Anonymous wrote:OP here,

Can you please stop talking?

Yes, once I defend myself from the cheap shots you are taking here - accusing me of making assertions I never made, of denying realities I never addressed......... because I never mentioned this school year and am not sure I ever mentioned the number of white students at Basis period because they were irrelevant to my analysis

You've doubted that Basis is 34% white. Look at the data yourself: 151 white test takers, 454 total test takers. Do the math. [b]

I have never doubted or disputed the racial composition of the Basis population, in fact I am not sure I have even mentioned it in any of my posts........ I think maybe there was a shift between year 1 and 2, but not 2 and 3 (now)

You've doubted that Basis is 27.1% economically disadvantaged in 2014? Look at the school profile: http://www.dcpcsb.org/sites/default/files/34_BASIS_DC_PCS.pdf.


It was the same in 2013: 26.2%: 119 test takers out of 454 total.

What exactly was the same here in 2013? Your first statement refers to FARMS, your second to race.

Your first statement refers to a profile of the FARMS% of the student body in the entire school at Basis NOW, in the school year 2014-2015, who are taking the PARCC.

Your second statement refers to the number of white students in the 2012-2013 school year who took the DC CAS.

WHAT A CHEAP SHOT. WHAT DECEPTIVE STATEMENTS. YOU MAY BE AN ECONOMIST, BUT FIGURES LIE AND LIARS FIGURE AND WHAT YOU HAVE DONE ABOVE WOULD NOT BE ACCEPTABLE IN YOUR PROFESSIONAL CAREER....

I have never doubted or disputed that the FARMS population at Basis for the 2014-2015 school year is significantly lower than it has been in previous years. I don't believe I have made a single reference to the number of white students at Basis for any of the three years we have existed..

I have only been talking about the first two years we were open, when we were in the top 3 on the DC CAS with a high FARMS population. Those years would be the 2013 and 2014 DC CAS scores, which were based, respectively, on the 2012-2013, and 2013-2014 school populations at Basis, which were high FARMS.
No one is taking the DC CAS in 2014-2015 school year, they are taking the PARCC, and we are no longer high FARMS.

When I talk about 2014, I am talking about the 2014 DC CAS, which is the 2013-2014 school year, when we were 40% FARMS, and a Title I school (unless OSSE was mistaken, and we committed fraud by getting all their extra help), when we scored second only to Deal of all the middle schools in Washington DC on the DC CAS.

I dare you, I challenge you, to find one document that disputes this very simple assertion, which was the only one I ever made. THAT in 2013 (our first year) Basis DC scored 3rd out of all middle schools with a high FARMS population, and in 2014 it scored 2nd with a high FARMS population[/b]

It was the Basis bashers who saw an opportunity to pipe up about what our overall population looks like NOW, forgetting that our DC CAS scores were earned by the population who was there THEN, who were high FARMS

I seldom question the intelligence of economists, but I am questioning your morality and your intelligence and I think and hope you underestimate the intelligence of the others on this thread and on DCUM.

You should also be aware, which you probably are not, that the DC CAS MS scores are for kids only in 5th-8th grade, and that Basis is a pyramid model, with an outright policy of no social promotion enforced by comprehensive exams starting in 6th grade - fail any comprehensive exam but math, fail it again in the fall, you are faced with two choices - repeat the grade or leave the school. As a result of that and because Basis does not offer sports or a wider high school experience, the average Basis school has an attrition rate of 30-40% by 9th grade. So right now we have less than 30 tenth graders, and 130 5th graders, and maybe 100 6th graders (you can look it up if you are interested, but one section in 6th grade failed to fill last year due to disorganization so)...... the incoming 5th graders have a tremendous effect on the overall population of the school, which is what is calculated in the above stats you are citing........

you do the math



I get it. You don't like data. But you cannot deny reality because it doesn't conform with your whims.

I LOVE data, and all the data I have confirms the assertions I have made above, which were the only assertions I made. The reality of our DC CAS scores in 2013 and 2014 is incredible and stunned everyone given our population.


I have tried to help you in a variety of ways to deepen your analysis
most significantly, by showing you that the statistics provided for both public and charter schools by DCPS/OSSE etc
do not lump advanced and proficient together, which is why you claimed you originally did so - you asserted that DCPS lumped advanced and proficient together, which was false[b] and then that the data was not available, so I tried to show you that the data available in fact break everything down by economics, race and even gender. I was trying to improve the accuracy of your analysis and perhaps allow you to broaden it as others here have requested you do if you are so inclined. But I am through with you.

You are being incredibly misleading when you link my references to the "population of Basis in 2014" and our 2014 DC CAS scores, wilfully ignoring that we are talking about two different school years - 2013-2014, and 2014-2015, which is when the demographics at Basis changed significantly, and we are in 2015 now- so why not talk about it as the Basis population of 2015? So far there is only one of those, and they are taking the PARCC.

But what I find so ironic about your attack on me (if you are indeed an economist) is I have never focused on race but rather economics - what I have always talked about was the FARMS population at Basis, not the white population, which I think may have shifted from the first year to the second but hasn't really shifted from the second to the third. What has shifted is the FARMS population, which here does mean minority (although there are Latinos as well as African Americans), but since only 14% of the students in DC public and charter schools are white, in this city, FARMS is not code for AA or non-white.


To recap, I have only talked about FARMS% not white% as it relates to our performance on the DC CAS for our first two years (2013 and 2014), when our FARMS percentage was high, in contrast to the two other schools we were competing with where we, Deal, and Washington Latin were the top three highest scoring middle schools because the white population does not matter to me- I think Deal has a lot of white kids, Latin less so - [b]while the "2014 population" you keep throwing in my face is for the school year 2014-2015, and you are talking about both the white population and the FARMS population. The FARMS population has shifted. I am not sure the white population has increased that much, but again it was never a factor in my analysis

I think some people understood that here, because while your analysis was so focused on race, the IB Hardy parents certainly are talking about race when they talk about going to Hardy or kids who are IB for Hardy sending their kids to Washington Latin and Basis as none of these parents having a problem with race. As the Basis parent said though, what they were warned about was the FARMS population at Basis not the racial composition of the school. And we are in 2015 so talking about the 2014 population was a cheap shot that I would hope most people would see through anyway.

This year I concede that our FARMS numbers are significantly lower,
this school year according to OSSE (meaning 2014 - 2015)
and we are in 2015 so talking about the 2014 population was a cheap shot that I would hope most people would see through anyway

we are
grades 5-10
enrollment 510
black 48.2%
white 32.4%
FARMS 27%
so we definitely look a lot more like Deal and Latin in terms of our FARMS population
and this was a seismic shift that is a drastic departure from our first two years

your link doesn't work.
I cannot provide mine,
but perhaps you were not here when someone coined the phrase "it's the economy, stupid."

here are the stats from the 2012-2013 OSSE Equity Report for school year 2013-2014.
the kids who took the 2014 DC CAS, the 5th-8th graders for purposes of competition where the result was
1) Deal
2) Basis
3) Washington Latin

grades 5-9
enrollment 443
black 55%
white 28%
FARMS 40%

so THAT was our population when we scored second to Deal on the DC CAS,
the last that DC CAS will ever be administered here
our population when we scored 3rd (the year we opened) was very similar.

The reason that this is so important in DC is because everyone says don't send your kid to a school that is over 40% FARMS - which is NOT code for black people. I don't know what the FARMS population is at Hardy. But if Basis can do it, so can Hardy, and having a 40% FARMS population should not be an acceptable excuse anymore for failure. The most reputable study was a longitudinal one in Montgomery County elementary schools where there are different percentages of subsidized housing so the population was fairly stable, done by the 21st Century Fund that found that there was a tipping point, and that FARMS children did just as poorly in schools where they were 35% as 85% FARMS populations. We also did a better than average job of closing the achievement gap last year, and I am proud of that as well.

and the person who posted about all the white kids scoring advanced at Elementary schools is actually making YOUR point. You put a high SES white kid into any school (including a high FARMS school with crappy DC CAS scores overall) and they will score advanced on the DC CAS for the most part given a certain home life.

My point was a little more subtle - you put a bunch of FARMS kids into a Basis school, which is a chain founded in Arizona, definitely NOT geared to poor African American kids, and they can compete with Deal and Washington Latin in their first two years of existence.

But you are attributing to me statements I did not make, conflating years and unfairly trying to convince people that I am lying. And that I will not tolerate. Not even from a "disinterested" possibly stupid or maybe malicious anonymous economist on DCUM. Over and out. You no longer sound so dreamy. You are a liar. But thankfully I am happily married with 3 kids, one of whom may end up at Hardy, which is why I got on this thread in the first place......

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:30% is self-selection

30% is accelerated/enhanced math

30% is individual testing ability acquired by Basis students (not a bad thing, please do not over-react)

10% is white noise

100% conjecture!

+1

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All the advanced kids at key and Mann leave after 3rd or 4 th for private. What's your point again?

OP here.

THIS IS BLATANTLY FALSE. Please don't say things that are blatantly AND demonstrably false.

For Key, in 2013-2014, there are MORE advanced students in both reading and math despite their being almost half as many students in 5th grade versus 3rd grade. At Mann, the percentage of students taking the test that test as advanced remains constant in both math and reading (though fewer students are present, historically, in 5th versus 3rd).

READERS, let this be a lesson: don't believe much of anything on this board. Most people know nothing. Sadly, that does not impede their willingness to speak one iota.

The numbers are here: http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/Files/downloads/ABOUT%20DCPS/DCPS%20Data/DCPS%20DC%20CAS%20SY2013-2014.xlsx

At least, don't automatically believe numbers-based statements that are not backed up by official numbers.

OP here.

Those are the only statements to which I pay attention. Lots of people say quantitative-sounding things. I like to see if what they say is true, based upon actual quantitative data. That's how I ended up getting sucked into this whole Hardy-vortex. It is so full of people saying completely false things that I'm astonished, even for an anonymous Internet forum. It's almost as if there exists a contigent dedicated to misinformation that is larger than any contigent seeking honest discussion.

Maybe it's related to Washington being so influenced by lobbyists and politicians who are trying more to push their point of view than to accurately analyze information. Then there's people expressing their competitiveness through their kids and the free-wheelingness of an anonymous internet board where, unlike work, you don't HAVE to back up statements with facts.

Anonymous wrote:30% is self-selection

30% is accelerated/enhanced math

30% is individual testing ability acquired by Basis students (not a bad thing, please do not over-react)

10% is white noise

100% conjecture!

30% is self-selection

30% is accelerated/enhanced math

30% is individual testing ability acquired by Basis students (not a bad thing, please do not over-react)

10% is white noise

OP here,

I wasn't denying that. But even the most advanced instruction only bears fruit with capable students. The credit for Basis' performance on the math DCCAS is owed to both students and teachers.

I was not trying to dismiss Basis' performance. I was merely saying that I fully expected to see Basis outperform the other schools *based on what I've heard about Basis.*

By the way, we can get Latin data back further from the OSSE site. I'm not doing this now.

Anonymous wrote:OP here.

White students.

Hardy (35 students):
Reading:
63% proficient
29% advanced
Math:
46% proficient
46% advanced

Latin (151 students):
Reading:
60% proficient
36% advanced
Math:
36% proficient
54% advanced

Basis (154 students):
Reading:
60% proficient
34% advanced
Math:
29% proficient
68% advanced

This is about what I would expect. The only statistically significant difference between Latin, Hardy and Basis is likely the percentage of advanced performers at Basis versus Hardy. Basis' Math scores are unsurprising given that those are precisely the students who self-select into Basis. Regardless, that's a nice performance.

I don't think that you have much evidence to support that claim, OP. In fact, I suspect that BASIS and Latin have very similar applicant pools. Latin is an extremely popular school, and many of the kids who get into BASIS undoubtedly ranked Latin higher but drew a bad number in the lottery.

Wouldn't be reasonable to attribute the differences in proficient (97% v. 90%) and advanced (68% v. 54%) scores between BASIS and Latin to the caliber of the math instruction at BASIS?

OP here,

Can you please stop talking?

You've doubted that Basis is 34% white. Look at the data yourself: 151 white test takers, 454 total test takers. Do the math.

You've doubted that Basis is 27.1% economically disadvantaged in 2014? Look at the school profile: http://www.dcpcsb.org/sites/default/files/34_BASIS_DC_PCS.pdf.

It was the same in 2013: 26.2%: 119 test takers out of 454 total.

I get it. You don't like data. But you cannot deny reality because it doesn't conform with your whims.

Anonymous wrote:Actually BASIS is only 27% FARMS. Similar to Deal.

right but not for those DC CAS scores -
both years we took the DC CAS we were a Title I school which means over 40% FARMS when we got those scores.
2013 and 2014.
He quoted under 150 white test takers I think when last year there were 454 students who took the DC CAS

The demographic shift occurred this year, which means a lot of things -
for one, we are no longer entitled to the extra help we were getting from OSSE for kids who were behind..............

two, if the stereotypes held true, our scores would have been higher, and we would have beaten Deal because we were a close second last year with 40% FARMS.

But the DC PARCC will be very interesting.......

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:All the advanced kids at key and Mann leave after 3rd or 4 th for private. What's your point again?

OP here.

THIS IS BLATANTLY FALSE. Please don't say things that are blatantly AND demonstrably false.

For Key, in 2013-2014, there are MORE advanced students in both reading and math despite their being almost half as many students in 5th grade versus 3rd grade. At Mann, the percentage of students taking the test that test as advanced remains constant in both math and reading (though fewer students are present, historically, in 5th versus 3rd).

READERS, let this be a lesson: don't believe much of anything on this board. Most people know nothing. Sadly, that does not impede their willingness to speak one iota.

The numbers are here: http://dcps.dc.gov/DCPS/Files/downloads/ABOUT%20DCPS/DCPS%20Data/DCPS%20DC%20CAS%20SY2013-2014.xlsx

At least, don't automatically believe numbers-based statements that are not backed up by official numbers.

OP here.

Those are the only statements to which I pay attention. Lots of people say quantitative-sounding things. I like to see if what they say is true, based upon actual quantitative data. That's how I ended up getting sucked into this whole Hardy-vortex. It is so full of people saying completely false things that I'm astonished, even for an anonymous Internet forum. It's almost as if there exists a contigent dedicated to misinformation that is larger than any contigent seeking honest discussion.

DCUM = FOX NEWS CHANNEL

Of a different kind, but essentially the same indeed Too much time spent talking and posturing, too little time analyzing and discussing real data and facts...