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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Big improvement at Two Rivers, all campuses.

Slight dip at ITDS.[/quote]

I don't mean this as a jab to Two Rivers, just want to make sure I am looking at site correctly. I went to the EmpowerEd site, and sorted by performance of 'all students'. When I sorted by school, it looked like they dropped 2-4% from last year's scores, and a range of 3-21% less than pre-pandemic. Again, not judging that school at all, and I think the emphasis on these tests is not the best way to use our energy. But just wanted to ask if I was looking at that data incorrectly before I started looking at other data. [/quote]

It's totally possible that I'm doing it wrong. You have to be really careful looking at all the subgroups and it's easy to mess it up.[/quote]

Not PP but it automatically sets to at risk group so you need to change drop down to all students.[/quote]

IMO that is the strongest way to interpret these test results. If a school improves its scores bc the demographics shift and they have more affluent kids it doesn't mean as much to me. Schools that do the best job at chipping away at the achievement gap should be celebrated the most. [/quote]

Those are the schools to avoid because they have learned they can close the gap by pulling down the top learners.[/quote]

There are schools where there are very high achieving kids, and the lower achieving kids also improve. It is not always one or the other. I have seen teachers who have pushed kids in fourth grade to a 6th or seventh grade level while at the same time bringing up children that started at a first grade level  2-3 grade levels. The second student is still 'behind' by the end of 4th grade, but that growth is crucial. Again, not at every school, but data from schools can show both high achievement and decreasing gaps. [/quote]

Sure there might be an exception or outlier but totally agree with above.  DC tries to close the achievement gap by bringing down the top.  The top students are not given appropriate educational content and thus do not teach their full potential.  The achievement gap actually would be even wider. Courses are dumb down and grade inflation is rampant.

Talk to any teacher and ask them if they are able to effectively differentiate in classes where you have kids 3-4 grades apart, especially when the majority of those kids are on the lower end.  I already know the answer to that.  The outlier or exceptional  teacher might be able to do that in mid elementary but no way in middle or high school.  This is also based on the scenario that they have exceptional class management skills because we all know none of the kids are learning anything when behavioral issues dominant in the class which BTW gets much worst as kids get older.

Even with that, it’s [/quote]

I was able to differentiate for middle schools. There were 5 different levels of lessons. In order to do it, I didn’t do whole group instruction. The issue is that in DCPS, you aren’t allowed this flexibility. They expect you to teach “tier 1” instruction and think a one size fits all approach in the core classes actually works. They will say “scaffold”, but scaffolds without changing the actual content/skill don’t help when you are too far below or too far beyond the mean.[/quote]

I am a teacher and agree with this.  But you have to admit that level of differentiation takes a lot of work and planning.  I was able to do it years ago when I taught the same courses several years in a row.  In schools where the principal switches teachers courses and grade levels often it’s really hard to do that level of planning for every lesson.[/quote]

It’s way too much work.  The much easier and most efficient way is to offer different levels of the same course and group kids in the appropriate level. It’s called tracking and what is offered in the overwhelming majority of middle and high schools in this country.

As to elementary, it’s called G & T, AAP, etc…[/quote]

+1. I don't blame my kids' teachers for not being able to give them appropriate content, and I appreciate the times the were honest with us about this. We don't ask teachers to teach kindergarteners in the same class as third graders, but in DC we ask them to teach classes with that same range of skills and abilities.

The absence of tracking also raises the importance of the overall makeup of the school, since the classroom is going to be a random selection of kids in that grade. There are middle schools that could put together a classroom of kids at each grade who are at or above grade level but don't, which means more parents avoiding those schools outright and either living in more residentially segregated neighborhoods or sending their kids to charters. The focus on equality at the school level has second-order effects that create more inequality both between schools and at the neighborhood level. [/quote]

Some families at title 1 elementary schools here have asked leadership to group the handful of higher performing kids in the same class and have been pointedly denied and told no.  They actually purposely disperse these few kids to different classes.[/quote]

It got even worse in later elementary where my kid and his above grade friends were asked to basically be tutors for the worst performing kids. Spoiler alert -- it doesn't benefit either party. We pulled our younger kid out of the school into a better DCPS partially for this reason. [/quote]

Everyone’s experiences are different of course. This happened to my oldest daughter as well. Oftentimes she seemed to be basically teaching many of her middles school classes. We didn’t have the option of moving for various reasons. Anyways, while not ideal it has taught her lots of skills she wouldn’t have learned otherwise - particularly around leadership, collaboration etc. skills not just about tutoring but being resilient and gaining respect too. As a natural introvert being pushed out of her comfort zone was probably helpful in some respects 🤷‍♂️[/quote]

Actually learning math is better than learn those skills, which can be developed over a lifetime.[/quote]

I have tutored math and writing.  As a student.  Both efforts helped reinforce my knowledge and made me a better student.[/quote]

I’m one of the resident college professors. Nothing polishes conceptual knowledge like teaching a class. In grad school they had me teach calculus on manifolds to a couple independent study students. You’ll never forget it after something like that. [/quote]

You must be a terrible professor if you believe your grad school experience has anything to do with third graders not properly being taught math. No wonder that's the only job you could get.[/quote]

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