Anonymous wrote:Wow, Ludlow seems to have really consolidated its gains! 72 ELA is legit, and 51 Math is a big improvement. Seems like it’s just getting better and better...

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:So where is the achievement gap below 40 or 50%?

At Oyster-Adams, the black/white achievement gap in ELA is 12%; however it’s 32% in math.

There is essentially no black/white achievement gap at Ross: 4% in ELA and 0% in Math. DCPS needs to bottle and replicate whatever is going on at Ross!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Wow, Ludlow seems to have really consolidated its gains! 72 ELA is legit, and 51 Math is a big improvement. Seems like it’s just getting better and better...

Look folks this isn't rocket science the richer/whiter the school the higher the scores..... next

That's why I find all the "wow ITS" stuff a bit disingenuous ... they have so few at risk kids they often can't even report on them.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was a study released over the summer that what mattered what not class size, but school size (how many students in the building).

On the whole, smaller schools do better than larger ones. That may help explain Ross as well as the fact that some smaller charter schools do better with at-risk kids than DCPSs which are almost always bigger.

I wish that someone would dig in and try to come up with lessons that can be replicated. Every year we don't we lose another group of kids who fail to graduate with basic skills.

How do you explain Janney?

Not PP, but I think in the case of a school like Janney, where virtually every family is affluent and highly educated, students will still perform well. The real test would be if you took a school like Janney and compared it to a school half the size, but with the same demographics. I'd imagine the performance would be slightly better at the smaller school (although not massively better performance, given ceiling effects).

The study was look at whether smaller schools helped POOR kids. And it does seem to make a difference. Researchers aren't spending a lot of time on kids from wealthy families because they are, and always have, had high graduation and achievement rates.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was a study released over the summer that what mattered what not class size, but school size (how many students in the building).

On the whole, smaller schools do better than larger ones. That may help explain Ross as well as the fact that some smaller charter schools do better with at-risk kids than DCPSs which are almost always bigger.

I wish that someone would dig in and try to come up with lessons that can be replicated. Every year we don't we lose another group of kids who fail to graduate with basic skills.

How do you explain Janney?

Not PP, but I think in the case of a school like Janney, where virtually every family is affluent and highly educated, students will still perform well. The real test would be if you took a school like Janney and compared it to a school half the size, but with the same demographics. I'd imagine the performance would be slightly better at the smaller school (although not massively better performance, given ceiling effects).

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was a study released over the summer that what mattered what not class size, but school size (how many students in the building).

On the whole, smaller schools do better than larger ones. That may help explain Ross as well as the fact that some smaller charter schools do better with at-risk kids than DCPSs which are almost always bigger.

I wish that someone would dig in and try to come up with lessons that can be replicated. Every year we don't we lose another group of kids who fail to graduate with basic skills.

How do you explain Janney?

Anonymous wrote:There was a study released over the summer that what mattered what not class size, but school size (how many students in the building).

On the whole, smaller schools do better than larger ones. That may help explain Ross as well as the fact that some smaller charter schools do better with at-risk kids than DCPSs which are almost always bigger.

I wish that someone would dig in and try to come up with lessons that can be replicated. Every year we don't we lose another group of kids who fail to graduate with basic skills.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was a study released over the summer that what mattered what not class size, but school size (how many students in the building).

On the whole, smaller schools do better than larger ones. That may help explain Ross as well as the fact that some smaller charter schools do better with at-risk kids than DCPSs which are almost always bigger.

I wish that someone would dig in and try to come up with lessons that can be replicated. Every year we don't we lose another group of kids who fail to graduate with basic skills.

Here's what I was thinking of. Poor kids in California, West Virginia and Alaska did much better in smaller schools, particularly in middle grades https://www.educationworld.com/a_issues/issues108.shtml

This makes a lot of sense and probably contributes to why Ross does so well.

I'm the Janney parent again. My 5th grade kid was in a class of 24 but her teachers (math, ELA, science, social studies) taught 3 classes so roughly 75 kids total.
It's a lot easier for kids to not get what they need when they're 1 of 75 than 1 of 12. It's no easy for a math teacher to even thoroughly evaluate 75 kids, let alone address the specific learning needs of 75.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm wondering if there are differences in faculty demographics between Ross and some of the other schools where similarly affluent black students do well.

Is the principal or APs AA? Are they male/female? What's the diversity mix of the teacher.

All the data shows that students of color do better when at least some of their teachers look like them. The same does not hold true for white students btw.

The principal is a white female. Based on the website, all the teachers are white (there is one whose photo isn't posted, so it's possible she's black, but she's also new to the school), and most are women. They do have some black aides/paraprofessionals.

Whatever. I just got the DCPS calendar, and almost everybody in it was black. Satisfied?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was a study released over the summer that what mattered what not class size, but school size (how many students in the building).

On the whole, smaller schools do better than larger ones. That may help explain Ross as well as the fact that some smaller charter schools do better with at-risk kids than DCPSs which are almost always bigger.

I wish that someone would dig in and try to come up with lessons that can be replicated. Every year we don't we lose another group of kids who fail to graduate with basic skills.

Here's what I was thinking of. Poor kids in California, West Virginia and Alaska did much better in smaller schools, particularly in middle grades https://www.educationworld.com/a_issues/issues108.shtml

This makes a lot of sense and probably contributes to why Ross does so well.

I'm the Janney parent again. My 5th grade kid was in a class of 24 but her teachers (math, ELA, science, social studies) taught 3 classes so roughly 75 kids total.
It's a lot easier for kids to not get what they need when they're 1 of 75 than 1 of 12. It's no easy for a math teacher to even thoroughly evaluate 75 kids, let alone address the specific learning needs of 75.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There was a study released over the summer that what mattered what not class size, but school size (how many students in the building).

On the whole, smaller schools do better than larger ones. That may help explain Ross as well as the fact that some smaller charter schools do better with at-risk kids than DCPSs which are almost always bigger.

I wish that someone would dig in and try to come up with lessons that can be replicated. Every year we don't we lose another group of kids who fail to graduate with basic skills.

Here's what I was thinking of. Poor kids in California, West Virginia and Alaska did much better in smaller schools, particularly in middle grades https://www.educationworld.com/a_issues/issues108.shtml

Anonymous wrote:There was a study released over the summer that what mattered what not class size, but school size (how many students in the building).

On the whole, smaller schools do better than larger ones. That may help explain Ross as well as the fact that some smaller charter schools do better with at-risk kids than DCPSs which are almost always bigger.

I wish that someone would dig in and try to come up with lessons that can be replicated. Every year we don't we lose another group of kids who fail to graduate with basic skills.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Yes but they are not any less upper income than the AA population at Ross which is the point. What are you trying to contest? That’s Ross has richer black kids and that’s why they perform as well as their white peers? Or that Janney has lower middle class (not low enough to qualify for FARM) AA than Ross and that’s why they suck with the 36 black kids they do have? I know one thing, as a black mom of a black boy, if I had my choice, I would not enroll my kid at Janney. Also, I know about 20 families at Janney. 4 black, 1 interracial, and 5 white. 3 of the 4 Black are head and shoulders more wealthy with more prestigious careers. But you keep assuming all the black kids at Janney come from households making a modest $70k.

PP here and I am simply wondering why Ross in particular has AA scores higher than comparable schools. Do you really think Ross is doing something so specific and impactful and different from Janney etc. that it increases scores that much in AA students compared to other schools? Rather than perhaps a more likely explanation, like SES differences or random fluctuations in scores? If so, all I can say is that you have more faith in the system than I do, from one black parent to another.

Ross is tiny, for one thing. There are like twelve kids in the fifth grade. As kids leave, the school does not backfill, so lots of fifth graders have been there all along vs. entering later.

And my own personal theory--Ross contains an above-average proportion of only/oldest children. It's very common that a family who lives IB sends their first kid there, but when they have a second kid, they want more space, so they move out of the catchment. So small classes full of the oldest children of educated, involved parents -- not really something that can be replicated.

What it does suggest is that physical plant is not the secret sauce. The Ross building is tiny and old, and they are lacking in facilities common at other schools. Not to say that physical plant doesn't matter, but clearly it's not a critical component of academic success.