Anonymous wrote:And the charter school spin

http://www.dcpcsb.org/News-Room.aspx?ID=418

Where are the real numbers? Come on!

All of these scores and reports are meaningless because they don't take into account any sort of demographic shifts. There are ways to track on a cohort-by-cohort basis, but they are complicated and difficult. This is an example of other measures that probably give a lot more value than just the straight, year over year proficiency scores:

http://greatergreatereducation.org/post/18970/heres-the-dc-school-ranking-you-should-be-looking-at/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:YAY - Seaton has a 16.6 percent increase in reading. Their reading scores last year were bad, but it's a great school. Glad that the scores have caught up and demonstrated a huge improvement (their math scores were already good).

Yes! I was happy to see that too.

Ditto. Still a long way to go but hopefully, they are in the right track!

- Incoming PK family @ Seaton

The ten public charter schools whose students scored highest on DC CAS were (in order of overall proficiency):
1. St. Coletta Special Education PCS (87.9 percent)
2. DC Prep PCS – Edgewood Middle (86.3 percent)
3. KIPP DC – College Preparatory PCS (83.2 percent)
4. BASIS DC PCS (82.9 percent)
5. DC Prep PCS – Benning Middle (81.1 percent)
6. KIPP DC – KEY Academy PCS (80.0 percent)
7. Washington Latin PCS – Middle School (77.9 percent)
8. Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS (77.1 percent)
9. DC Prep PCS – Edgewood Elementary (75.4 percent)
10. Washington Yu Ying PCS (74.9 percent)

Anonymous wrote:YAY - Seaton has a 16.6 percent increase in reading. Their reading scores last year were bad, but it's a great school. Glad that the scores have caught up and demonstrated a huge improvement (their math scores were already good).

Yes! I was happy to see that too.

And the charter school spin

http://www.dcpcsb.org/News-Room.aspx?ID=418

Where are the real numbers? Come on!

YAY - Seaton has a 16.6 percent increase in reading. Their reading scores last year were bad, but it's a great school. Glad that the scores have caught up and demonstrated a huge improvement (their math scores were already good).

Anonymous wrote: I'm also interested in whether Tyler Elementary School and Amidon-Bowen Elementary School improved significantly.

According to http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/About+DCPS/Press+Releases+and+Announcements/Press+Releases/DCPS+Students+Continue+to+Demonstrate+Growth Amidon gained 10.4 percentage points in math proficiency. That still only means about a third of students are proficient in math, but it is a big improvement over 2011-12 when only 17% were proficient.

Given it's not on the list of 40 lowest-performing schools that gained on both math and reading, it seems reading scores went down or stayed the same. They were at 31% proficient last year.

Anonymous wrote:Is there some supportable reason for DCPS to be using 2007 as the base year for this analysis? Because if you look at 2008-14, the picture is pretty different.

and what year was all the test cheating uncovered? If it was 2007 or after, were the results adjusted to remove the documented cheating?

The scale on these slides is ridiculous. Check out slide 3 as an example. The 4.1 percentage point-increase on the right looks much larger even though the base is 44.6%. You would think from the difference in graphs that it had more than doubled.

To the PP who said, "why would they spin?" you have it right there. They don't release the raw data and instead have some general data points that are made to looks better than they really are.

Is there some supportable reason for DCPS to be using 2007 as the base year for this analysis? Because if you look at 2008-14, the picture is pretty different.

Anonymous wrote:Slightly more info here (DCPS only):

http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/Files/DC%20CAS%202014%20-%20DCPS%20Press%20Deck.pdf

Slide 4 probably has the most disconcerting data.

Yeah, seriously. DCPS is thanking the gods for Asian students.

Slightly more info here (DCPS only):

http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/Files/DC%20CAS%202014%20-%20DCPS%20Press%20Deck.pdf

Slide 4 probably has the most disconcerting data.

"School level data will be available on the DCPS website later this summer."

It is absurd that they aren't releasing school-by-school data this very day. In order to offer the overall stats they had to consult the school-by-school data. It is infuriating.

They don't have the school-by-school breakdowns. It's 100% spin right now.