PARCC test results - slight increase in scores overall, white students see drop, Wilson plunges

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The L-T numbers are actually astonishingly good when you realize that they don't have enough non-economically disadvantaged kids to report that group separately. Their ED numbers are 42/40! Compare that to Watkins' 16/26 or Maury's 18/14. If I were the parent of a poor and/or AA kid living on/near the Hill, the choice would be easy.

This is my takeaway also. LT does exceptionally well at educating both poor and wealthy kids. I attribute this to rock-solid teachers at every grade level. Nicely done LT!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes same test nationally. Eight states use PARCC including Maryland.

Mercedes Schneider, author of "Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools," states that despite the fact that PARCC sets suggested cut scores, the states still have the option of resetting those cut scores. This is also a factor in determining who is proficient.

IIRC, DC set their cut scores at the recommend level, so the test results are comparable with other states.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC Prep charter middle school appears to be thriving according to the test scores. Any parents here with students there?

Not a HRCS according to DCUM.

DCUM needs to catch up.

Two categories -- a catch phrase for non-Title I charter schools + high performing charter schools for those where the data warrant it. And yes, a couple schools would qualify as both

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes same test nationally. Eight states use PARCC including Maryland.

Mercedes Schneider, author of "Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools," states that despite the fact that PARCC sets suggested cut scores, the states still have the option of resetting those cut scores. This is also a factor in determining who is proficient.

IIRC, DC set their cut scores at the recommend level, so the test results are comparable with other states.

That is correct. They use scores of 4 and 5 as proficient. Some states have opted to use scores of 3 through 5 as proficient.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are white parents going to be clamoring to get into Banneker? It was the top scoring high school in DCPS with 98% of its students scoring at or above proficiency in literacy and 62% of its students scoring at or above proficiency in mathematics. School Without Walls was 84% proficiency in literacy and 52% proficiency in mathematics.

Have you been paying attention to this thread?

Not only is Banneker a test-in school, but it counsels out a large number of its students (anyone whose GPA drops below 3.0, even in the middle of a year). Combine that with the non-existent special ed or ELL populations and, voila, the few students who remain to actually take the PARCC do very well.

If Wilson could do all that, it'd probably be the best in the nation. If SWS was as aggressive as Banneker in counseling students out, its scores would be higher.

Just a correction - i said it used to be 3.0.

I think DCPS has reworked the Banneker grading system so that it's less draconian -- by it is still a school with significant attrition from 9th to 12th.

Thank you for the clarification. I'd love to see the comparable attrition data from SWS.

According to learnDC.org (thank you PP for the suggestion), Banneker and SWS have completely different attrition profiles.

Enrollment at Banneker:
- 9th: 167
- 10th: 114
- 11th: 74
- 12th: 94

Approx. attrition rate: 44%

Enrollment at SWS:
- 9th: 160
- 10th: 142
- 11th: 150
- 12th: 138

Approx. attrition rate: 14%


Quite relevant when we compare PARCC numbers, correct?

(Both are great schools, but there's no need to hype results)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC Prep charter middle school appears to be thriving according to the test scores. Any parents here with students there?

KIPP Promise also. Wow. 47/74 (and 55/88 for non-special ed, which I think is the highest non-special ed math score in the whole city!) with a virtually 100% ED AA population. That is incredibly impressive.

are you going to send your child there - no. If all the children at KIPP were high or middle SES kids would you send you kid there - no.

Admit it you want a different kind of education for your kid. You also want the test scores to validate that different kind of education, and that isn't happening. I'm fine with it not happening (I think standardized tests are not great measures of learning), but you can't have it both ways until we have a better test, and that's not going to happen anytime soon (in part because tests that measure learning would be very expensive to grade).

Time, people, to let go of test scores as the holy grail.

[Anonymous]

COULD YOU PLEASE STOP CALLING SCHOOL WITHOUT WALLS "SWS"? IT IS "SWW". SWS IS AN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:DC Prep charter middle school appears to be thriving according to the test scores. Any parents here with students there?

KIPP Promise also. Wow. 47/74 (and 55/88 for non-special ed, which I think is the highest non-special ed math score in the whole city!) with a virtually 100% ED AA population. That is incredibly impressive.

are you going to send your child there - no. If all the children at KIPP were high or middle SES kids would you send you kid there - no.

Admit it you want a different kind of education for your kid. You also want the test scores to validate that different kind of education, and that isn't happening. I'm fine with it not happening (I think standardized tests are not great measures of learning), but you can't have it both ways until we have a better test, and that's not going to happen anytime soon (in part because tests that measure learning would be very expensive to grade).

Time, people, to let go of test scores as the holy grail.

and because educators don't write the tests . . .

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Why are the grade 3 ELA scores at some of the traditionally high performing schools so much lower compared to the other grades?"

Yep. The Janney 3rd graders tanked ELA but not math, the 5th graders tanked math but not ELA, but the 4th graders rocked both. Very, very strange. One would think that in a school with a well thought-out curriculum and mostly the same staff year to year, the scores from grade to grade would be fairly consistent. My guess is that either there were excessive technology errors on some of the test days or the test design is just off. For Wilson, I'd guess parents may have told their kids to not worry about tanking the test, but I don't have the sense that happened at Janney since the issue seems to be with one test or the other but not both.

Same thing seems to have happened at all other elementary schools. ELA grade 3 may have been more (relatively) difficult than ELA later grades.

I pulled many of the other high performing schools and can find evidence of the grade 3 ELA issue only at Janney, Lafayette, and Eaton.

Actually Stoddert had this issue too. ELA 3rd grade 70% vs. ELA 4th grade 86%. A 16 point difference is kind of large whereas the Math scores were much closer with only a 5 point difference.

[Anonymous]

Eh. These tests are dumb and - at best - measure demographics, not education quality.

There was nothing that happened at Wilson that could have caused this big a drop. I thought the tests were a joke when Wilson kids (including mine) did well, I think they are a joke now that Wilson kids are doing no so well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are white parents going to be clamoring to get into Banneker? It was the top scoring high school in DCPS with 98% of its students scoring at or above proficiency in literacy and 62% of its students scoring at or above proficiency in mathematics. School Without Walls was 84% proficiency in literacy and 52% proficiency in mathematics.

Have you been paying attention to this thread?

Not only is Banneker a test-in school, but it counsels out a large number of its students (anyone whose GPA drops below 3.0, even in the middle of a year). Combine that with the non-existent special ed or ELL populations and, voila, the few students who remain to actually take the PARCC do very well.

If Wilson could do all that, it'd probably be the best in the nation. If SWS was as aggressive as Banneker in counseling students out, its scores would be higher.

Just a correction - i said it used to be 3.0.

I think DCPS has reworked the Banneker grading system so that it's less draconian -- by it is still a school with significant attrition from 9th to 12th.

Thank you for the clarification. I'd love to see the comparable attrition data from SWS.

According to learnDC.org (thank you PP for the suggestion), Banneker and SWS have completely different attrition profiles.

Enrollment at Banneker:
- 9th: 167
- 10th: 114
- 11th: 74
- 12th: 94

Approx. attrition rate: 44%

Enrollment at SWS:
- 9th: 160
- 10th: 142
- 11th: 150
- 12th: 138

Approx. attrition rate: 14%


Quite relevant when we compare PARCC numbers, correct?

(Both are great schools, but there's no need to hype results)

Maybe. PARCC is only supposed administered in during high school once, in 10th grade for ELA and whenever the right year happens based on their math level.

For 2014-15 DCPS tested kids in 9th and 10th for ELA. No idea what they did for 15-16. At any rate if they normalize to just 10th the attrition issue will be less stark between SWW and Banneker.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Are white parents going to be clamoring to get into Banneker? It was the top scoring high school in DCPS with 98% of its students scoring at or above proficiency in literacy and 62% of its students scoring at or above proficiency in mathematics. School Without Walls was 84% proficiency in literacy and 52% proficiency in mathematics.

Have you been paying attention to this thread?

Not only is Banneker a test-in school, but it counsels out a large number of its students (anyone whose GPA drops below 3.0, even in the middle of a year). Combine that with the non-existent special ed or ELL populations and, voila, the few students who remain to actually take the PARCC do very well.

If Wilson could do all that, it'd probably be the best in the nation. If SWS was as aggressive as Banneker in counseling students out, its scores would be higher.

Compare Banneker to School Without Walls, a test-in school also. Banneker has an even greater hill to climb since 48% of its student population are economically disadvantaged, while only 17% of School Without Walls' population are economically disadvantaged. Both schools have a non-existent special education or ESL population.

I was comparing apples to apples. You are the one who mentioned the Wilson comparison.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:"Why are the grade 3 ELA scores at some of the traditionally high performing schools so much lower compared to the other grades?"

Yep. The Janney 3rd graders tanked ELA but not math, the 5th graders tanked math but not ELA, but the 4th graders rocked both. Very, very strange. One would think that in a school with a well thought-out curriculum and mostly the same staff year to year, the scores from grade to grade would be fairly consistent. My guess is that either there were excessive technology errors on some of the test days or the test design is just off. For Wilson, I'd guess parents may have told their kids to not worry about tanking the test, but I don't have the sense that happened at Janney since the issue seems to be with one test or the other but not both.

Same thing seems to have happened at all other elementary schools. ELA grade 3 may have been more (relatively) difficult than ELA later grades.

I pulled many of the other high performing schools and can find evidence of the grade 3 ELA issue only at Janney, Lafayette, and Eaton.

Actually Stoddert had this issue too. ELA 3rd grade 70% vs. ELA 4th grade 86%. A 16 point difference is kind of large whereas the Math scores were much closer with only a 5 point difference.

I've noticed the same elsewhere but choose not to list the schools. In some case the 4th grade proficiency does not reflect last year's or this year's 3rd grade proficiency even with little student turnover. I suspect the test were poorly structured (given) or other irregularities like software issues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is Banneker predominantly African American?

Yes.

Banneker -

81.1% Black
.2% White
14% Latino
1.8% Asian
2.2% Multi-racial

Keep in mind that Banneker, like SWW High school, can send students who don't maintain a minimum GPA back to their neighborhood schools.

Not only they can, but they do. The "out" rates are astonishingly high (just looked at enrollment data a few weeks ago)

How does one get into Banneker. Sorry my kid is only in second grade but is zoned for Wilson where he will NOT go.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is Banneker predominantly African American?

Yes.

Banneker -

81.1% Black
.2% White
14% Latino
1.8% Asian
2.2% Multi-racial

Keep in mind that Banneker, like SWW High school, can send students who don't maintain a minimum GPA back to their neighborhood schools.

Not only they can, but they do. The "out" rates are astonishingly high (just looked at enrollment data a few weeks ago)

How does one get into Banneker. Sorry my kid is only in second grade but is zoned for Wilson where he will NOT go.

Apply via the lottery for 9th AND follow the other steps (teacher recommendations, interviews and so forth). It's outlined on myschooldc.org