Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Banneker and School Without Walls are the top high schools. Lots of DCPS elementary schools at the top of the ratings. For the charters, Latin, Friendship and Center City have campuses in the top.

The official OSSE site is here https://schoolreportcard.dc.gov/home.
It may be easier to navigate the information on the EmpowerK12 site https://www.empowerk12.org/dc-accountability-scores-dashboard.

Easy to be a top school when you control who your student body is. Both of these schools have very very very low ELL and Sped percentages. Hardly fair.

I don't disagree with you but one thing that I do like is that if you have a highlight motivated, already academically successful kid, there is some information to help you determine the school that might fit best. It's not the only information a parent needs, but it's a start.

Anonymous wrote:Banneker and School Without Walls are the top high schools. Lots of DCPS elementary schools at the top of the ratings. For the charters, Latin, Friendship and Center City have campuses in the top.

The official OSSE site is here https://schoolreportcard.dc.gov/home.
It may be easier to navigate the information on the EmpowerK12 site https://www.empowerk12.org/dc-accountability-scores-dashboard.

Easy to be a top school when you control who your student body is. Both of these schools have very very very low ELL and Sped percentages. Hardly fair.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look people, it’s not that hard. Just ignore everything and look at overall test scores for the school. The percentage of kids testing at grade level and the percentage of kids testing above grade level.

DC manipulates the data to give more weight to at risk kids, etc… so that these poorly performing schools “look” better than they are. Just ignore that and look directly at test scores.

I agree with this. I've been in the system for 9 years/2 kids and played the lottery twice, and each time I ordered the list and made a choice based on which school had the highest percentage of kids getting 4s and 5s on ELA, Math and Science. Ended up very satisfied and impressed.

This was always my inclination and then you have folks out there who say test scores don’t matter and are just reflective of the SES of the school. I still have no idea what the best approach to analyzing how well schools do or not in actually teaching kids!

imo these people are trying to gaslight you into staying at your neighborhood title 1 school.

you can't fake high scores. Now that we are in a school with very high test scores (and high proportion of SES families), as one of the PPs said, the teaching is leaps and bounds beyond the other school.

This is a sad reality. SES is very related to school quality, but not because the schools are doing nothing and counting on parents to teach their kids, and it's not due to teacher quality -- the Title 1 teachers were incredible. It's because so much time is spent bringing up the bottom that they can't spend a lot of time pushing at the top, or filling out the day with interesting projects. Everyone can be held to a higher standard and pushed harder.

Are you a teacher at a title 1 school? What is this weird generalization? I do special projects all the time with my 3rd graders but I also love project based learning. The problem is DCPS and the lack of things schools can do about tardies and students being absent a lot. If you start out missing 40-59% of pre-k and continue a similar trend of course the child is behind by mid K/1st grade.

Many schools also don’t allow intense differentiation (small groups) or hire people to do reading and math interventions. And yes, they do have the money -they choose to spend it somewhere else.

However one thing is true, there are only a handful of great T1 schools and I understand why some would not want their child to go to one.

And non T1 schools are actually not pushing kids harder. It’s the opposite, they allow more play in Pre-K and K than T1 schools. They develop better critical thinking skills and executive functioning- which is the key to learning. So kids learn in a more developmentally appropriate way. Seriously, there’s research on this -look it up. It’s actually really funny and sad that DCPS thinks that teaching kids formal math at 3 is going to save all the at risk children.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look people, it’s not that hard. Just ignore everything and look at overall test scores for the school. The percentage of kids testing at grade level and the percentage of kids testing above grade level.

DC manipulates the data to give more weight to at risk kids, etc… so that these poorly performing schools “look” better than they are. Just ignore that and look directly at test scores.

I agree with this. I've been in the system for 9 years/2 kids and played the lottery twice, and each time I ordered the list and made a choice based on which school had the highest percentage of kids getting 4s and 5s on ELA, Math and Science. Ended up very satisfied and impressed.

This was always my inclination and then you have folks out there who say test scores don’t matter and are just reflective of the SES of the school. I still have no idea what the best approach to analyzing how well schools do or not in actually teaching kids!

If your goal is to get the best school for your kids, find the school that does the best with kids like yours. If I had to recommend a group of schools for a rich white girl, I would not suggest the same ones as I would for an economically disadvantaged black boy. Once you find the schools that do well for the kind of kid you have, think about your other priorities: commute, feeder pattern, diversity (would you prefer a more racially or economically diverse school? are you ok with your kid being one of a few kids like him in the school, given that the other kids like him are doing well?), special curriculum (montessori? bilingual?), and any other factors you care about (outdoor time? aftercare?).

If you don't have kids and are generally looking for schools to support or emulate, that's a different process. I like Empower's BOLD performance framework for finding schools that do well educating economically disadvantaged kids.

And tell me where should the rich little white girl go vs. the poor little black boy?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am surprised by how badly Eliot-Hine performed. There are a lot of threads on DCUM trying to convince me that EH is the equivalent of SH, which this data does not support in the least... SH gets 84%ile (more or less equivalent to Hardy) and EH gets 21st%ile.

EH was substantially behind SH in both scores (basically SH is +20% in every measure) and growth (SH above average for both; EH below for both).

EH also had 35%(!!!) of students chronically absent.

I genuinely do not mean this to bash EH and I am glad it is getting increased neighborhood buy-in, but this Report Card presents a totally different reality than DCUM. EH actually came out behind Jefferson, but those are much closer and seems to be more about how you weight student achievement vs growth.

I was also surprised by EH. Those growth scores are… not good. In the context of having a good chunk of kids with room to grow, it suggests the school is not doing a great job. Hopefully it’s just an anomaly.

I don't think EH is doing a great job educating kids; it's just doing an ok job of attracting and retaining more kids who came in prepared.

The JOW scores show the challenges of a renovation. I think the school will rebound, but it doesn't bode well for Brent.

What does that have to do with Brent? Their scores were fine and will be even if some parents leave. More will come after the renovation is complete.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Banneker and School Without Walls are the top high schools. Lots of DCPS elementary schools at the top of the ratings. For the charters, Latin, Friendship and Center City have campuses in the top.

The official OSSE site is here https://schoolreportcard.dc.gov/home.
It may be easier to navigate the information on the EmpowerK12 site https://www.empowerk12.org/dc-accountability-scores-dashboard.

Looks like BASIS and Walls have the best numbers. However, Basis is 100% lottery and Walls selects its students.

Is BASIS really a lottery if they kick kids out who don’t pass their many tests? Walls can’t do that…

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look people, it’s not that hard. Just ignore everything and look at overall test scores for the school. The percentage of kids testing at grade level and the percentage of kids testing above grade level.

DC manipulates the data to give more weight to at risk kids, etc… so that these poorly performing schools “look” better than they are. Just ignore that and look directly at test scores.

I agree with this. I've been in the system for 9 years/2 kids and played the lottery twice, and each time I ordered the list and made a choice based on which school had the highest percentage of kids getting 4s and 5s on ELA, Math and Science. Ended up very satisfied and impressed.

This was always my inclination and then you have folks out there who say test scores don’t matter and are just reflective of the SES of the school. I still have no idea what the best approach to analyzing how well schools do or not in actually teaching kids!

If your goal is to get the best school for your kids, find the school that does the best with kids like yours. If I had to recommend a group of schools for a rich white girl, I would not suggest the same ones as I would for an economically disadvantaged black boy. Once you find the schools that do well for the kind of kid you have, think about your other priorities: commute, feeder pattern, diversity (would you prefer a more racially or economically diverse school? are you ok with your kid being one of a few kids like him in the school, given that the other kids like him are doing well?), special curriculum (montessori? bilingual?), and any other factors you care about (outdoor time? aftercare?).

If you don't have kids and are generally looking for schools to support or emulate, that's a different process. I like Empower's BOLD performance framework for finding schools that do well educating economically disadvantaged kids.

This is a great response. I really don't get what OSSE is trying to accomplish with the overall accountability score. It certainly doesn't seem to be useful for families.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look people, it’s not that hard. Just ignore everything and look at overall test scores for the school. The percentage of kids testing at grade level and the percentage of kids testing above grade level.

DC manipulates the data to give more weight to at risk kids, etc… so that these poorly performing schools “look” better than they are. Just ignore that and look directly at test scores.

I agree with this. I've been in the system for 9 years/2 kids and played the lottery twice, and each time I ordered the list and made a choice based on which school had the highest percentage of kids getting 4s and 5s on ELA, Math and Science. Ended up very satisfied and impressed.

This was always my inclination and then you have folks out there who say test scores don’t matter and are just reflective of the SES of the school. I still have no idea what the best approach to analyzing how well schools do or not in actually teaching kids!

If your goal is to get the best school for your kids, find the school that does the best with kids like yours. If I had to recommend a group of schools for a rich white girl, I would not suggest the same ones as I would for an economically disadvantaged black boy. Once you find the schools that do well for the kind of kid you have, think about your other priorities: commute, feeder pattern, diversity (would you prefer a more racially or economically diverse school? are you ok with your kid being one of a few kids like him in the school, given that the other kids like him are doing well?), special curriculum (montessori? bilingual?), and any other factors you care about (outdoor time? aftercare?).

If you don't have kids and are generally looking for schools to support or emulate, that's a different process. I like Empower's BOLD performance framework for finding schools that do well educating economically disadvantaged kids.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look people, it’s not that hard. Just ignore everything and look at overall test scores for the school. The percentage of kids testing at grade level and the percentage of kids testing above grade level.

DC manipulates the data to give more weight to at risk kids, etc… so that these poorly performing schools “look” better than they are. Just ignore that and look directly at test scores.

I agree with this. I've been in the system for 9 years/2 kids and played the lottery twice, and each time I ordered the list and made a choice based on which school had the highest percentage of kids getting 4s and 5s on ELA, Math and Science. Ended up very satisfied and impressed.

Look at overall test scores but also look at growth scores and the scores for the demographic that represents your kid. There is a data file on the OSSE site where you can see the performance of students by grade level and subject but also by race, not-economically disadvantaged, etc. I have found that high scores and high/moderate growth are both important.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look people, it’s not that hard. Just ignore everything and look at overall test scores for the school. The percentage of kids testing at grade level and the percentage of kids testing above grade level.

DC manipulates the data to give more weight to at risk kids, etc… so that these poorly performing schools “look” better than they are. Just ignore that and look directly at test scores.

I agree with this. I've been in the system for 9 years/2 kids and played the lottery twice, and each time I ordered the list and made a choice based on which school had the highest percentage of kids getting 4s and 5s on ELA, Math and Science. Ended up very satisfied and impressed.

This was always my inclination and then you have folks out there who say test scores don’t matter and are just reflective of the SES of the school. I still have no idea what the best approach to analyzing how well schools do or not in actually teaching kids!

imo these people are trying to gaslight you into staying at your neighborhood title 1 school.

you can't fake high scores. Now that we are in a school with very high test scores (and high proportion of SES families), as one of the PPs said, the teaching is leaps and bounds beyond the other school.

This is a sad reality. SES is very related to school quality, but not because the schools are doing nothing and counting on parents to teach their kids, and it's not due to teacher quality -- the Title 1 teachers were incredible. It's because so much time is spent bringing up the bottom that they can't spend a lot of time pushing at the top, or filling out the day with interesting projects. Everyone can be held to a higher standard and pushed harder.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look people, it’s not that hard. Just ignore everything and look at overall test scores for the school. The percentage of kids testing at grade level and the percentage of kids testing above grade level.

DC manipulates the data to give more weight to at risk kids, etc… so that these poorly performing schools “look” better than they are. Just ignore that and look directly at test scores.

I agree with this. I've been in the system for 9 years/2 kids and played the lottery twice, and each time I ordered the list and made a choice based on which school had the highest percentage of kids getting 4s and 5s on ELA, Math and Science. Ended up very satisfied and impressed.

This was always my inclination and then you have folks out there who say test scores don’t matter and are just reflective of the SES of the school. I still have no idea what the best approach to analyzing how well schools do or not in actually teaching kids!

So, I actually don't agree with this, because I view test scores as a floor, but not the single factor I would use to choose a school above that floor. Even within scores, I actually care more about the percentage of 5s at the margin than 4s + 5s once the latter is over about 50%.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look people, it’s not that hard. Just ignore everything and look at overall test scores for the school. The percentage of kids testing at grade level and the percentage of kids testing above grade level.

DC manipulates the data to give more weight to at risk kids, etc… so that these poorly performing schools “look” better than they are. Just ignore that and look directly at test scores.

I agree with this. I've been in the system for 9 years/2 kids and played the lottery twice, and each time I ordered the list and made a choice based on which school had the highest percentage of kids getting 4s and 5s on ELA, Math and Science. Ended up very satisfied and impressed.

This was always my inclination and then you have folks out there who say test scores don’t matter and are just reflective of the SES of the school. I still have no idea what the best approach to analyzing how well schools do or not in actually teaching kids!

Anonymous wrote:Look people, it’s not that hard. Just ignore everything and look at overall test scores for the school. The percentage of kids testing at grade level and the percentage of kids testing above grade level.

DC manipulates the data to give more weight to at risk kids, etc… so that these poorly performing schools “look” better than they are. Just ignore that and look directly at test scores.

I agree with this. I've been in the system for 9 years/2 kids and played the lottery twice, and each time I ordered the list and made a choice based on which school had the highest percentage of kids getting 4s and 5s on ELA, Math and Science. Ended up very satisfied and impressed.

^ Oh, sorry. I see now. They divide equally between all racial groups counted equally unless they aren't counted at all. That makes zero sense.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:See the "DC Report Card Technical Guide" here: https://osse.dc.gov/page/dc-school-report-card-resource-library

p. 53 Student Group Weights

"The accountability system calculates each metric for each student group present in the school. Student
groups with fewer than 10 students for that metric are not included. In these cases, the student groups are
dropped from the overall metric scores. After calculating the student group metric scores, the are
aggregated based on the weights listed in Table 12 below to come up with a single metric score used in the
accountability score calculation.

Table 12: Student Group Weights
Student Group Percentage of Overall Score
All Students 30%
Economically Disadvantaged 40%
Race/Ethnicity 15%
Students with Disabilities 10%
English Learners 5%"

WOAH. So the achievement of economically disadvantaged kids is not only double counted, but actually alone counts more than the achievement of ALL kids??? (But they don't count at all if there aren't 10 students. So the group that's the hardest to grow just doesn't get counted at rich schools?) On top of that, what does "race/ethnicity" mean here? Does it mean Black? Because all of the other variables are a specific group of kids, whereas "Race/ethnicity" is a category with different groups of kids... not a single group. That is, "race/ethnicity" does not have a single measure and so is not able to be averaged in like the other categories. So it may be that on top of everything else, they are counting only the achievements of one specific racial/ethnic group, but they won't even come out and say that. That is INSANE.

They explain that in the next page of the document.

"3. Race/Ethnicity will include the following race/ethnicity groups:
a. American Indian/Alaska Native
b. Asian
c. Black or African American
d. Hispanic or Latino
e. Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander
f. White
g. Two or more races.
4. Race/ethnicity groups with fewer than ten students will be excluded from the calculation. The 15%
race/ethnicity weights will be divided based on how many race/ethnicity groups are counted toward
the accountability score."

So convoluted.

But what does it mean to count all of those different groups as "15%"?