We're 2 out of 10, which I think is the same. I love my school and the teachers are fantastic. That's all that matters. We have lots of challenges with ESOL students, but the school and the community are doing great things to help them.
I can see how this is a logical change for already high-performing schools who are failing a segment of their population. That should be brought to light.
I wonder how it impacts schools that were low on the GS scale before because of low test scores in a high poverty / high ESL population. It seems like a double penalty for them, potentially, if they get both low test scores and also show large achievement gaps. Hopefully that's not how it works.
This is what happened with our zoned school. It went from a total score of 7 to a 5 and it's exactly this, low test scores and high poverty and ESL populations and now doubly penalized by the achievement gap data.
I actually think the subdata and subscores is helpful info, but collapsing it into one final score doesn't seem useful in the least.
I also totally agree that this is a much more fair assessment for high-performing schools that have persistent achievement gaps.
Also this gives some credence to what I have told friends for a long time. We have about 24 elementary schools in my district. 10 are Title 1 schools and I know people that avoid buying houses that feed into those because they assume they are “bad schools.” Those schools receive more federal resources for helping low income kids so with this new system they are rated higher than many other schools (such as the one we attend) that have lots of low income kids and fewer resources to serve them.
We should not care about the ratings but instead the education quality for all kids
My kids school scores 7/10 overall, but only 3/10 for equity, and 3/10 for low income students. I can't say I'm entirely surprised that they are failing low income students-- I think they have unrealistic standards, especially for the lower grades. If you didn't send your kid to a high-end preschool, and/or have them tutored, then they start off behind in kindergarten and it's hard to ever catch up.
I can actually see some parents picking a school with greater inequity because then their precious will stand out more. But I have very little faith in people.
I can see how this is a logical change for already high-performing schools who are failing a segment of their population. That should be brought to light.
I wonder how it impacts schools that were low on the GS scale before because of low test scores in a high poverty / high ESL population. It seems like a double penalty for them, potentially, if they get both low test scores and also show large achievement gaps. Hopefully that's not how it works.
No it definitely is. Our school fits this in the sense that we have significant portion of low income population. It went down. I really don't understand why the achievement gap is so high for our school. But it is, painfully so.
It's interesting too because our zoned school is extremely racially diverse, with whites a comparatively small minority of students, and the racial and ethnic achievement gaps are not too terrible (7, 8, and 9) but the socioeconomic gap is pretty big. Interestingly, the lower income students at our particular school are for the most part white students, although that trend doesn't hold for the rest of the district.
the class size rating for my school seems wayyyyyyyyyyy off. Is it counting aides in that ratio? We have two kindergarten classes and both have 25 kids in them. They were sharing an aide until just last week when they hired a second and now they both have a full time aide in addition to the teacher.
the class size rating for my school seems wayyyyyyyyyyy off. Is it counting aides in that ratio? We have two kindergarten classes and both have 25 kids in them. They were sharing an aide until just last week when they hired a second and now they both have a full time aide in addition to the teacher.
The ratio includes ancillary teachers, specialized service teachers, part time teachers, etc. It would probably also include aides as teachers if they were certified but I'm not sure about them. All the extra teachers that are counted does give an appearance of smaller class sizes.
A better eating would be median class size but it would take more work than simple division, so I don't foresee it happening.
I live in a large city that designates as much money per student as a wealthy suburb does per student. The school scores of each are vastly different for almost every school within respective districts.
We have a lottery system for school placement, but technically you are supposed to be zoned for a tier 1 school along with lower tiered options. Doesn't mean you will get in, just that its possible. We toured the potential tier one school because we were hoping to send the kids to public school and heard so many great things about this school. I was not surprised to see the new breakdown reflect a more negative picture of the school based on what we saw and learned while on our tour.
I wonder if these new stats will influence what the re-elected mayor (who hasn't been that amazing in regards to schools) plans to do going forward.
the class size rating for my school seems wayyyyyyyyyyy off. Is it counting aides in that ratio? We have two kindergarten classes and both have 25 kids in them. They were sharing an aide until just last week when they hired a second and now they both have a full time aide in addition to the teacher.
The ratio includes ancillary teachers, specialized service teachers, part time teachers, etc. It would probably also include aides as teachers if they were certified but I'm not sure about them. All the extra teachers that are counted does give an appearance of smaller class sizes.
A better eating would be median class size but it would take more work than simple division, so I don't foresee it happening.
Would it really take more work? I think my county caps all classes at 24 kids (at least in Kinder) maybe for all ES. Anyway, the ratios shows 12:1 which would represent the 24 kids, 1 teacher and 1 aide. Although technically my kid has two teachers and two aides plus the reading specialist.
Our elementary school went up from a 4 to a 7, I'm very pleased with this, as we have 35% from low income families and I felt like our school was unfairly rated low because of that.
So it is going to be a little more realistic and not flat out racist? Of course the rich parents are angry. Where I live has high property value and the local schools are low rated, which is not an accurate reflection of many of the schools.
It also allowed me to see that our school is failing low income students, which is frustrating because I feel like we have a lot of programs designed to help at risk populations and it is still apparently not working. This is especially interesting in light of heyjude post yesterday about Hispanic kids. The school is dual immersion and focuses on teaching things from a Hispanic world view instead of white one. The Spanish teachers are native speakers and I would really hope that no one would write off any hispanic child merely because of their background at a school like this. We are still failing Hispanic kids (which account for 54% of the population). Their math, English, and science scores are still 20points below the white students. I think it is really important to look at why that is.
Part of the reason that the math and science scores are low is that these tests, however much people want to say that they are skills tests, are really, at the core, reading tests. I even noticed it at the first grade level in math--most of the problems that were on my son's standardized math test were fill in the blank math statements. If a student is struggling with language or reading (regardless of reason), then no amount of math or science skill instruction is going to help them through the language issues.
I'm pleasantly surprised by the high equity ratings and ratings for students with disabilities of the schools my kids will go through. One asshole commenter complained that the high school promotes Black Lives Matter and that the free lunch kids don't have to pay in the cafeteria.
Post by downtoearth on Nov 9, 2017 13:09:29 GMT -5
Yeah, I don't get the low-income student metric. I need more info. My kids' school went up b/c they have good test scores and 31% low income (but the other 69%, I would guess and upper middle to upper income kids).
A school right next to ours went down and they are half Montessori and half typical elementary with 47% low income (all pretty much in the typical elementary side) and so they gave it a 2/10 for serving the low income students and a 5/10 for serving all students. So basically, they are winning with the Montessori (mostly middle/upper middle income kids) and losing pretty bad with the other kids (47% of which are low income). Hmmmm, is my reading of this right? That is interesting considering that the Montessori parents separate themselves from the other parents and classrooms a lot. I might agree that the new measurements are better than, but it's still not a great metric for affluent parents to pick a school - they are going to pick out of the schools with low income kids and therefore take their PTA $ and time away from those.
Our middle and high stayed the same (9 and 10) and their equity scores are also 9/10 for both race and low income. They have the same population as our intermediate school which dropped from a 9 (or 10) to a 7 which was because of equity. However I think our county does a poor job with certain things that would affect that at the k-5 level but do a much better job with support and funding at middle/high so I'm not surprised that the 3-5 school dropped but the middle/high didn't.
Hmmm can't tell if the new scoring system hit our area or not. My child's first elementary school was an 8 last year and is now a 7 - it was much more inclusive and diverse than the school she was zoned to after we moved. It was a 10 and is currently a 10. The racial demographics are diverse, but not SES.
High school dropped from 10 to 7. That is very discouraging. Expecially since I have been hearing that the difference in GPAs for the top 200 are fractions of points and all over 4 because the point system takes advanced placement into account and allots higher points for A/P. That is super competitive.
The school is also really diverse racially but not so much wrt SES.
Our high school went from an 8 to a 9. This doesn’t surprise me. We have always done a decent job of supporting all students. It’s one of the reason many people in neighboring towns try to petition in.
Equity is 9, Low Income students at 9. They're doing better than most schools with IEP students but there's a lot of room for improvement there- especially for bright to average kids with learning differences. TBH, many low income students here are the children of single mothers who live with their own parents for access to the schools.
I can actually see some parents picking a school with greater inequity because then their precious will stand out more. But I have very little faith in people.
I'll sit here. I also see people thinking "Well, the white/middle or high income kids are doing fine, so my kid will do great there." I have little faith that white people will care beyond how this affects them.
Follow up- checked mine and we’re now at a 1/10 but every parent review is a 5 ⭐️
What was it before?
I thought it was a 3? But I’m not sure. I’ve never placed much stock in ratings so I didn’t pay close attention. I’d like to see stats in a few years of how kids from our school fared in middle/high school, though, bc I think the dual-language education makes standardized testing in 2/3/4 grades more challenging, but I’d expect that Spanish speaking students being educated in their native language and English to be more successful in the long run
I can see how this is a logical change for already high-performing schools who are failing a segment of their population. That should be brought to light.
I wonder how it impacts schools that were low on the GS scale before because of low test scores in a high poverty / high ESL population. It seems like a double penalty for them, potentially, if they get both low test scores and also show large achievement gaps. Hopefully that's not how it works.
So I just looked at the school where I work. We ended up with a 1/10 in equity. 2/10 overall.
Almost 30% of our students are ESL. Those kids take the WIDA test every year to assess their English language skills.
The state just changed our testing requirements and since we no longer have high stakes testing for graduation, the test that now counts toward school accountability is the reading portion of the WIDA test. So that’s what is being reported to the state and where they’re gathering data. I’ve seen students perform near the top in the writing, listening, and speaking portions, and then fail the reading section.
When you compare us to a predominately white high school in the suburbs, we look terrible. It’s frustrating as an educator actually in the building because I know better.
Post by Queen Mamadala on Nov 9, 2017 21:45:31 GMT -5
I just checked and the grade school my 5th and 2nd grader attend is still 3/10 and ranked 2 on the equity scale. The only schools with 7+ equity are 75+ white with a lower percentage of low-income students. My 7th grader's school was 8/10, now it's 7, with an equity score of 4. The high school it feeds into is still 7/10, though it's equity score is 3. I'm not at all surprised. The middle and high school are segregated. The reviews said as much. The IB program students are heavily insulated and the majority of the funding goes to the IB program and the teachers also heavily favor the IB students.
The middle school employs IB curriculum school-wide, but it's a watered down version for the non-IB students and the students receive weaker instruction and the class culture atmosphere is entirely different. The schools are pretty diverse, but it's obvious which group of students fall behind.