Reply to Please Read! Are we putting the blame about Prince Georges County on the wrong people?

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Reply to "Please Read! Are we putting the blame about Prince Georges County on the wrong people?"

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[quote=Anonymous]Here's the thing you need to understand about a Great Schools Rating.   The rating only takes into account what percentage of students have managed to achieve minimal "passing" proficiency on certain State tests.

Schools with a 95% pass rate for, say, their overall math scores could just be really good at getting everyone to that basic level -- but might not be doing anything for the kids who already arrive at school able to pass the grade level tests.    That is NOT The same thing as having all their kids 95% proficient in math.   95% of the kids could just basely be passing the state math tests (and formerly, the pass rate was set very, very low… sometimes as low as 50% correct on a multiple choice test where you would score 25% by random chance alone).

It is definitely possible for a school to put all its time and energy into those kids "on the bubble" -- the ones you identify at the start of the year as in danger of not making basic proficiency.  You do a lot of test prep with those kids and get them just up to the "Pass proficient" level (and to do that you ignore the kids who are already able to pass and don't need extra assistance to do so).

When I see schools that are very unusual in their demographics, with near 100% pass rates despite having demographics that are usually correlated with lower pass rates, I am skeptical that these strong pass rates are really reflective of an outstanding education program.   Often it turns out they reflect something different -- intense test pressure for the kids "on the bubble", relocating resources from your already proficient students and not focusing on their achievement, intensive efforts to get every testing accommodation under the sun for special needs students, and possibly, reorganizing a school to reduce the number of ESL and SPECIAL ED students by various means.

A school like Roosevelt High School has a Science Tech program that is open by exam and application.   There are 250 students in that part of the program each year or 1000 students total.  You can assume that almost all of those students will be able to pass a test of basic math and reading proficiency at grade level.    Yet the school is twice or three times that size.   So for the Magnet part of the program, the pass rate on state tests would be expected to be near 100% or a Great Schools Score of 10.   However when you factor in the other students who did not enter by exam, they would not be expected to all pass at the same rate as they are general education students, not part of the STEM magnet.

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