Reply to Who said there isn't a North-South divide?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It had the same demographics but better scores a few years back under the veteran principal.  The principal who took over from her certainly helped tank it in many ways. It's true the demographics have't changed too much. They have been consistently bad.[/quote]

No, the demographics have actually "improved" and returned to the levels that existed under the veteran principal, which is still Title 1 but not even the in the top three poorest schools in APS, so high but not the highest. Yet the scores are the lowest and dropping. [/quote]

I suspect the low test scores are a two-fold issue. First, many of the UMC parents who care about higher test scores choice out to other schools. The parents who leave are more likely to push their own kids academically for good scores/grades, so kids who would score well have essentially left the school. Relatedly, parents who want a traditional calendar also choice out. The UMC parents who remain at Barcroft are more likely to not care about test scores, and in turn, probably pass that on to their kids, resulting in slightly lower UMC scores than the absence of choice would otherwise reflect. Relatedly, the parents who stay are clearly fine with a non-traditional calendar, suggesting they may not care about "traditional" things like test scores, provided they see their children are learning. So there is a selection bias at play among the UMC families.

Second, among the families who qualify for FARMs, precisely because the school is NOT the neediest and highest poverty, there isn't a huge push to "teach to the test" and drill for the SOLs. So test scores among the poorer students at the school are lower than at higher poverty schools like Randolph and Carlin Springs, even though the kids may be learning as much/well as their peers (or more, given more instruction time toward content/learning, and less on drilling).

Both of these issues were compounded by the last principal, who was, by all accounts, simply out of her depth and lost favor with the UMC families. Hopefully the new principal will be able to turn things around, but that takes a few years to be reflected in test scores. Unfortunately, given that the first round of boundary changes is happening this year, she may simply not have the time to show her impact, at least not via official test scores. [/quote]

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