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Have you seen the new version of the DC School Chooser??
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Anonymous
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Ugh - it's AWFUL! Last year's guide had useful information, such a breakdown of what % of students scored Below Basic, Basic, Proficient, or Advanced in Math and Reading, plus an indicator of how diverse the student body is. All this year's guide tells you is the address and what bus routes (?!) are nearby.
Utterly worthless. http://www.fightforchildren.org/Promoting_Quality_Education.html#DC_School_Chooser_ |
Anonymous
| Totally agree. Fortunately, last year's PDF is still available -- http://fightforchildren.org/pdf/SchoolChooser.pdf -- I just saved a copy on my hard drive before it disappears.... |
Anonymous
| Very helpful. Thanks! |
Anonymous
| What do you expect from this organization? What do they know about education? |
Anonymous
Not sure what they know about education, but that shouldn't be particularly necessary to reprint some basic statistics, right? In the previous year's document (thanks for the link PP!) you could look at a school and see what percentage of students were Advanced Readers vs. Proficient, or Basic (which is actually pretty awful) or Below Basic. Now that information is no longer available. That's what bugs me the most. FWIW, you could also tell if the school actually had a diverse student body. Now you can't. If you want to know that information, you'd have to hang around outside the school like some kind of creepy guy and check out all the children! Bottom line: last year's version contained information that discerning parents actually want to know. This year's version essentially has addresses and phone numbers. Thanks - but I can look that up on DCPS's website. They've managed to subtract all the value from the book. Stupid. |
Anonymous
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Totally agree with PPs.
Does anyone know where one can find the statistics on racial/ethnic diversity, %FARMS, test performance that were in the previous school chooser? That was the most useful part for me as well. |
Anonymous
| U can figure it out from the SEO report cards |
Anonymous
Anonymous
| What is FARMS. TIA |
Anonymous
Free and reduced price meals. (Poverty indicator). |
Anonymous
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This year's school choser was compiled by greatschools.org A site I have found difficult to navigate in the past. The reviews and stars seemed all over the place in terms of timeliness and accuracy. Not sure who was involved in the redesign of the doc. Greatschools seem to have only one person in DC.
ITA last year's format was easier to use at a glance. |
Anonymous
Well yes, but that misses what made the chooser document so helpful. You could get visual representations (bar graphs and pie charts) and compare schools side by side. OSSE's data isn't nearly as user friendly. |
Anonymous
| ita. and i think the school chooser was more appropriate for a broader range of literacy levels. |
Anonymous
| Yeah - I don't like the redesign either. |