expand the school name column. its broken out Latin upper school (high school), middle school 2nd street, cooper, in that order.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Scores for my relevant demographic group are stagnant (a bit down, but it's a small number), while overall scores for the school are up a fair bit. The scores I care about are in a fine place but certainly not one where there is not plenty of room for improvement. What is your threshold for becoming concerned about a trend like that? A drop of a particular size? Dropping or stagnating over a particular number of years?

Dropping or stagnating trend over time.

If you have a high performer and as kids go up in grades, achievement gap gets wider and this likely means that content and focus is on the lower performers.

I noticed this at one school -- the number of 4/5s went down, the number of 3+ went up.

I guess that means more kids are brought up to an adequate level, but the kids at the top are not challenged as much.

Or the kids at the top have left.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Scores for my relevant demographic group are stagnant (a bit down, but it's a small number), while overall scores for the school are up a fair bit. The scores I care about are in a fine place but certainly not one where there is not plenty of room for improvement. What is your threshold for becoming concerned about a trend like that? A drop of a particular size? Dropping or stagnating over a particular number of years?

Dropping or stagnating trend over time.

If you have a high performer and as kids go up in grades, achievement gap gets wider and this likely means that content and focus is on the lower performers.

I noticed this at one school -- the number of 4/5s went down, the number of 3+ went up.

I guess that means more kids are brought up to an adequate level, but the kids at the top are not challenged as much.

Anonymous wrote:Scores for my relevant demographic group are stagnant (a bit down, but it's a small number), while overall scores for the school are up a fair bit. The scores I care about are in a fine place but certainly not one where there is not plenty of room for improvement. What is your threshold for becoming concerned about a trend like that? A drop of a particular size? Dropping or stagnating over a particular number of years?

Dropping or stagnating trend over time.

If you have a high performer and as kids go up in grades, achievement gap gets wider and this likely means that content and focus is on the lower performers.

Anonymous wrote:Where are you guys seeing the data broken out into individual campuses? I'm curious about Latin 2nd versus Cooper but just see "Washington Latin PCS" listed on the OSSE spreadsheet here -

https://app.box.com/s/a1bx09uvrx0i066n2alof3onbfivboen

This site is a bit easier to navigate https://www.empowerk12.org/data-dashboard-source/dc-parcc-dash

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone done the analysis of percentages of 5s? I'm going to be honest and say that I am confident my UMC white kid with most statistical advantages you can name (parental education, married parents, etc) would get 4s anywhere, but a 5 might depend on the school/teaching. It's also a good way of judging schools that have a sizeable advanced cohort. Lots of the schools we are considering have kids peel off in 5th grade for charters, so I'd be particularly interested in how non-economically disadvantaged (white if it's the only proxy) 3rd and 4th or, if that's too complicated, just 4th graders do. But I'd also happily take any data related to 5s if anyone has pulled out the data.

lol ok. Kids get 5s because they are motivated and focused and get how to take tests. It is not actually about teaching to the test. At that age you can’t really teach those abilities.

Right. I don't care what my kid gets on the CAPE for the sake of it, so I don't want schools that teach to the test. I want schools with a large number of kids who get 5s so that there's a cohort to teach advanced material to.

DCPS doesn't really do this, even with a large cohort of 5s.

I’ll correct above. DCPS doesn’t do this because there are no kids getting 5’s at many schools.

Where are you guys seeing the data broken out into individual campuses? I'm curious about Latin 2nd versus Cooper but just see "Washington Latin PCS" listed on the OSSE spreadsheet here -

https://app.box.com/s/a1bx09uvrx0i066n2alof3onbfivboen

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone done the analysis of percentages of 5s? I'm going to be honest and say that I am confident my UMC white kid with most statistical advantages you can name (parental education, married parents, etc) would get 4s anywhere, but a 5 might depend on the school/teaching. It's also a good way of judging schools that have a sizeable advanced cohort. Lots of the schools we are considering have kids peel off in 5th grade for charters, so I'd be particularly interested in how non-economically disadvantaged (white if it's the only proxy) 3rd and 4th or, if that's too complicated, just 4th graders do. But I'd also happily take any data related to 5s if anyone has pulled out the data.

lol ok. Kids get 5s because they are motivated and focused and get how to take tests. It is not actually about teaching to the test. At that age you can’t really teach those abilities.

Right. I don't care what my kid gets on the CAPE for the sake of it, so I don't want schools that teach to the test. I want schools with a large number of kids who get 5s so that there's a cohort to teach advanced material to.

DCPS doesn't really do this, even with a large cohort of 5s.

I will echo what another parent wrote - as a Cap Hill resident, the number of Brent (and other) parents at Mathnasium and private tutors is quite large. Not knocking that, each parent should do what they can to support their kid. But it inflates the scores at those schools due to factors not related to actual school instruction, which means those kids at the school who aren’t supplementing outside of school will underperform bc the quality of instruction at the school was not what led to the high scores in the first place.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Anyone have any other observations from the data about other schools?

Some schools (a mix of DCPS and charters--Whittier, Payne, some of the Friendship and Center City schools, etc.) are far outperforming their high at-risk populations.
Some schools (mostly charters like Shining Stars and Breakthrough) are far underperforming considering their low at-risk populations.

Montessori and high standardized test scores don't fit together in DC. Bilingual education sometimes does, but it varies across schools and demographic groups.

Of the schools with few at-risk kids, some are better at serving them than others.

In most of the schools with many at-risk kids, the kids who aren't at risk (current proxy: white, since we don't have non-at-risk data) are doing pretty well, but there is considerable variation.

Schools that are near each other can have big variations in test scores. Some of this is self-reinforcing as families move to the boundary with the higher-performing school, some is likely due to having self-contained special ed classes clustered at certain schools, some might actually be about better teaching or administration at a given school. It's hard to tell.

If your goal is to find an elementary school with a decent peer group of kids scoring 4+ in both ELA and math (what you consider decent could vary, but let's say a majority of kids on both tests) there are more options than you might think. For elementary, in addition to the JR and McArthur feeders there's Brent, Maury, SWS, Ludlow-Taylor, Ross, Yu Ying, and MV Calle Ocho.
And if you go down to 45% scoring 4+ in each, you add Whittier, LAMB, ITDS, Stokes, Friendship Chamberlain, Payne, and Garrison.
Others that are close include Burroughs, Chisholm, and Marie Reed.

I'm not fan of Shining Stars, but apparently it has 53% low income and a stunning 23% homeless.

https://schoolreportcard.dc.gov/lea/166/school/3066/report#measure-107

Shining Stars and Whittier have the same at-risk percentage: 43%. At SS, 34% of kids scored a 3+ in math; at Whittier it was 81%. Chisholm, Sela, Burroughs, and Center City Congress Heights all do significantly better than SS with very similar percentages at-risk.

Other notable underperformers in math considering at risk rate include Stokes (only 6% at risk--less than Mann, Brent, Hearst, SWS, Stoddert, or Oyster!), Lee Montessori (they have 15% at risk--similar to Hyde-Addison and Maury but with far lower scores), Breakthrough (and it's not Montessori to blame here--CHML has the same at-risk percentage but the 3+ rate is 13 percentage points higher), and Lee Montessori EE (Lewis has the same at-risk percentage but 3+ proficiency is 55 percentage points higher!), Miner, and Ketcham.

For ELA, leaving out the bilingual schools, I noticed both campuses of Lee, Learn DC, Two Rivers Young, Amidon-Bowen, Langley, Miner, Ketcham, and some of the Rocketship campuses all did worse than schools with similar at-risk populations.

The outliers look different when you look at 4+. And not all at-risk kids are the same. And there's more to schools than test scores. And a school that does great with at-risk kids might not be the right fit for a kid with a different life. But it is interesting.

It's interesting how Stokes is one of the few schools that has most kids getting 4+ on both tests yet underperforms for 3+ given its at risk percentage. That indicates a significant achievement gap: mostly 4s and 5s but also more 1s and 2s than one might expect. If I were considering the school I would want to know how it works with such a range of students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone done the analysis of percentages of 5s? I'm going to be honest and say that I am confident my UMC white kid with most statistical advantages you can name (parental education, married parents, etc) would get 4s anywhere, but a 5 might depend on the school/teaching. It's also a good way of judging schools that have a sizeable advanced cohort. Lots of the schools we are considering have kids peel off in 5th grade for charters, so I'd be particularly interested in how non-economically disadvantaged (white if it's the only proxy) 3rd and 4th or, if that's too complicated, just 4th graders do. But I'd also happily take any data related to 5s if anyone has pulled out the data.

lol ok. Kids get 5s because they are motivated and focused and get how to take tests. It is not actually about teaching to the test. At that age you can’t really teach those abilities.

Right. I don't care what my kid gets on the CAPE for the sake of it, so I don't want schools that teach to the test. I want schools with a large number of kids who get 5s so that there's a cohort to teach advanced material to.

DP. That might be what the data shows but it also might not.

At many of the schools with very high percentages of kids scoring 4+, it not uncommon for parents to be supplementing aggressively outside of school, especially in math. At a school like that, you might think "oh good lots of kids scoring 5, the teacher can teach above grade level." In reality, the teacher still has to focus most of their content on grade level because there will always be kids who need that, and the kids doing a lot of outside supplementing may be bored in class but still excelling in math.

If your focus is on providing a challenging environment for advanced learners, I would pick a floor for scoring and then start focusing on qualitative factors. For instance, some schools offer enrichment for kids who excel in or have a strong interest in subjects at school (rather than parents having to go find it elsewhere). Look for schools with active History Day participation, math and creative writing clubs after school (not just tutoring, but clubs where kids can go beyond the curriculum), science fairs, etc. Talk to parents and kids at the school and listen to how they talk about the academics and what they enjoy most at the school. This is going to tell you way more about the metrics you value than trying to isolate the 5s for non-economically advantaged kids and using it to draw conclusions about what the classroom experience is like.

To give you an example of how this looks, I'm a parent on Capitol Hill and when I was looking at schools, I looked at things like how Payne has a really great History Day program with a lot of kids participating, and they also have a dedicated science teacher for upper grades. Or how LT does a science fair every spring that all kids participate in, and their after school enrichment programming is largely taught by the school's teachers and includes a ton of academic enrichment in various subjects. Those are more interesting and meaningful metrics for me in choosing a school than which school has 5 additional 4th graders from non-economically disadvantaged backgrounds scoring a 5 on CAPE.

Scores for my relevant demographic group are stagnant (a bit down, but it's a small number), while overall scores for the school are up a fair bit. The scores I care about are in a fine place but certainly not one where there is not plenty of room for improvement. What is your threshold for becoming concerned about a trend like that? A drop of a particular size? Dropping or stagnating over a particular number of years?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone done the analysis of percentages of 5s? I'm going to be honest and say that I am confident my UMC white kid with most statistical advantages you can name (parental education, married parents, etc) would get 4s anywhere, but a 5 might depend on the school/teaching. It's also a good way of judging schools that have a sizeable advanced cohort. Lots of the schools we are considering have kids peel off in 5th grade for charters, so I'd be particularly interested in how non-economically disadvantaged (white if it's the only proxy) 3rd and 4th or, if that's too complicated, just 4th graders do. But I'd also happily take any data related to 5s if anyone has pulled out the data.

lol ok. Kids get 5s because they are motivated and focused and get how to take tests. It is not actually about teaching to the test. At that age you can’t really teach those abilities.

Right. I don't care what my kid gets on the CAPE for the sake of it, so I don't want schools that teach to the test. I want schools with a large number of kids who get 5s so that there's a cohort to teach advanced material to.

Anonymous wrote:Has anyone done the analysis of percentages of 5s? I'm going to be honest and say that I am confident my UMC white kid with most statistical advantages you can name (parental education, married parents, etc) would get 4s anywhere, but a 5 might depend on the school/teaching. It's also a good way of judging schools that have a sizeable advanced cohort. Lots of the schools we are considering have kids peel off in 5th grade for charters, so I'd be particularly interested in how non-economically disadvantaged (white if it's the only proxy) 3rd and 4th or, if that's too complicated, just 4th graders do. But I'd also happily take any data related to 5s if anyone has pulled out the data.

lol ok. Kids get 5s because they are motivated and focused and get how to take tests. It is not actually about teaching to the test. At that age you can’t really teach those abilities.

Anonymous wrote:ive noticed the school snapshot profiles produced by myschool no longer have bar charts with test scores on them. i think that is a positive step.

Um why? So only the parents with the wherewithal to process spreadsheet data can know the test scores?