Anonymous wrote:I would not judge a school solely, or even primarily, on test scores. It's just one part of the picture.

However, I'm very interested in how my children do and would be concerned if their scores were low.

Test scores should not be the only criteria but it’s a good starting point to narrow down your list.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a school has high-income demographics but low test scores, that's deeply unimpressive and I would avoid it.

Yes. CMI and Lee Montessori are two of the main schools that fall into this category.

Yes! It’s funny because some people tout Montessori as so great but it does not work for all children, unlike other educational philosophies that work for all.
CMI also has the worst ECE program.

And Lee has a better rep than SSMA and CHML!

Anonymous wrote:I've read in a few threads to not pay too much attention to Cape scores, and i've also seen Charters refenced alot for more of a nuanced curriculum, but how exactly is that measured if Charter standardized testing scores are noticeably lower than a Brent, Janney, Maury, Murch etc? If not using DC Cape as a metric, how do parents measure whether their child is on or above grade level? And other than perceived SES level, differentiate between High performing schools vs lower or mid performing schools?

Its easy to tell what the "best" schools are based on testing scores alone(and location obviously), but i'm curious what metric parents are using to decide whether their kids are at, below or well beyond grade level in various areas?

You need to compare apples to apples. You can’t compare schools like Brent, Maury to immersion charters for instance. The kids at our charter has none, zero ELA in ECE or K and then 50% less thru 5th. So as studies show, these kids will have lower ELA scores than kids not in immersion. Eventually they will catch up and surpass. Also how do you quantify leaning another language vs not.

In addition, kids who don’t do well in the language will likely not do well in math because it is also taught in the language.

So immersion isn’t for everyone. If my kid was struggling in ELA or math, I would pull the kid out. But it’s great for kids where school comes easy and it presents as another challenge.

Also besides CAPE testing which is required, our charter uses MAP which I think is the better test. It is adaptive and used nationally in many states so you can have more of a national comparison rather than just DC.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:If a school has high-income demographics but low test scores, that's deeply unimpressive and I would avoid it.

Yes. CMI and Lee Montessori are two of the main schools that fall into this category.

Yes! It’s funny because some people tout Montessori as so great but it does not work for all children, unlike other educational philosophies that work for all.
CMI also has the worst ECE program.

Anonymous wrote:I'm hopeful that once we have actual standardized tests where we can compare DC tests to those in other states, comparison will be more useful.

Another thing to do with the test scores is look at how kids in your particular kid's demographic perform in different schools.

All of this gets more useful if you get granular with your anaylsis.

Our charter uses MAP as standardized tests and lots of states use that. I find it more useful because it’s comparing kids in other states and not just DC which is a really low bar.

Anonymous wrote:If a school has high-income demographics but low test scores, that's deeply unimpressive and I would avoid it.

Yes. CMI and Lee Montessori are two of the main schools that fall into this category.

If a school has high-income demographics but low test scores, that's deeply unimpressive and I would avoid it.

If you look at school's annual reports there's a lot of data on performance and other goals like teacher retention. Mundo Verde for example has Spanish language performance goals.

I think tracking your own kid's performance vs grade level standards is pretty easy. Comparing performance across schools in an informed and meaningful way is hard because there is so much variation. And the question of which school is best for the specific kids in a specific family can be a totally different question from which school is best on a broad policy level.

Personally, I look at test scores but I also look at the demographic such as do they have high needs students in self contained -those are factors that may cause the school to have some lower scores.

For example Brent’s scores will likely go down as they are being made to open self-contained classrooms after modernization. But the school itself will still be wonderful.

Test scores matter but they are in the top 5, not the only factor. I also look at how many minutes of computerized learning does the school utilize (it should not be much in K-2, a little in 3-5, and at all in pre-k)
What are their enrichment programs like and do they fit my child’s interests. And of course proximity.

There’s a handful of other things as well that I look at.

Schools use things like MAP, I ready, DIBELS, and other evaluation tools. As well as teacher evaluations of a student's classwork. There are lots of ways to compare your student to grade level standards.

I dislike CAPE because the results are given to parents so late. It can be 6 months, well into the next school year after an April test. Some schools are so small that the data is noisy and some of it is suppressed for privacy. Also, after this year DC will be using a different test altogether, no more CAPE.

To compare schools I would look at the curriculum and see if I have strong opinions about it. There is no CAPE for social studies, the arts, and world languages, for example, so CAPE isn't helpful there. Evaluating math CAPE scores in middle school requires a separate spreadsheet and some background understanding of how test score reporting works. Also, because some schools have a good feeder pattern and others don't, people who care about that will consider it when choosing a school.

If you look at DC School Report Card, they have lots of data on things like student retention, that relate to school quality. Only you can decide what factors matter to your family. But that is what I would look at.

Adding: checking the trend line for a particular school is also useful. More useful, in my view, than just looking at one year's score.

I'm hopeful that once we have actual standardized tests where we can compare DC tests to those in other states, comparison will be more useful.

Another thing to do with the test scores is look at how kids in your particular kid's demographic perform in different schools.

All of this gets more useful if you get granular with your anaylsis.

I look only at CAPE scores for my child to see if they are at or below grade level. IReady tracks that result pretty accurately as well.

I would not judge a school solely, or even primarily, on test scores. It's just one part of the picture.

However, I'm very interested in how my children do and would be concerned if their scores were low.

I've read in a few threads to not pay too much attention to Cape scores, and i've also seen Charters refenced alot for more of a nuanced curriculum, but how exactly is that measured if Charter standardized testing scores are noticeably lower than a Brent, Janney, Maury, Murch etc? If not using DC Cape as a metric, how do parents measure whether their child is on or above grade level? And other than perceived SES level, differentiate between High performing schools vs lower or mid performing schools?

Its easy to tell what the "best" schools are based on testing scores alone(and location obviously), but i'm curious what metric parents are using to decide whether their kids are at, below or well beyond grade level in various areas?