Anonymous
Post 08/23/2025 14:49     Subject: DC CAPE SCORES
Anonymous wrote:i think its good myschool no longer has the test scores because a lot of people who are not dcum posters were making their lottery list substantially influenced by the test scores and its more complicated/nuanced for reasons like all of those posted above. the data is still readily out there. i also wonder if even looking at at-risk numbers if some schools might have a population that is really especially at-risk/high-needs even within the farms subset.



If my school really no longer has the test scores, I totally disagree.

Transparency is good and it is something that OSSE and DCPS is not. Exhibit A eliminating showing science scores and now replacing the science curriculum with a terrible new one. No worries. If kids are doing terrible, no one will know.

More data is always good and then families can take it and do what they want. I don’t care if some families pick schools based on test scores or if they take that as only one of many considerations. Each family can decide what it’s important to them, not OSSE or DCPS.

IMO, it’s a big red flag when you move away from transparency and data.

Anonymous
Post 08/23/2025 13:41     Subject: DC CAPE SCORES
i think its good myschool no longer has the test scores because a lot of people who are not dcum posters were making their lottery list substantially influenced by the test scores and its more complicated/nuanced for reasons like all of those posted above. the data is still readily out there. i also wonder if even looking at at-risk numbers if some schools might have a population that is really especially at-risk/high-needs even within the farms subset.
Anonymous
Post 08/23/2025 13:35     Subject: DC CAPE SCORES
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


You are looking at the LEA file. There is a school level file also. On it they Washington Latin PCS - middle is 2nd street middle and Washington Latin PCS - HS is 2nd street high school and Washington Latin PCS - Cooper is Cooper middle.
Anonymous
Post 08/23/2025 13:11     Subject: DC CAPE SCORES
Anonymous wrote:
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.


That's not true. You may just be at a DCPS where it doesn't happen. At our DCPS last year, for example, my kid's 4th grade math teacher assigned different homework to different math groups and the top group got explicitly above grade level work. (All kids get the whole packet, so kids could challenge or review at their own discretion, but their assignment varied by math group.)


You get homework?????
Anonymous
Post 08/23/2025 13:07     Subject: DC CAPE SCORES
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
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.


I agree DCPS does not provide advanced material to advanced kids as part of their curriculum.

Individual teachers sometimes do, however.

But as previously noted, you can't find this out by looking at test scores because you don't know WHY kids at a particular school are getting 5s. Is it because the schools teachers are doing a particularly good job of offering advanced content to students who are ready for it? Or is it because parents at the school are paying for a lot of enrichment and tutoring? Or, another possibility: the school follows DCPS grade level curriculum in the classroom, but offers additional enrichment in math and ELA via after school programs or clubs which enables kids who are interested to work ahead?

You have to visit the school, talk to the faculty, talk to current and former families, etc. CAPE scores are the beginning of an inquiry, not the end.


You certainly know that a school with a chunk of 5s is more like to offer or be open to providing above grade level work or enrichments. If the school doesn't have a chunk of 5s, it almost certainly isn't happening and it's hard to pitch to the school as needed.
Anonymous
Post 08/23/2025 13:06     Subject: DC CAPE SCORES
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.


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.


Totally agree with this. The LT enrichments are truly fantastic and they have a lot to do with drawing & keeping UMC families at the school. They are particularly great for working parents who don't have time to schlep their kids around the Hill after school to find the equivalent enrichments elsewhere. I also like that it fosters cohesion between grade levels. My kids have way more friends a grade above or below them than I ever did as a kid because they spend time with them in shared-interest after school clubs.
Anonymous
Post 08/23/2025 13:05     Subject: DC CAPE SCORES
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
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.


I agree DCPS does not provide advanced material to advanced kids as part of their curriculum.

Individual teachers sometimes do, however.

But as previously noted, you can't find this out by looking at test scores because you don't know WHY kids at a particular school are getting 5s. Is it because the schools teachers are doing a particularly good job of offering advanced content to students who are ready for it? Or is it because parents at the school are paying for a lot of enrichment and tutoring? Or, another possibility: the school follows DCPS grade level curriculum in the classroom, but offers additional enrichment in math and ELA via after school programs or clubs which enables kids who are interested to work ahead?

You have to visit the school, talk to the faculty, talk to current and former families, etc. CAPE scores are the beginning of an inquiry, not the end.


Agree with this, and I've had kids in DCPS for a total of 9 years now and experience at two different DCPS schools with four different principals.

This is also principal dependent -- if the principal supports differentiation, the teachers are more likely to do it.
Anonymous
Post 08/23/2025 13:02     Subject: DC CAPE SCORES
Anonymous wrote:
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.


I agree DCPS does not provide advanced material to advanced kids as part of their curriculum.

Individual teachers sometimes do, however.

But as previously noted, you can't find this out by looking at test scores because you don't know WHY kids at a particular school are getting 5s. Is it because the schools teachers are doing a particularly good job of offering advanced content to students who are ready for it? Or is it because parents at the school are paying for a lot of enrichment and tutoring? Or, another possibility: the school follows DCPS grade level curriculum in the classroom, but offers additional enrichment in math and ELA via after school programs or clubs which enables kids who are interested to work ahead?

You have to visit the school, talk to the faculty, talk to current and former families, etc. CAPE scores are the beginning of an inquiry, not the end.
Anonymous
Post 08/23/2025 13:01     Subject: DC CAPE SCORES
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:What about an analysis of middle school 5s like Hardy 6th has 2x ELA 5s as Basis? Sure some kids read lots at home for fun….


Classes at Hardy are twice the size of classes at BASIS in 6th grade (BASIS about 120, Hardy about 200).

It could be as simple as that.


+1

Raw numbers don’t help in any type of statistical analysis like this. You need percents or ratios because of varying sizes.


I think you actually need both. 50% where it's 5 kids may be less desirable than 30% where it's 30 kids when it comes to picking a school with a good cohort.


For instance, you could have a tiny school like ITDS where the average performance for math is higher, but all kids are stuck in the same math class vs a larger school like SH where the average performance for math is lower, but math is explicitly tracked and there are enough kids for an entire class of advanced kids. For my kid, the latter would be a better set up.
Anonymous
Post 08/23/2025 13:00     Subject: DC CAPE SCORES
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:What about an analysis of middle school 5s like Hardy 6th has 2x ELA 5s as Basis? Sure some kids read lots at home for fun….


Classes at Hardy are twice the size of classes at BASIS in 6th grade (BASIS about 120, Hardy about 200).

It could be as simple as that.


+1

Raw numbers don’t help in any type of statistical analysis like this. You need percents or ratios because of varying sizes.


I think you actually need both. 50% where it's 5 kids may be less desirable than 30% where it's 30 kids when it comes to picking a school with a good cohort.
Anonymous
Post 08/23/2025 12:59     Subject: DC CAPE SCORES
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.


That's not true. You may just be at a DCPS where it doesn't happen. At our DCPS last year, for example, my kid's 4th grade math teacher assigned different homework to different math groups and the top group got explicitly above grade level work. (All kids get the whole packet, so kids could challenge or review at their own discretion, but their assignment varied by math group.)
Anonymous
Post 08/23/2025 12:55     Subject: DC CAPE SCORES
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:What about an analysis of middle school 5s like Hardy 6th has 2x ELA 5s as Basis? Sure some kids read lots at home for fun….


Classes at Hardy are twice the size of classes at BASIS in 6th grade (BASIS about 120, Hardy about 200).

It could be as simple as that.


+1

Raw numbers don’t help in any type of statistical analysis like this. You need percents or ratios because of varying sizes.
Anonymous
Post 08/23/2025 11:02     Subject: DC CAPE SCORES
Anonymous wrote:What about an analysis of middle school 5s like Hardy 6th has 2x ELA 5s as Basis? Sure some kids read lots at home for fun….


Classes at Hardy are twice the size of classes at BASIS in 6th grade (BASIS about 120, Hardy about 200).

It could be as simple as that.
Anonymous
Post 08/23/2025 10:18     Subject: DC CAPE SCORES
Anonymous wrote:
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?


It’s good they got rid of the bar charts on MySchool because they were defective. They showed “data suppressed” as zero, which is inaccurate and often quite misleading. So yes, it’s better to report no data than to report misleading/erroneous data. (Especially because it was the parents with the wherewithal to parse spreadsheets who were able to identify the error.)
Anonymous
Post 08/23/2025 10:15     Subject: DC CAPE SCORES
What about an analysis of middle school 5s like Hardy 6th has 2x ELA 5s as Basis? Sure some kids read lots at home for fun….