Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm starting to agree with this article that says fixing education isn't the answer. Solving poverty is.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/education-isnt-enough/590611/

Yup, this.

Anonymous wrote:I'm starting to agree with this article that says fixing education isn't the answer. Solving poverty is.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/education-isnt-enough/590611/

Anonymous wrote:I'm starting to agree with this article that says fixing education isn't the answer. Solving poverty is.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/education-isnt-enough/590611/

Anonymous wrote:I'm starting to agree with this article that says fixing education isn't the answer. Solving poverty is.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/07/education-isnt-enough/590611/

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But with the same budgets, there are schools that do not have a gaping achievement gap. ITS' (and other schools with this problem) should send someone out to interview, observe and learn from other schools. That's the whole idea of charters -- to innovate and find new ways to educate ALL students.

If it isn't working they need to course correct or fold their tent. If a school can't out-perform the traditional school sector why are they open?

Again with the nonsense. At-risk kids need more time at school because their parents don't drill multiplication facts and are more likely to park them in front of screens for hours on end. You don't mke up for that handicap with observations. You don't even make up for that handicap by making those parenta drive from SE to upper NW every morning to a rich white public or private school, other than driving the self-selection of at-risk familiea who are able to support their kids and pull their scores up.
Observe and learn. Sounds like thoughts and prayers to me. Name two schools that are doing what you say and dcum will tell you why their gap is narrower. Whatever it is, I bet it's not magical equity skills.

I guess I'm not being clear. I don't think we disagree. The achievement gap data shows that several of the so-called progressive charter models are failing at-risk kids right now (ITS, CMI, 2R at 4th and most of the Montessori elementaries).

Cap City is doing significantly better than the city average for at-risk students. They are NOT drilling or putting students in front of screens for hours.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But with the same budgets, there are schools that do not have a gaping achievement gap. ITS' (and other schools with this problem) should send someone out to interview, observe and learn from other schools. That's the whole idea of charters -- to innovate and find new ways to educate ALL students.

If it isn't working they need to course correct or fold their tent. If a school can't out-perform the traditional school sector why are they open?

Again with the nonsense. At-risk kids need more time at school because their parents don't drill multiplication facts and are more likely to park them in front of screens for hours on end. You don't mke up for that handicap with observations. You don't even make up for that handicap by making those parenta drive from SE to upper NW every morning to a rich white public or private school, other than driving the self-selection of at-risk familiea who are able to support their kids and pull their scores up.
Observe and learn. Sounds like thoughts and prayers to me. Name two schools that are doing what you say and dcum will tell you why their gap is narrower. Whatever it is, I bet it's not magical equity skills.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But with the same budgets, there are schools that do not have a gaping achievement gap. ITS' (and other schools with this problem) should send someone out to interview, observe and learn from other schools. That's the whole idea of charters -- to innovate and find new ways to educate ALL students.

If it isn't working they need to course correct or fold their tent. If a school can't out-perform the traditional school sector why are they open?

Again with the nonsense. At-risk kids need more time at school because their parents don't drill multiplication facts and are more likely to park them in front of screens for hours on end. You don't mke up for that handicap with observations. You don't even make up for that handicap by making those parenta drive from SE to upper NW every morning to a rich white public or private school, other than driving the self-selection of at-risk familiea who are able to support their kids and pull their scores up.
Observe and learn. Sounds like thoughts and prayers to me. Name two schools that are doing what you say and dcum will tell you why their gap is narrower. Whatever it is, I bet it's not magical equity skills.

I guess I'm not being clear. I don't think we disagree. The achievement gap data shows that several of the so-called progressive charter models are failing at-risk kids right now (ITS, CMI, 2R at 4th and most of the Montessori elementaries).

Cap City is doing significantly better than the city average for at-risk students. They are NOT drilling or putting students in front of screens for hours.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:But with the same budgets, there are schools that do not have a gaping achievement gap. ITS' (and other schools with this problem) should send someone out to interview, observe and learn from other schools. That's the whole idea of charters -- to innovate and find new ways to educate ALL students.

If it isn't working they need to course correct or fold their tent. If a school can't out-perform the traditional school sector why are they open?

Again with the nonsense. At-risk kids need more time at school because their parents don't drill multiplication facts and are more likely to park them in front of screens for hours on end. You don't mke up for that handicap with observations. You don't even make up for that handicap by making those parenta drive from SE to upper NW every morning to a rich white public or private school, other than driving the self-selection of at-risk familiea who are able to support their kids and pull their scores up.
Observe and learn. Sounds like thoughts and prayers to me. Name two schools that are doing what you say and dcum will tell you why their gap is narrower. Whatever it is, I bet it's not magical equity skills.

Anonymous wrote:But with the same budgets, there are schools that do not have a gaping achievement gap. ITS' (and other schools with this problem) should send someone out to interview, observe and learn from other schools. That's the whole idea of charters -- to innovate and find new ways to educate ALL students.

If it isn't working they need to course correct or fold their tent. If a school can't out-perform the traditional school sector why are they open?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It appears BASIS has made significant progress closing its achievement gap over the last couple f years. It was not good before. If you click in, note the dashboard defaults to the at-risk subgroup. You need to reset to see all students.

And yes, I know that their at-risk population is low, but there are enough in each grade to report scores.

https://empowerk12.org/dc-parcc-dash

At risk is low. Poor performers counseled out before PARCC testing too. BASIS also doesn't sugarcoat high student demands and at a minimum the student body reflects a willingness to accept the school culture of mountains of testing/homework. Their at-risk population is somewhat self-selected.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It appears BASIS has made significant progress closing its achievement gap over the last couple f years. It was not good before. If you click in, note the dashboard defaults to the at-risk subgroup. You need to reset to see all students.

And yes, I know that their at-risk population is low, but there are enough in each grade to report scores.

https://empowerk12.org/dc-parcc-dash

At risk is low. Poor performers counseled out before PARCC testing too. BASIS also doesn't sugarcoat high student demands and at a minimum the student body reflects a willingness to accept the school culture of mountains of testing/homework. Their at-risk population is somewhat self-selected.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t know if this is a small sample size issue, but looking at the raw data, ITS and LAMB seem to have horrible success with at risk- students whereas YY and Sela seem to be killing it. Maybe the alphabet/language root decoding is helping math scores?

YY has vanishingly few at-risk kids, so I don't know that you can draw a lot of conclusions from it. And Sela's population is also pretty small.

I think ITS' at risk kids are more in the middle school.due to backfilling, and it is hard to catch kids up if they enter far behind.

The conclusion you can draw from YY's set up is that a little Mandarin works to scare away almost all the at-risk kids, the entire point of the artifice.

Go YY, for killing it!

I wouldn't say that YY is killing it, with even 5th grade scores only in the 60's, but it's better than many schools. YY has a terrible SPED program, so many parents pull their SPED kids. I've come to the conclusion that the head of school purposely keeps the bumbling incompetent SPED coordinator as a deterrent. She's certainly been made aware of the issues by multiple parents yet nothing changes.

Anonymous wrote:It appears BASIS has made significant progress closing its achievement gap over the last couple f years. It was not good before. If you click in, note the dashboard defaults to the at-risk subgroup. You need to reset to see all students.

And yes, I know that their at-risk population is low, but there are enough in each grade to report scores.

https://empowerk12.org/dc-parcc-dash

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:most depressing experience so far is looking at the EOTP schools near me and seeing in the spreadsheets that of any group, the number of students that actually hit the exceeds category at the top reflects 1 student, sometimes 2 students.

I’m a teacher and I feel the same way. I think a lot of my kids should have done better, but they just had no interest in taking the test.

Well that's a tough spot. Do you push them all to invest in their PARCC outcomes so a few kids can get trophy scores for your school or do you manage realistic expectations for the overwhelming majority who struggle to meet that goal (likely through no fault yours)?

The overall scores largely correlate to income and at-risk status.

I’m the teacher in the PP. I teach elementary math. I try to build them up throughout the year so they constantly hear that they can do hard things. I do very little test prep, but did spend time working on how to explain your answers in writing, but because that’s a good skill to have outside of testing. The kids want to know how they will do so I’ll show them their previous scores and say “I think you can get X This year if you Y.” But the reality is the kids (for the most part) don’t have any interest or investment in doing well. They’ll ask if they need to pass PARCC to go on to the next grade and the answer is no. I had kids finish in 7 minutes, not finish at all, sleep through the test, walk out and sit in the hallway, cry, and be disruptive so we are forced to remove them. I saw some kids grow but most just stayed the same and a few went down. I wouldn’t say there are any trophy kids, though we do look at what kids were close to the next level up and could make it with some extra TLC. [/quotes]

Thanks for sharing your experience. That's a good reminder of the challenges in many schools. Some schools have students overall struggling with PARCC but will have a small set of outliers, which I suspect reflects that extra support.