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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Shining Stars is a Tier 1 school now!

https://www.dcpcsb.org/more-students-ever-attend-top-ranked-public-charter-school

"Ten schools made the jump from Tier 2 to Tier 1 this year, with Shining Stars Montessori Academy PCS improving by 31 points"

This is great news for the future of SSMA.

The only sour note for me -- and the reason I am posting it on this thread - is that the "Shake Up at SSMA" last year was clearly totally unjustified. I don't know why the last director of education left the school. But hats off to her. She did a remarkable job for SSMA. If you're reading this - Ms. W - Thank you![/quote]

I remember the low score being a lot because of attendance. What's the jump attributable to? Better attendance is less impressive than perhaps other markers.[/quote]

The academic scores generally went up. But the dramatic improvements in tiering came from the scores for attendance and re-enrollment. See here:

https://www.dcpcsb.org/sites/default/files/2018-10-29%20Shining%20Stars%20Montessori%20Academy%20PCS%20PK3-8%20PMF.pdf

and compare the numbers to the year before:

https://www.dcpcsb.org/sites/default/files/2017-11-8%20PMF%20Score%20Card%20SY16-17_Shining%20Stars%20Montessori%20Academy%20PCS_2017.pdf

Last year, SSMA got 0.9 out of 18 points for attendance and re-enrollment. This year: 13.6. That counts for 12.7 points of the 12.8 points of improvement (24.4 to 37.2) that were assessed last year. So almost ALL of the increase came from those two areas, relative to last year.

The academic scores did go up from 13.5 to 14.5, which is a big rise. But that rise was evened out by lower CLASS scores, so that it was attendance and re-enrollment that made the difference. But because SSMA is old enough as an institution, it was also graded on two new components. It was graded on a 55 point scale last year. But this year it was graded on a 90 point scale because 35 new tiering points came from 'growth' in Math and English scores.

If you do the math though, SSMA IS STILL A TIER 2 SCHOOL: 54.7 out of 90 is 60.7%, not 75.4% as it now reads on the school quality report. SOMEONE WILL FIGURE OUT THAT THEY SCREWED UP THE MATH and drop SSMA back to Tier 2.

What's more, the attendance numbers are clearly bogus. There's no way attendance was 94.8% at Shining Stars last year. No way. The ED knew she needed to get the number up and submitted a high number for that reason. But she cooked the books. It's a fake number.

Given what I know about SSMA: huge teacher turnover (which will affect academic scores) and lower re-enrollment, expect the tiering numbers to drop down next year.

So, in sum, the Tier 1 rating is a math error that they will correct. The improvement based on attendance is bogus. And the improvement based on re-enrollment will be reversed next year. The only good thing about the PMF IN REALITY is the increased academic scores. Let's hope the new education director can build on the success of the last on that score. But with such a huge turnover in guides, don't count on it.[/quote]

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