PARCC results: how will they be communicated to families?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone have the results broken down by demographics? Especially since the overall story seems to be that the shutdown had a much bigger effect on black/AA scores and at risk scores, it seems like the above lists probably just show how many white kids a school has. No?

I'd be more interested to see if there was a big difference once you control for demographics. Did any schools actually handle the pandemic better or worse?

Ludlow-Taylor appears to have the best overall ELA score on the Hill and SWS less good (counting all grades), so definitely not just a measure of how white the schools are.

For ELA:

LT: 69
Brent: 66
Maury: 66
SWS: 56
2 Rivers: 39
Watkins: 37

[Anonymous]

How are you all pulling this data? When I try to look at the data in the links, it's broken out in really unhelpful ways.

[Anonymous]

Does anyone know what "DS" stands for and why schools with "DS" in one or more columns don't add up to 100%? Is Column N a Level 2 and then this missing percentages are Level 1 and not on the spreadsheet?

[Anonymous]

This is the least surprising, most depressing news we could have gotten in the first week of school. I feel deeply frustrated by the fact that many of us vocally and proactively talked about this starting in the summer of 2020 and constantly sought solutions that would prevent this from happening, and were repeatedly told to be quiet and that we were being entitled or selfish. This was inevitable and it should have been obvious to all involved when it was happening. That it wasn't is almost more alarming than the fact it happened at all.

This will all be blamed on Covid but I honestly think a lot of people should lose their jobs over this. Especially when you look at the impacts on black and Hispanic kids, and at-risk kids. We're talking 10%+ drops in proficiency across all categories and grade levels.

I also think the more people dig into the high school numbers the worse the problem will get. People on DCUM don't get it because their kids mostly do not attend the HSs in DC vaccine the biggest issues. But it's not just that scores dropped for HS students. It's that significant numbers of kids are missing altogether -- just simply do not go to school anymore and haven't since March 2020. Meaning that not only does DC have a massive drop-out/truancy issue that has worsened during the pandemic, but that these abysmal scores actually represent the performance of the kids who are most present in the schools.

We failed the kids, folks. We, the adults, failed our kids. We better come together to fix it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How are you all pulling this data? When I try to look at the data in the links, it's broken out in really unhelpful ways.

If you want the best school-by-school data, go to the 4th link on the page "2021-22 School Level PARCC and MSAA Data" which will give you a spreadsheet that allows you to sort by school, subject area, and even sub-group area (i.e. "writing expression" versus "vocabulary"). The drop downs let you select whatever data you want, so if you want to compare two schools to each other, or just look at math scores for all grades in one school, you can.

I also recommend looking at the first link, which is a PDF that looks at district-wide data. It has useful birds-eye data on how the district did as a whole, including breakout for race, gender, at-risk status, etc. Lots of comparisons to both the 2019 test, as well as some comparisons of how results changed between 2016-2019, versus 2019-2022.

Most of the other spreadsheets will not be useful unless you are familiar with this data set, which most parents are not.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know what "DS" stands for and why schools with "DS" in one or more columns don't add up to 100%? Is Column N a Level 2 and then this missing percentages are Level 1 and not on the spreadsheet?

DS means they're suppressing the data voluntarily so that you can't calculate data that is legally suppressed. Explained on that first explanatory tab.

[Anonymous]

On behalf of everyone looking to see hot takes on PARCC scores, can we please ask all of you who want to relitigate school closures/COVID policies/WTU complicity and how you all knew better to go to one of the other 1000 threads you've derailed and beat your dead horses there?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is the least surprising, most depressing news we could have gotten in the first week of school. I feel deeply frustrated by the fact that many of us vocally and proactively talked about this starting in the summer of 2020 and constantly sought solutions that would prevent this from happening, and were repeatedly told to be quiet and that we were being entitled or selfish. This was inevitable and it should have been obvious to all involved when it was happening. That it wasn't is almost more alarming than the fact it happened at all.

This will all be blamed on Covid but I honestly think a lot of people should lose their jobs over this. Especially when you look at the impacts on black and Hispanic kids, and at-risk kids. We're talking 10%+ drops in proficiency across all categories and grade levels.

I also think the more people dig into the high school numbers the worse the problem will get. People on DCUM don't get it because their kids mostly do not attend the HSs in DC vaccine the biggest issues. But it's not just that scores dropped for HS students. It's that significant numbers of kids are missing altogether -- just simply do not go to school anymore and haven't since March 2020. Meaning that not only does DC have a massive drop-out/truancy issue that has worsened during the pandemic, but that these abysmal scores actually represent the performance of the kids who are most present in the schools.

We failed the kids, folks. We, the adults, failed our kids. We better come together to fix it.

Yes, it would have been much better if we sent teachers and students back into crowded classrooms pre-vaccine and many more people died. You're so right that this is the worse outcome.

I would almost guarantee that statistically the effect on life expectancy from COVID exposure for a 14-17 year old is less than the effect of dropping out of high school.

The fact that bars and hair salons opened before schools shows you where this country's values and priorities lay. It's horrifying and teachers and students will deal with the consequences for years and years to come.

I will never forget this. I look at these results and think about February 2021 when bars were packed and restaurants were open and people were throwing house parties and socializing, and we were begging for ONE DAY of in person instruction a week and were being told it was "too risky" by people who had just been given vaccine preference. Unreal.

[Anonymous]

It would be interesting (maybe for some enterprising college student) to pull together the data for each individual school on number of in-person days and compare that to the changes in test score, controlling for things like demographics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All public and charter schools in DC with a 5th grade, is what it looks like to me.

You can't compare fifth grade classes across schools though since so many kids shuffle to middle schools and better feeder patterns in fifth.

What is the best comparison?

Probably 3rd grade for how well the school did distance learning (since those kids did K and 1st remote) or 4th for the school overall. There's attrition in 4th at many schools, but the biggest loss happens all at once in 5th.

+1. Fifth grade classrooms look markedly different from every other elementary grade in schools that don't have middle school pathways. Just look at the threads on MacFarland right now. Aside from a few pioneers, everyone that can get out does get out. That leaves a much more disadvantaged population remaining in fifth. Test scores would reflect that.

The following are all true with respect to 5th grade scores:

Latin and BASIS are testing kids who were educated elsewhere[list]

Attrition at many ES in 5th means new kids backfilling, with kids who do not reflect the education of that school up to 5th grade[/list]

Because of Latin and BASIS pulling self-selecting populations, the top end of the kids 4th grade classes are not there in 5th, which creates a brain drain

My conclusion is that using 5th grade data to try and assess educational outcomes at a give school is a waste of time

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All public and charter schools in DC with a 5th grade, is what it looks like to me.

You can't compare fifth grade classes across schools though since so many kids shuffle to middle schools and better feeder patterns in fifth.

What is the best comparison?

9th grade for charters starting in 5th.

As a BASIS family, even I know that's not an entirely fair comparison. BASIS 9th graders have been at the school for 4 years. No exceptions. Latin has some new 9th graders. DCPS HS are inheriting kids from a variety of schools. Even application HS that test in show 9th grade results largely based on where the kids came from.

From my perspective the issue is whether there exists at any school a critical mass of kids who are at or above grade level. If only 30% or so are then that informs how those teachers can teach. Whatever your threshold is combined with changes in scores at the same school YoY are really the only totally useful applications of this data.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I know test scores aren’t the be all end all, but this is still depressing. I’m preparing now for gaslighting.

Yep. Every year, the head of our charter would spin a fantastical yarn about why our school's scores were always well in the bottom half, why we dropped to Tier 2, etc - excuse after excuse, zero accountability to students, to families, to the board. I just couldn't swallow her BS anymore. So glad we left.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:This is the least surprising, most depressing news we could have gotten in the first week of school. I feel deeply frustrated by the fact that many of us vocally and proactively talked about this starting in the summer of 2020 and constantly sought solutions that would prevent this from happening, and were repeatedly told to be quiet and that we were being entitled or selfish. This was inevitable and it should have been obvious to all involved when it was happening. That it wasn't is almost more alarming than the fact it happened at all.

This will all be blamed on Covid but I honestly think a lot of people should lose their jobs over this. Especially when you look at the impacts on black and Hispanic kids, and at-risk kids. We're talking 10%+ drops in proficiency across all categories and grade levels.

I also think the more people dig into the high school numbers the worse the problem will get. People on DCUM don't get it because their kids mostly do not attend the HSs in DC vaccine the biggest issues. But it's not just that scores dropped for HS students. It's that significant numbers of kids are missing altogether -- just simply do not go to school anymore and haven't since March 2020. Meaning that not only does DC have a massive drop-out/truancy issue that has worsened during the pandemic, but that these abysmal scores actually represent the performance of the kids who are most present in the schools.

We failed the kids, folks. We, the adults, failed our kids. We better come together to fix it.

NP. I have a kid in HS. There is only so much you can do to prevent HS kids from dropping out. If parents don’t value education or that value isn’t instilled in the kids, it is beyond our control. I see this in my own family. My sister has never valued education like I have. Her kids barely made it out of HS. There are always excuses for everything. So sorry no, we didn’t fail. They did. They chose to fail. It wasn’t a priority.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does anyone know what "DS" stands for and why schools with "DS" in one or more columns don't add up to 100%? Is Column N a Level 2 and then this missing percentages are Level 1 and not on the spreadsheet?

Look at the first tab for the explanation. It's data that is suppressed for privacy. But you can figure it out generally - like, if level 4 and 5 are DS, add up levels 1-3 and then subtract those from 100, and that's going to be 4+5.

They didn't do that previously and it makes it difficult to compare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:This is the least surprising, most depressing news we could have gotten in the first week of school. I feel deeply frustrated by the fact that many of us vocally and proactively talked about this starting in the summer of 2020 and constantly sought solutions that would prevent this from happening, and were repeatedly told to be quiet and that we were being entitled or selfish. This was inevitable and it should have been obvious to all involved when it was happening. That it wasn't is almost more alarming than the fact it happened at all.

This will all be blamed on Covid but I honestly think a lot of people should lose their jobs over this. Especially when you look at the impacts on black and Hispanic kids, and at-risk kids. We're talking 10%+ drops in proficiency across all categories and grade levels.

I also think the more people dig into the high school numbers the worse the problem will get. People on DCUM don't get it because their kids mostly do not attend the HSs in DC vaccine the biggest issues. But it's not just that scores dropped for HS students. It's that significant numbers of kids are missing altogether -- just simply do not go to school anymore and haven't since March 2020. Meaning that not only does DC have a massive drop-out/truancy issue that has worsened during the pandemic, but that these abysmal scores actually represent the performance of the kids who are most present in the schools.

We failed the kids, folks. We, the adults, failed our kids. We better come together to fix it.

NP. I have a kid in HS. There is only so much you can do to prevent HS kids from dropping out. If parents don’t value education or that value isn’t instilled in the kids, it is beyond our control. I see this in my own family. My sister has never valued education like I have. Her kids barely made it out of HS. There are always excuses for everything. So sorry no, we didn’t fail. They did. They chose to fail. It wasn’t a priority.

While that is generally true, a good way to ensure a kid on the bubble drops out instead of staying in school is to just close the school for months on end and ask him to log into class from a home that may or may not be conducive to doing so. If you want to write those kids off as lost causes anyway, go ahead, but DCPS has a public mandate to try and make sure that kid gets an education. And they failed. And we'll all pay the price.