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So, the way this is weighed, white kids scoring quite a bit lower than expected/average on PARCC does pretty much nothing to the ranking of the school. Yu Ying getting a score in the 90's with a white kid score of 41. Even though it is 30% white.

Maybe you understand this, but just to clarify, it doesn’t mean the white kids’ score are objectively very low. It just means that they are lower compared to other white kids across the district. The other population groups far exceed the scores for their relevant populations. And scores are just one factor in the mix.

This is important!

Agreed this is important. Taking CMI, for example, to pick on just one school that's been mentioned--it doesn't mean that the white kids at the school are doing horribly. It just means that they aren't doing as well as expected, relative to their counterparts at other schools.

Sure. Since I have a white kid, though, this matters to me. I don't really want my kid at a school where the white kids are doing worse than average, do I? Just like any other subgroup may have the same feeling about a school which does not do well in their demographic.

But, I understood that already - I know white kids are still overall going to score fairly well. My point was that this star system is HEAVILY weighted toward the progress of disabled (for some reason more than any other group by far), and secondarily weighted by at risk etc.

FINE> BUT, parents will simply read it as "this is the average score of the school relative to every other school". So there is no strong emphasis. Maybe it should be called STAR Rankings for Underperforming Demographics in DCPS and Charter Schools. But it isn't.

The weighting also appears to have little to do with the population in the school of any one demographic - ie, if the school is largely white, shouldn't their underperformance (yes, relative to expectation) be quite a bit more apparent in the scoring?

I'd love to see Bowser take to the powerpoint and explain all this convoluted math to parents in DC in some kind of town halls.

Agree with this. So how do you ask your school about this without seeming to be racist? Because at the end of the day, at our school, it appears that my (white) kids are not performing as well as they should be, even though the oldest got a 4 on both areas of PARCC. Would they have gotten a 5 at a school where white kids performed better, based on expectations of how white kids should have performed. Every subgroup should be asking this question.

At a few schools I've looked at, white students are lagging in some of the "minor" categories, including attendance. So dig in and look at every measure.

Are you in a school where there aren't many white students, particularly in testing grades or just a small school overall? Small sample size can really skew these report cards. Also, in DC, white, high SES students are the most likely students to opt-out of PARCC. If a couple of the best students aren't being tested, that will show up.

As for how to ask, I would ask the principal why he/she thinks some subgroups are performing better than others, particularly in X domain (not just overall but see what metric seems to be dragging them down). And ask how he/she plans to address it.

Thanks this is helpful. Our charter is small and white kids make up about a 1/3 of all kids. I did think about that factor and the impact of one or two kids with a small sample size.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, shocking info on CMI. The school keeps going downhill.

This. I don't understand how they have a waitlist.

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Anonymous wrote:5 Star Elementary

Eaton Elementary School
Hyde-Addison Elementary School
Janney Elementary School
Mann Elementary School
Marie Reed Elementary School
Maury Elementary School
Oyster-Adams Bilingual School
SWS
Washington Yu Ying

Not impressed with this list. There are real problems at some of these supposedly 5-star schools. We like SWS, but our children haven't been taught to write effectively there over the years. They can't spell, punctuate or use good grammar there to save their lives in the upper grades, which seems to be the norm at SWS, leaving us to hire writing tutors. We know Maury families who bailed for "lesser" schools to avoid 18 months worth of trailers at miserable Eliot-Hine MS. We know a bunch of YuYing kids in their neighborhood whose spoken Chinese is hopeless after many years of "immersion" study (one of us is a native Mandarin speaker). Janney is super crowded. Lafayette, Murch and Brent didn't make the list, and they're more popular that some schools that did, with 100% in-boundary kindergartens. Etc etc.

This rating system isn’t meant to grade spelling, building condition, size, second language efficiency, and popularity. It’s a good think you didn’t design the system.

PP makes a fair point, schools that obviously need major improvement score 5s. Develop a ranking system more rooted in common sense and market forces, thanks. It's not good that whoever designed the system did.

So your argument is that Maury should have fewer stars because it is in a swing space (and will have a brand new beautiful building in less than a year?). Because “market forces”? More like sour grapes.

Anonymous wrote:If I were the parent of a child who is too young for the testing grades or just entering the lottery, the only pieces of this I would pay attention to are attendance, re-enrollment and the CLASS scores (Classroom organization, emotional support, instructional support).

And maybe whether there is a parent organization.

Also if your school has 1 or more self-contained classrooms for children with special needs, know that the STAR score is likely to be lower than it would be otherwise.

Anonymous wrote:Wow, shocking info on CMI. The school keeps going downhill.

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Anonymous wrote:5 Star Elementary

Eaton Elementary School
Hyde-Addison Elementary School
Janney Elementary School
Mann Elementary School
Marie Reed Elementary School
Maury Elementary School
Oyster-Adams Bilingual School
SWS
Washington Yu Ying

Not impressed with this list. There are real problems at some of these supposedly 5-star schools. We like SWS, but our children haven't been taught to write effectively there over the years. They can't spell, punctuate or use good grammar there to save their lives in the upper grades, which seems to be the norm at SWS, leaving us to hire writing tutors. We know Maury families who bailed for "lesser" schools to avoid 18 months worth of trailers at miserable Eliot-Hine MS. We know a bunch of YuYing kids in their neighborhood whose spoken Chinese is hopeless after many years of "immersion" study (one of us is a native Mandarin speaker). Janney is super crowded. Lafayette, Murch and Brent didn't make the list, and they're more popular that some schools that did, with 100% in-boundary kindergartens. Etc etc.

This rating system isn’t meant to grade spelling, building condition, size, second language efficiency, and popularity. It’s a good think you didn’t design the system.

PP makes a fair point, schools that obviously need major improvement score 5s. Develop a ranking system more rooted in common sense and market forces, thanks. It's not good that whoever designed the system did.

Anonymous wrote:Our white kids go to a 3 star majority minority/majority "high risk" elementary school. We know the school has lots of kids from families facing challenges that ours do not. We also know that our kids are doing very well academically while having a real world experience. We don't care how many silly stars our school has.

Parents who care about these kinds of things are just overcompensating for not being around their kids enough. They think living in the most expensive and whitest neighborhood and keep working too hard and call it "good parenting." The most important thing isn't having your kids at a top ranked school. The most important thing is being there.

Anonymous wrote:Be sure to look at re-enrollment rate by student group too.

If you are at an EOTP school that has trouble retaining white students as they get older, that will affect the overall subgroup score but doesn't necessarily have anything to do with instruction or achievement.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:5 Star Elementary

Eaton Elementary School
Hyde-Addison Elementary School
Janney Elementary School
Mann Elementary School
Marie Reed Elementary School
Maury Elementary School
Oyster-Adams Bilingual School
SWS
Washington Yu Ying

Not impressed with this list. There are real problems at some of these supposedly 5-star schools. We like SWS, but our children haven't been taught to write effectively there over the years. They can't spell, punctuate or use good grammar there to save their lives in the upper grades, which seems to be the norm at SWS, leaving us to hire writing tutors. We know Maury families who bailed for "lesser" schools to avoid 18 months worth of trailers at miserable Eliot-Hine MS. We know a bunch of YuYing kids in their neighborhood whose spoken Chinese is hopeless after many years of "immersion" study (one of us is a native Mandarin speaker). Janney is super crowded. Lafayette, Murch and Brent didn't make the list, and they're more popular that some schools that did, with 100% in-boundary kindergartens. Etc etc.

This rating system isn’t meant to grade spelling, building condition, size, second language efficiency, and popularity. It’s a good think you didn’t design the system.