Anonymous wrote:Basis has its middle school students take the standard grade level math test instead of the algebra and geometry tests. No other middle school does that. Lots of self-selection at Basis but still only about 60% of 5th graders (before any counseling out happens) got 4s and 5s. That is sort of interesting.

So even giving them the easier test option, their stats aren't that great!

This is an internet board! Lots of different people read it. There are good arguments for why schools with lots of kids passing might offer a stronger educational experience. But it is also complicated because some kids can really easily score a 4 to a point where it does not really tell you much of anything about the overall quality of their education at a particular school and others have learning disabilities or other challenges associated with school work.

Basis has its middle school students take the standard grade level math test instead of the algebra and geometry tests. No other middle school does that. Lots of self-selection at Basis but still only about 60% of 5th graders (before any counseling out happens) got 4s and 5s. That is sort of interesting.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here are the Advanced Middle School Math Results

Top 15 Middle Schools Algebra I 4+ (Meeting, Exceeding)

Deal Middle School 92.0
MacFarland Middle School 86.2
Hardy Middle School 83.9
Washington Latin PCS - Middle School 81.8
John Francis Education Campus 75.0
Stuart-Hobson Middle School (Capitol Hill Cluster) 69.6
Ida B. Wells Middle School 68.0
Eliot-Hine Middle School 65.5
Oyster-Adams Bilingual School 59.1
Jefferson Middle School Academy 50.0
E.L. Haynes PCS - Middle School 44.8
Kelly Miller Middle School 42.9
Washington Latin PCS - Anna Julia Cooper Middle School 37.5
DC Prep PCS - Edgewood Middle School 35.3
Inspired Teaching Demonstration PCS 30.8


Top 15 Middle Schools Algebra I 3+ (Approaching, Meeting, Exceeding)

Deal Middle School 98.6
MacFarland Middle School >95%
John Francis Education Campus >=90%
Hardy Middle School 94.9
Washington Latin PCS - Middle School 92.2
Stuart-Hobson Middle School (Capitol Hill Cluster) 87.5
Ida B. Wells Middle School 80.0
Eliot-Hine Middle School 75.9
Oyster-Adams Bilingual School 72.7
Kelly Miller Middle School 71.4
Jefferson Middle School Academy 71.4
Washington Latin PCS - Anna Julia Cooper Middle School 60.9
DC Prep PCS - Edgewood Middle School 54.9
McKinley Middle School 54.5
Inspired Teaching Demonstration PCS 53.8

It should be noted that at ITDS, Algebra in middle school is not optional. All students take it. I'm not sure if that's the case at the other schools. Does anyone know?

Ya, I feel like that is why BASIS is not on this measurement -- all the kids take the same schedule for math, which including algebra and geometry.(excepting a very small number who accelerate, like less than a handful). So everyone is "advanced." I was wondering why that school was not on that spreadsheet.

Basis tries to game the system by having their ninth graders take Algebra I CAPE, even though they take the class in middle school. They don’t take CAPE aligned with the classes thr students are currently taking. So it makes their high school scores look better because at many high schools the less successful students take algebra 1 in 9th.

You think the curriculum for 27 national BASIS schools is set with primary consideration for DC's state assessment? An assessment that is used literally nowhere else?

You remind me of the guy who spends all day every day believing that the girl that blew him off spends any time thinking about him while he pines and obsesses over her. Put down the tin foil hat and get over it.

BASIS DC is the only BASIS school that takes the DC CAPE exam. No other BASIS school takes it. How could there possibly be a national policy about which DC exam to give?

On that DC exam, BASIS DC chooses to give inappropriately easy math CAPE exams to its own students. No other DC school does this. The only logical reason for BASIS to do it is to inflate their stats.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here are the Advanced Middle School Math Results

Top 15 Middle Schools Algebra I 4+ (Meeting, Exceeding)

Deal Middle School 92.0
MacFarland Middle School 86.2
Hardy Middle School 83.9
Washington Latin PCS - Middle School 81.8
John Francis Education Campus 75.0
Stuart-Hobson Middle School (Capitol Hill Cluster) 69.6
Ida B. Wells Middle School 68.0
Eliot-Hine Middle School 65.5
Oyster-Adams Bilingual School 59.1
Jefferson Middle School Academy 50.0
E.L. Haynes PCS - Middle School 44.8
Kelly Miller Middle School 42.9
Washington Latin PCS - Anna Julia Cooper Middle School 37.5
DC Prep PCS - Edgewood Middle School 35.3
Inspired Teaching Demonstration PCS 30.8


Top 15 Middle Schools Algebra I 3+ (Approaching, Meeting, Exceeding)

Deal Middle School 98.6
MacFarland Middle School >95%
John Francis Education Campus >=90%
Hardy Middle School 94.9
Washington Latin PCS - Middle School 92.2
Stuart-Hobson Middle School (Capitol Hill Cluster) 87.5
Ida B. Wells Middle School 80.0
Eliot-Hine Middle School 75.9
Oyster-Adams Bilingual School 72.7
Kelly Miller Middle School 71.4
Jefferson Middle School Academy 71.4
Washington Latin PCS - Anna Julia Cooper Middle School 60.9
DC Prep PCS - Edgewood Middle School 54.9
McKinley Middle School 54.5
Inspired Teaching Demonstration PCS 53.8

It should be noted that at ITDS, Algebra in middle school is not optional. All students take it. I'm not sure if that's the case at the other schools. Does anyone know?

Ya, I feel like that is why BASIS is not on this measurement -- all the kids take the same schedule for math, which including algebra and geometry.(excepting a very small number who accelerate, like less than a handful). So everyone is "advanced." I was wondering why that school was not on that spreadsheet.

Basis tries to game the system by having their ninth graders take Algebra I CAPE, even though they take the class in middle school. They don’t take CAPE aligned with the classes thr students are currently taking. So it makes their high school scores look better because at many high schools the less successful students take algebra 1 in 9th.

You think the curriculum for 27 national BASIS schools is set with primary consideration for DC's state assessment? An assessment that is used literally nowhere else?

You remind me of the guy who spends all day every day believing that the girl that blew him off spends any time thinking about him while he pines and obsesses over her. Put down the tin foil hat and get over it.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the point is just that the data is complex. At risk students do not as an overall general demographic score very well on CAPE and that leads to complicated discussions re whether or not schools with a large number of lower scoring at risk students are doing a good job. But this is not true of all at risk students. If you isolate some of the highest performing and most motivated students within any demographic, you are going to get higher scores. If you just want to know how strong the student cohort is, then I guess it does not matter.

The families on this board are not at risk. So it doesn’t matter and is not relevant if schools are doing a good job of at risk.

Families on this board, majority will most likely have kids at or above grade level, so what matters is how strong the student cohort is overall.

The point of the exercise is performative nonsense - like most everything around here. Bunch of UMC, college educated white (mostly) women sit around and wax philosophic about those poor black and brown kids. In between lattes from Starbucks.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think the point is just that the data is complex. At risk students do not as an overall general demographic score very well on CAPE and that leads to complicated discussions re whether or not schools with a large number of lower scoring at risk students are doing a good job. But this is not true of all at risk students. If you isolate some of the highest performing and most motivated students within any demographic, you are going to get higher scores. If you just want to know how strong the student cohort is, then I guess it does not matter.

The families on this board are not at risk. So it doesn’t matter and is not relevant if schools are doing a good job of at risk.

Families on this board, majority will most likely have kids at or above grade level, so what matters is how strong the student cohort is overall.

The way that this "at risk" conversation started is that someone wrote that it was really impressive that Latin was doing so well given how many economically disadvantaged / at risk kids they have.

My point was simply to say, "Nope." Latin has fewer, not more at risk students than the other high schools on the list.

In general though, if you look at analyses of scores, like the one at Empower DC listed above, "at risk" is cross-referenced with scores to provide context. This is because if you look at a school that has lots of students who would generally get a 25 on a test and they are getting 45s, then you know that school is doing a really good job. Whereas if you just look at the 45s and say "what a bad score" you're missing the point that usually, on average, that student is expected to get a 25. The point is that what is a good score for one student isn't what is a good score for another person.

So, if you are considering your neighborhood school and they have xyz test scores, and you want to know if they are a good school, you need to take into account what the context is of xyz score.

It's true, if the only thing you care about, as a parent, is that there is a large enough high performing cohort for your kid, it's simpler. But if you're a policy maker, or even just a parent with an interest in statistics and DC schools writ large, then you might be interested in which schools are actually better as opposed to just which schools have the largest high performing cohort.

One reason you might be interested in this is because even if your family is wealthy or educated, your kid might have severe dyslexia and a reading delay and then, magically, they actually need good instruction oriented towards kids who are having a hard time in school. Then you might be glad you've done the analysis to find the best school for your kids as opposed to just the school with the most kids who look like them.

Anonymous wrote:I think the point is just that the data is complex. At risk students do not as an overall general demographic score very well on CAPE and that leads to complicated discussions re whether or not schools with a large number of lower scoring at risk students are doing a good job. But this is not true of all at risk students. If you isolate some of the highest performing and most motivated students within any demographic, you are going to get higher scores. If you just want to know how strong the student cohort is, then I guess it does not matter.

The families on this board are not at risk. So it doesn’t matter and is not relevant if schools are doing a good job of at risk.

Families on this board, majority will most likely have kids at or above grade level, so what matters is how strong the student cohort is overall.

I think the point is just that the data is complex. At risk students do not as an overall general demographic score very well on CAPE and that leads to complicated discussions re whether or not schools with a large number of lower scoring at risk students are doing a good job. But this is not true of all at risk students. If you isolate some of the highest performing and most motivated students within any demographic, you are going to get higher scores. If you just want to know how strong the student cohort is, then I guess it does not matter.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The poster said Banneker and McKinley are good schools. The so what is that they admit at-risk kids who care and help them succeed but you cannot with application schools necessarily straight up compare the at-risk scores to the at-risk scores at the open enrollment high schools and declare the value add is all Banneker and McKinley or the other schools are bad.

I just don't know why I should care. The at-risk population at Latin is surely very different from that of Ballou High School. Ditto basically any bilingual school in the city. I guess it's sort of interesting from an academic point of view but otherwise I don't know why anyone should care.

It's an important data point / factor when analyzing DC CAPE scores. Which is what this thread is doing.

It just doesnt seem particularly meaningful. Sure, the at-risk kid who applies to an application school is different. So is the at-risk kid who travels halfway across the city to go to Latin. Or the at-risk kid who goes to a school in a language that isn't their own. So what? Why are we parsing all the myriad distinctions among different at-risk kids. What difference does it make? Are some somehow more real than others?

At risk doesn’t matter.

What matters is total percentage of kids at and above grade level at a school so the teaching can at least be at grade level.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The poster said Banneker and McKinley are good schools. The so what is that they admit at-risk kids who care and help them succeed but you cannot with application schools necessarily straight up compare the at-risk scores to the at-risk scores at the open enrollment high schools and declare the value add is all Banneker and McKinley or the other schools are bad.

I just don't know why I should care. The at-risk population at Latin is surely very different from that of Ballou High School. Ditto basically any bilingual school in the city. I guess it's sort of interesting from an academic point of view but otherwise I don't know why anyone should care.

It's an important data point / factor when analyzing DC CAPE scores. Which is what this thread is doing.

Anonymous wrote:The poster said Banneker and McKinley are good schools. The so what is that they admit at-risk kids who care and help them succeed but you cannot with application schools necessarily straight up compare the at-risk scores to the at-risk scores at the open enrollment high schools and declare the value add is all Banneker and McKinley or the other schools are bad.

I just don't know why I should care. The at-risk population at Latin is surely very different from that of Ballou High School. Ditto basically any bilingual school in the city. I guess it's sort of interesting from an academic point of view but otherwise I don't know why anyone should care.

The poster said Banneker and McKinley are good schools. The so what is that they admit at-risk kids who care and help them succeed but you cannot with application schools necessarily straight up compare the at-risk scores to the at-risk scores at the open enrollment high schools and declare the value add is all Banneker and McKinley or the other schools are bad.

Anonymous wrote:How are CMI, MVP and SSMA doing? Those were former highly regarded charter schools.

SSMA was never highly regarded. They've always been barely keeping their doors open. That's still the case.

CMI had its moment but that moment came and went and they are not doing well.

I can't speak to MVP.