New GS rankings

[Anonymous]

The GS ratings have a huge influence on homebuyers and honestly does anyone even look into the new methodology? All prospective homebuyers will see is that sub-8 score on GS and think twice before putting in an offer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Did you look at why? It is because they are failing low income students and the is a large achievement gap. For test scores overall it is still ranked well. I am glad GS changed their ratings.

I did spend quite some time reading about the new GS ratings technique. Regarding so many schools failing FARMS and ESL students, it's puzzling to me as so many different counties and cities school boards have put so much into aiding, not ignoring this problem over the last decade. More $$$, more teachers and aids, smaller class sizes, one on one tutoring, translation specialists who work with students and parents on how to help, support groups and more.

I'm not sure what the problem is that FARM and ESL students haven't seen greater gains on testing, but I don't think it is for lack of effort on the part of Northern Virginia public schools. Could it be that Great Schools is not picking up on ways students are achieving? Is NoVA seeing such a new influx of students each year such that it starts the wheel turning again? Is Common Core itself not succeeding?

There is a gap that the schools cannot fix, because the schools did not cause the gap, nor are they capable of curing it. It's like running a race and one guy starting ahead of another, then saying the guy who came in second didn't achieve as much. He could run faster and still lose.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Parents do not want to live near the poors. The poors have “poor” habits that make them bad neighbors and that are detrimental to the schools - indolence, criminality, violence, lack of intellectual curiosity. Even the poors themselves do not want to live near the poors. This has been going on since the beginning of time and will never end for obvious reasons.

Not sure if your are joking but this is accurate

[Anonymous]

I have said it before and I'll say it again. GS needs to be sued. Their rating system is nothing more than a code for how many low income students are in a school. The more low income, the lower the score. There is no way for schools to overcome that, and schools with NO low income students are being credited for not having an achievement gap!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents do not want to live near the poors. The poors have “poor” habits that make them bad neighbors and that are detrimental to the schools - indolence, criminality, violence, lack of intellectual curiosity. Even the poors themselves do not want to live near the poors. This has been going on since the beginning of time and will never end for obvious reasons.

Not sure if your are joking but this is accurate

The only issue I have with this is that current GS ratings are high only for the richest and most lilly-white schools. The system is now so heavily rigged against a school with any low SES or diverse population at all, that parents can effectively use it to make sure their children only go to school with people absolutely identical to them.

[Anonymous]

GS probably can't be sued. But we can email corporations that use the service and let them know the new metrics are most likely not in compliance with current real estate laws due to the use of race and demographics to score home areas. People like:

http://investors.redfin.com/corporate-governance/management

Redfin integrates the school GS score with listings and the new metrics look a lot like racial profiling to me.

[Anonymous]

What if we were to sue under racial discrimination? Because the scoring based on race is not additionally corrected for inherent racial bias? Specifically- the race based scores are compared to overall scoring vs overall race based scores.

It's ugly all around. I am just throwing it out there for the wolves.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What if we were to sue under racial discrimination? Because the scoring based on race is not additionally corrected for inherent racial bias? Specifically- the race based scores are compared to overall scoring vs overall race based scores.

It's ugly all around. I am just throwing it out there for the wolves.

Yes, that makes it even worse.

And Fairfax is fairing worse than other districts because of it's own policies - it removes the top scoring students and ships them to AAP centers, and then ships in disabled students - our school, for example, has a large population of low-functioning students who don't even live in our district, and yet their scores count for us.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:GS probably can't be sued. But we can email corporations that use the service and let them know the new metrics are most likely not in compliance with current real estate laws due to the use of race and demographics to score home areas. People like:

http://investors.redfin.com/corporate-governance/management

Redfin integrates the school GS score with listings and the new metrics look a lot like racial profiling to me.

Honestly this. I'm surprised this hasn't happened before.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents do not want to live near the poors. The poors have “poor” habits that make them bad neighbors and that are detrimental to the schools - indolence, criminality, violence, lack of intellectual curiosity. Even the poors themselves do not want to live near the poors. This has been going on since the beginning of time and will never end for obvious reasons.

Not sure if your are joking but this is accurate

The only issue I have with this is that current GS ratings are high only for the richest and most lilly-white schools. The system is now so heavily rigged against a school with any low SES or diverse population at all, that parents can effectively use it to make sure their children only go to school with people absolutely identical to them.

Why do you care about that? It gives information to anyone who wants it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents do not want to live near the poors. The poors have “poor” habits that make them bad neighbors and that are detrimental to the schools - indolence, criminality, violence, lack of intellectual curiosity. Even the poors themselves do not want to live near the poors. This has been going on since the beginning of time and will never end for obvious reasons.

Not sure if your are joking but this is accurate

The only issue I have with this is that current GS ratings are high only for the richest and most lilly-white schools. The system is now so heavily rigged against a school with any low SES or diverse population at all, that parents can effectively use it to make sure their children only go to school with people absolutely identical to them.

Why do you care about that? It gives information to anyone who wants it.

I guess I'm just the kind of person who sees something wrong with a metric for parents to evaluate a school's (and neighborhood's) whiteness.

[Anonymous]

I have now spent a couple hours plotting GS data points on a graph. According to what I have so far:

1-there is a direct inverse relationship between the GS score and the percentage of black and hispanic students at the school.
2-there is a direct correlation between the percentage of white and asian students (added together) and the GS score.
3-there is a direct inverse relationship between a school's diversity and the GS score - in other words, schools with a student body that has large numbers of every racial group, as opposed to being dominated by just a few, are actually penalized in the GS scoring system.
4-having a less diverse body raises the GS score. This seems to be true even if the school is 80% of a traditionally lower-performing minority, as it is the diversity itself that lowers the school's score (since the school is penalized for having gaps between races).

I don't have every school in Fairfax County on there, of course, but I have quite a few and it seems high GS scores indicate not only lack of low-income students, but also ensure lack of racial diversity. Barring AAP centers, which are artificially balanced, no school with a 9 has any significant percentage of black or hispanic students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have now spent a couple hours plotting GS data points on a graph. According to what I have so far:

1-there is a direct inverse relationship between the GS score and the percentage of black and hispanic students at the school.
2-there is a direct correlation between the percentage of white and asian students (added together) and the GS score.
3-there is a direct inverse relationship between a school's diversity and the GS score - in other words, schools with a student body that has large numbers of every racial group, as opposed to being dominated by just a few, are actually penalized in the GS scoring system.
4-having a less diverse body raises the GS score. This seems to be true even if the school is 80% of a traditionally lower-performing minority, as it is the diversity itself that lowers the school's score (since the school is penalized for having gaps between races).

I don't have every school in Fairfax County on there, of course, but I have quite a few and it seems high GS scores indicate not only lack of low-income students, but also ensure lack of racial diversity. Barring AAP centers, which are artificially balanced, no school with a 9 has any significant percentage of black or hispanic students.

Same pp, and I want to add the interesting note that a school with a single dominant hispanic or black population, while still scoring low in GS, nevertheless tends to score higher than one that is evenly balanced between 3-4 races, despite all having similar low-income levels. Or at least it seems to be that way so far.

[Anonymous]

Did schools with majority poverty students receive a bump then? Seems that a school is rated based on how regular kids do versus impoverished students. The worst elementary school in my area is rated the same as mine because mine is half umc, half esol.

The only school I know of near me that had its rating increase was an elementary school with umc students and is half Asian, half white.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents do not want to live near the poors. The poors have “poor” habits that make them bad neighbors and that are detrimental to the schools - indolence, criminality, violence, lack of intellectual curiosity. Even the poors themselves do not want to live near the poors. This has been going on since the beginning of time and will never end for obvious reasons.

Not sure if your are joking but this is accurate

The only issue I have with this is that current GS ratings are high only for the richest and most lilly-white schools. The system is now so heavily rigged against a school with any low SES or diverse population at all, that parents can effectively use it to make sure their children only go to school with people absolutely identical to them.

Why do you care about that? It gives information to anyone who wants it.

I guess I'm just the kind of person who sees something wrong with a metric for parents to evaluate a school's (and neighborhood's) whiteness.

You know what is best for all their kids, right? Their parents are wrong and you are right.