Ashburton Elementary - GreatSchools Rating

[Anonymous]

I see Ashburton Elementary's GreatSchools rating is down to a 6. Any idea what has caused the decrease in ranking?

I would also be interested in any current parents' experience with Kindergarten / 1st grade at Ashburton. My kids would start Kindergarten in Fall 2022 and we are already starting to think about whether we will send them there or to a private school in the area.

[Anonymous]

Because they've been reading about here on DCUM.

[Anonymous]

Asian students have significantly lower test scores than the state average for Asian students, and I’m guessing that’s dragging the equity ranking to the ground.

[Anonymous]

I’ve had three children attend and love Ashburton. The administration is responsive, the staff is amazing. The PTA is active and engaged.

[Anonymous]

Parent here. One of the previous posters mentioned the great Community and that is 100% correct. The current principal got rid of a longtime beloved principal, and many long-term beloved of teachers. Some of us who have been around for a while are not fans of his.

[Anonymous]

It's called TRASHburton for a reason.

[Anonymous]

Can someone explain the issue with the video?

[Anonymous]

There are lots of articles on here how greatschools changed their school calculation about 3 years ago. They are mostly funded by realestate and they push readers to those school zones with more expensive homes.

Ashburton zones have a crazy zigzag that includes every town house and apartment complex nearby, even when they are closer to schools like Wyngate. I think i read the most recent details from an agent in the real estate forum.

We are an ashburton family, when we moved here years ago, it was an 8. Ashburton has higher diversity than some nearby schools. As soon as great schools added their equity calculation, the score immediately dropped.
I would NOT rely on greatschools scores

[Anonymous]

For thr record, my kids had amazing experiences and teachers in K and 1st. They are in private now and were much ahead academically than the remaining class.

Not sure how things are with covid, that should be your biggest question now. All of the schools will be in similar positions for a couple years.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There are lots of articles on here how greatschools changed their school calculation about 3 years ago. They are mostly funded by realestate and they push readers to those school zones with more expensive homes.

Ashburton zones have a crazy zigzag that includes every town house and apartment complex nearby, even when they are closer to schools like Wyngate. I think i read the most recent details from an agent in the real estate forum.

We are an ashburton family, when we moved here years ago, it was an 8. Ashburton has higher diversity than some nearby schools. As soon as great schools added their equity calculation, the score immediately dropped.
I would NOT rely on greatschools scores

This is such an entitled and rich white person thing to say. Why should the equity section not matter? Not everyone is like your children, to folks of different backgrounds, it’s important to know how different student groups perform on standardized tests and other measures of academics. Measuring student performance by demographics also makes the school ratings less about which schools have more white and wealthy kids and more about which schools are truly serving all their students well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There are lots of articles on here how greatschools changed their school calculation about 3 years ago. They are mostly funded by realestate and they push readers to those school zones with more expensive homes.

Ashburton zones have a crazy zigzag that includes every town house and apartment complex nearby, even when they are closer to schools like Wyngate. I think i read the most recent details from an agent in the real estate forum.

We are an ashburton family, when we moved here years ago, it was an 8. Ashburton has higher diversity than some nearby schools. As soon as great schools added their equity calculation, the score immediately dropped.
I would NOT rely on greatschools scores

This is such an entitled and rich white person thing to say. Why should the equity section not matter? Not everyone is like your children, to folks of different backgrounds, it’s important to know how different student groups perform on standardized tests and other measures of academics. Measuring student performance by demographics also makes the school ratings less about which schools have more white and wealthy kids and more about which schools are truly serving all their students well.

Because the score becomes a measure of whether your URM kids are from FARMs families or professional families. If you know the answer to that question, you know whether a school will have a good or bad great schools score

[Anonymous]

What is the definition of a "good" school?

Here's mine:
1. good programs
2. good job educating low income children who usually score lower - this is also subjective.

If a school is mostly made up of wealthiesh families, of course the scores will be higher. It would not matter where the school is located.

That's why the GS rating makes sense to include the equity rating. It gives a much better picture of how "good" the school is. It's easy to have wealthier students score well; it's a lot harder to educate lower income students such that they score well .

Let's say you have two schools with similar demographics of low income students:
School A low income students score very well
School B low income students score poorly

Which is school is "better"? School A, because clearly, they are doing something right. Obviously, this is an oversimplification as there could be a myriad of factors, but as a parent coming from the outside, you can only know the stats, and not those other factors.


Having stated that, there's nothing wrong with Ashburton.

[Anonymous]

I don't want to totally derail on the graetschool stuff, but I am curious how they come up with the equity scores. I just compared Ashburton with neighbor Wyngate, and Wyngate's said "low income and under-served minority students" scored in the 77%, while it was closer to 50 percentile at Ashburton. I know Ashburton has apartments (which Wyngate does not) and Ashburton generally has some more affordable houses than Wyngate, so I'm wondering how the populations compare. Does anyone know how they come up with these numbers?
I do wonder if they include Latinos in the under-served minority groups. Wyngate has a lot of highly educated Latino families, for whatever reason.

It might be interesting for school districts to also collect data on students based on whether their parents have a 4-year college education.

I'm not arguing with the PP that pointed out that how a school educates its most challenged students is a good indicator of how good a school it is. It just seems to me that the data for Ashburton might be off, and I'm wondering how it is skewed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I don't want to totally derail on the graetschool stuff, but I am curious how they come up with the equity scores. I just compared Ashburton with neighbor Wyngate, and Wyngate's said "low income and under-served minority students" scored in the 77%, while it was closer to 50 percentile at Ashburton. I know Ashburton has apartments (which Wyngate does not) and Ashburton generally has some more affordable houses than Wyngate, so I'm wondering how the populations compare. Does anyone know how they come up with these numbers?
I do wonder if they include Latinos in the under-served minority groups. Wyngate has a lot of highly educated Latino families, for whatever reason.

It might be interesting for school districts to also collect data on students based on whether their parents have a 4-year college education.

I'm not arguing with the PP that pointed out that how a school educates its most challenged students is a good indicator of how good a school it is. It just seems to me that the data for Ashburton might be off, and I'm wondering how it is skewed.

Because Wyngate has <5% FARMS while Ashburton has 11%, and Ashburton also has a higher ESOL population as well.

https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/02425.pdf
https://www.montgomeryschoolsmd.org/departments/regulatoryaccountability/glance/currentyear/schools/02422.pdf

Generally, the higher the FARMs rate in the school, the more difficult it is to raise the test scores of that group as a whole.

This is why it's important to try to spread out the FARMS percentages across the schools. There is more need in a higher FARMs school than a lower one.

[Anonymous]

What/who is behind the great schools data? THAT is what you want to know. It's unreliable. Talk to neighbors, friends but not on some random data that no one knows how it's calculated.

That said, we're an Ashburton family and really like the school. My kid has had amazing teachers. Don't love the principal. School is overcrowded and that has been something to get used to, for us and for my kid. But a very engaged community, wonderful parents and fun annual activities.