids learn in a more developmentally appropriate way. Seriously, there’s research on this -look it up. It’s actually really funny and sad that DCPS thinks that teaching kids formal math at 3 is going to save all the at risk children. |
Anonymous
Easy to be a top school when you control who your student body is. Both of these schools have very very very low ELL and Sped percentages. Hardly fair. |
Anonymous
I don't disagree with you but one thing that I do like is that if you have a highlight motivated, already academically successful kid, there is some information to help you determine the school that might fit best. It's not the only information a parent needs, but it's a start. |