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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Letter from Head of School to parents dated November 2014:

Dear Latin families,

This morning the Mayor held a press conference at which the Public Charter School Board (PCSB) released their school ratings based on the 2013-14 Performance Management Framework (PMF).  I was invited to attend, because once again Washington Latin’s Upper School is rated a Tier 1 high-performing school.  The Middle School is Tier 2 this year for the first time, the middle rating of three possible levels.  Earlier this fall, the Office of the State Superintendent for Education (OSSE) also issued its ratings: OSSE rated our Upper School a Rising School (the second of five ratings) and the Middle School a Reward School (the top rating).

These ratings reflect some important ways that DC charter schools are held to a high level of accountability. I want to provide you with information about these ratings, the assessments behind them, and what both say about Washington Latin. Here are several key points I want to highlight.

·      Academic Achievement - Washington Latin remains among the top-performing schools in the District of Columbia on both Math and Reading on the DC CAS for the Upper and Middle Schools. In the Middle School, 77% of students were proficient or advanced in Math and 79% in Reading.  In the Upper School, 70% of students were proficient or advanced in Math and 63% in Reading. We were especially pleased to see the improvement in Upper School Math, from 59% to 70% proficient over the last four years.  This compares to 54% Math proficiency and 50% in Reading for all DC public school students.

·      Academic Growth – Improvement in scores counts for a full 40% of the Performance Management Framework in the Middle School as opposed to 15% for the Upper School, where performance on the PSATs, SAT/ACTs and APs is also included. The primary reason for the Middle School Tier 2 rating was that our already high scores did not improve as much as hoped.

·      Time at Latin improves student achievement – The longer students are at Latin, the better their academic performance on the DC CAS.  Students who have been at Latin since 5th grade outscored more recently-enrolled students by 15 percentage points in Math and 16 points in Reading.

·      Testing across DC will change this year – Because of the Common Core standards adopted by DC, the District will administer a new test which is aligned to the new standards. The new test is called the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) and will first be administered in spring 2015. What our students learn in the classroom everyday will help prepare them for this new testing instrument.  PARCC will be a stronger assessment in terms of measuring the kind of higher-order academic abilities that Latin is focused on.  We believe this is a better test that will more accurately reflect where we are and how to improve our students’ learning.  With higher standards, scores may well drop for all DC students initially, but the long-term expectation is that student achievement will grow with higher standards and goals.

It is not yet clear how either OSSE or PCSB will handle ratings during the transition to PARCC, as it will take time to score the tests and then determine the new “cut scores” for Proficient, Advanced, etc. We will keep you informed as we learn more!

Our Assessment Philosophy – We remain committed to our high academic standards for all students at Latin. I work in close partnership with Principal Diana Smith, Director of Academics Lacy Peale, and Director of Data and Assessment Ryan Benjamin to ensure a balance between teaching for success on assessments and teaching a classical curriculum at the core of our mission. In our continued effort to develop well-rounded learners, we do not measure student achievement based on one test but rather on a variety of tools including the DC CAS, Latin’s own academic indices, and standardized tests used nationally to assess college readiness (PSAT, SAT and Advanced Placement exams). Together this suite of assessment tools helps us ensure that we are addressing student needs and identifying areas requiring greater focus.

Implications for WLPCS

At Latin, we are serious about academics and recognize the benefits of a common form of evaluation across the District for all public school students. The DC CAS scores are helpful for comparing our program’s effectiveness with those of other schools and ensures that we continue to focus on improving the learning of all students.  At the same time, we will continue to balance our liberal arts/ classical approach with the need to perform well on these tests.  Testing data are important, but they are not the sole driver of our pedagogy and curriculum.

With that said, we are focusing on improving our growth, particularly in middle school, as we have done previously in the upper school. While the change to the new PARCC assessment makes this year especially challenging for arriving at academic metrics, we have set goals in our efforts to improve, including:

·      MATHEMATICS - In order to prepare our students for the PARCC in Mathematics, students will take school-wide monthly assessments that mimic the PARCC questions. Each assessment will have 1-2 performance-based questions (open response) and 5-10 selected response questions. Teachers will grade according to the PARCC rubric, and administrators will use Schoolnet to measure achievement and growth on these assessments as the PARCC approaches.

·      READING - We will create a reading assessment of multiple-choice questions based on the literature in the WLPCS curriculum. We will give these assessments to students in grades 5-11 at the beginning of November and then will include a similar assessment as part of the final exams in June for grades 7-11.

In terms of the rating change for the middle school, we believe this is a temporary shift and does not reflect a substantial change in the quality of our academic program or the focus of our teaching to the classical model.  We expect that, with continued focus on academic excellence overall and attention paid to the new assessment, Washington Latin will again demonstrate the quality of our program with the highest ratings.

I hope you see our school as one where words matter, ideas matter, and people matter. We have high expectations, both behavioral and academic, for our faculty and staff and for our students. We remain committed to offering our challenging, classical education to our wonderfully diverse community and to being one of DC’s highest performing charter schools. Your ongoing partnership and support are important to our work as we move onward and upward![/quote]

Res Ipsa Loquitor.

Wonder what the motto of the school is.

Dismiss, deflect, distract, delay, deceive.......... and saved by the PARCC!!!!!![/quote]

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