Reply to Data Analysts - Where are you? (CAPE)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
So these are 18 out of 145 elementary schools where about half the students can read/write:
Row Labels	Average of Percent
Janney Elementary School	 84.7 
Lafayette Elementary School	 78.8 
Ross Elementary School	 78.6 
Key Elementary School	 77.5 
Stoddert Elementary School	 76.4 
Murch Elementary School	 74.3 
Brent Elementary School	 70.7 
Maury Elementary School	 70.5 
Hyde-Addison Elementary School	 70.2 
Shepherd Elementary School	 69.3 
Eaton Elementary School	 68.5 
Mann Elementary School	 66.6 
School-Within-School @ Goding	 66.2 
Hearst Elementary School	 66.0 
Oyster-Adams Bilingual School	 65.8 
Ludlow-Taylor Elementary School	 52.8 
DC Bilingual PCS	 52.8 
Washington Yu Ying PCS	 50.3

Janney is the best. There is a statistically similar cluster of Lafayette, Ross, Key, Stoddert, Murch. After Oyster-Adams, the dropoff is steep. Also note, charters aren't great on this list (they improve for middle/high though; lots of selection stories here

[/quote]

I get different data here. Are you looking at kids getting a 4+ on CAPE for ELA? This is what I get using the EmpowerEd dashboard. I'm also adding the %at-risk because I think it's useful for comparing schools. Still looking at all kids but schools that are scoring high on CAPE who have larger at-risk populations tend to have better teaching because they have fewer kids showing up already at or approaching grade level. It can help with 1-1 comparisons if you are deciding between schools also. Like a question I have looking at this data is why Mann and Brent are in the 60s even with less than 10% at-risk populations. On the other hand it looks to me like Murch, Maury, Eaton, and Hyde-Addison are out-performing other schools with more favorable demographics. And finally I think Payne deserves some real accolades here -- no one else comes close to those results with such a high at-risk population. Wow. They are doing something right there.:

Janney (87) 3% at risk
Ross (87) 2%
Lafayette (79.8) 3%
Key (76.7) 3%
Stoddert (76.5) 6%
Murch (75) 10%
Shepherd (73.8) 7%
Maury (73) 18%
Eaton (72.3) 14%
Hyde-Addison (71) 15%
Oyster-Adams (67.6) 7%
Hearst (64.4) 15%
SWS (63.9) 12%
Brent (63.3) 9%
Mann (63.2) 3%
Ludlow-Taylor (61.1) 23%
EW Stokes (56.4) 11%
DC Bilingual (55.5) 17%
Yu Ying (54.3) 10%
Inspired Teaching (53.4) 21%
Payne (51.5) 46%[/quote]

No clue what empower is doing. I'm using the raw data from the OSSE webpage that was the first post here. No reason to use data with unclear intermediate processing. Also I think empower is still using last year's data...

Completely anecdotal, but Mann seems to straight up not give a shit about testing. Like going out of their way to not care and focus on prepping their students instead for St. Albans/Maret/Etc. And agree on Payne. They are really the only school that seems to be an outlier/value-add. [/quote]

Could you be looking at CAPE + data? Rather than just CAPE? I'm looking at the CAPE data and it matches the Empower data and the second poster, not yours. (The CAPE+ data makes schools that have self-contained classrooms look substantially worse because the pass rates are tiny, but because those are completely separate classrooms, they really have no affect on a mainstream classroom experience.) I'm looking at the raw data and the second PP is correct.

I would also note that the schools on this list with relatively higher at risk percentages and still good overall rates -- Maury, L-T, Payne -- seem to do this partially by having extraordinarily high white passage rates (like around 90-95%; top handful of ESes in the city). So it may be that they do a good job with at risk kids or it may be that they do a VERY good job with not at risk kids, it's hard to tell.[/quote]

Extremely anecdotal here but regarding your observation about schools like with higher at risk percentages that have very high white passage rates:

Our experience at a Title 1 school that is gentrifying is that the teaching is unbelievably good. And this makes sense because teaching to a high needs population takes a ton of varying skills. You have to have good teaching pedagogy and know what actually works because there is no time or point in experimenting with something that isn't tried and true. They also tend to have excellent classroom management skills and be very good communicators (with kids and with adults).

If you take a teacher like that and give them a kid from a stable home with educated and invested parents and a willingness to support education at home those kids can do incredibly well. So I think these schools that have only recently shifted from being Title 1 or are still Title 1 simply have phenomenal teachers who know how to teach. That's it. That doesn't mean other schools don't have great teachers but I do think there are schools with wealthier family populations who can skate by with okay teaching and still have decent test results. I think a lot of these schools with very small at risk populations who are still only hitting 60-70% proficiency are sometimes not doing a great job with kids who have great support but need more help in the classroom --  a teacher who is used to kids showing up in K or 1st already reading may not have the skills to work with a kid who might be struggling due to a subclinical special need (ADHD that hasn't gotten bad enough to be diagnosed or may have an unusual presentation for instance). Their skills may be rusty or they may just not be as effective generally.

Anyway that's my theory. Teaching quality is my #1 when it comes to school selection before peer group (which is still a close #2). Ideally you want both but in public schools you don't always get them both. I think one thing you see at certain charters is that the teaching is very weak (do to high turnover and low pay) and test scores really show this because some charters even with very low at risk populations still have really atrocious test scores. It's a massive red flag and why we we'd rather be at a Title 1 with a higher at-risk population than a charter with more upper middle class families but very questionable academic metrics.[/quote]

I too believed this kind of thing when I was at a Title 1 DCPS. But then we moved to one of the top 5 DCPS schools and the teachers are also incredible -- both teachers we've had spent years at Title 1 schools, and then moved to a higher resourced school, so they are highly effective. And they are able to do more in the classroom, because the floor is higher. So, the ceiling is also higher.

DCPS title 1 teachers *are* often amazing. But they are not better than the DCPS teachers at the good schools.[/quote]

PP here. Right like I said -- ideally you want both. But in DC if you want both there are a tiny number of schools where you can get both and it can be very hard to find housing IB for those schools (and almost impossible to lottery into).

So what I'm saying is that assuming you don't have access to one of those handful of schools you may be choosing between a DCPS with a high at-risk population but potentially strong teaching (and this is where those test scores come in because that's a metric that can tell you something about teacher quality) or perhaps a charter with a low at-risk population but potentially weak teaching. This is the situation we found ourselves in and I found that the quality of teaching at the Title 1 was significantly higher whereas the peer group benefits at the charter were only a bit better. And especially as we look towards middle school (where we are moving in order to gain access to better options) I am relieved we opted for the school with great teaching over the school with more upper middle class peers. At least for us it was the right call.[/quote]

Absolutely, and I made the same decision when my kids were young (title 1 DCPS with great teaching vs charter with iffy teaching and more UMC kids). Absolutely no regrets.

But, the title 1 schools have bigger problems as the kids get older. [b]In later elementary it's harder for teachers to spend the time differentiating, [/b]and in middle school it's impossible to do it in the classroom -- you need advanced classes, otherwise the kids are stuck all learning at the same (slow) pace. So, having a cohort of high achievers becomes necessary because it allows the school to offer advanced classes. Cohort matters, bc it impacts the actual curriculum. [/quote]

This was our experience. In our kid's school, our kid spent 95% of his day on computer apps while the teacher spent all of the time helping the students who were behind. Lucky for us, our kid was focused enough to teach himself through the apps and actually left the school quite well-prepared, but that wasn't due to the teachers. It was due to all the apps he used.[/quote]

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