I'm not seeing an equality or low income score for my elementary school. Under "low income" they say no data and "equality" just gives me a break down of disciplines and chronic absenteeism by race (which looks even to me). Am I missing something??
Regardless, our neighborhood school, which was a 10 when we bought our house, is now a 6. That coincides with the tenure of an awful principal. The parents actually petitioned to get rid of her and she retired. She's part of the reason we switched Ben to a GT school (which gets a 9, up from an 8). A new principal started this year, so I hope to see improvement before Stella starts.
Post by sparkythelawyer on Nov 9, 2017 23:25:39 GMT -5
Huh. My district all sort of coalesced around the middle. My neighborhood school went from a 10 to an 8 due to equity gap, but the previously listed 4 or 5 school is now an 8 also, because their gap is narrower.
Post by darthnbjenni on Nov 10, 2017 0:17:47 GMT -5
I dislike that so much of our high school's score rides on our 4 content end of course exams (3 taken as freshmen, 1 as juniors). So frequently I get children that move into the country not speaking a word of English at the beginning of the semester, and due to the block schedule, are expected to take an exam in English only 4 months later. Of course the failure rates are high, but what the tests don't measure is how much the child has grown in those 4 months - going from being unable to communicate, to having simple conversations with friends and teachers. I wish the data were further broken down by levels of ESOL status and SpEd (there would be a wide gap in the data of our itinerant ADD/ADHD students, and those with severe disabilities that are in self contained classes, not even graduating with a diploma - yet are still tested).
The crap elementary school our neighborhood was rezoned to (which is 20 minutes in the opposite direction from most jobs) just dropped from a 4 to a 2 with a 1 in equity. And people wonder why we complain about being rezoned. It's not just because it's a bad school, but because they are crap for those who need it most. The other two schools I could try to opt into are 6s with a better equity gaps. It's only for one year (new school will open in our zone his 1st grade year) but there is no question I'm applying to get him into one of those 6s.
Post by sillygoosegirl on Nov 10, 2017 2:41:10 GMT -5
Our local elementary school is still a 4.
Currently getting 3 for test scores, 8 for progress, 2 for race/ethnicity, and 3 for low income.
I feel like they should be breaking it out by ESL vs native English speakers. I thought the new system would increase our schools rating, based on everything I hear about our school. But our school has a very large immigrant population, so they are comparing our overwhelmingly ESL Hispanic and Asian students to statewide average test scores of Hispanic and Asian students who are mostly not immigrants. They could be doing a fabulous job with those students, but the tests are still in English.
It would be nice if they broke down the progress numbers by race/ethnicity and income. That could maybe tease out a bit more of what the school is or isn't doing for these students, rather than measuring other attributes of the populations the school serves.
We got a 3 in low income because low income students at the school scored below the state average, even though there is zero gap between all students and low income students. Double whammy.
DS's school dropped from a 10 to a 9 but it's a mostly middle to upper middle class small neighborhood school. The school where I volunteer in Dallas is at a 5 now but I'm not sure what number they scored earlier. It's almost entirely low income, large amounts of English language learners, and around 50% of the school's population are recently arrived refugee children who don't speak English and many had not had an opportunity to ever go to school before. Despite all of these things the kids are happy, the teachers are passionate and involved, and there have been improvements in test scores over the years.
I think my school went up a little, but there are still some concerning disparities for low-income and black students.
Honestly though, my #1 criteria for choosing a school is that the racial make-up is at least 50% black. I can work with anything else, which I understand is somewhat of a privilege. I just refuse to have my daughter be one of a few in her classes.
I'm not seeing an equality or low income score for my elementary school. Under "low income" they say no data and "equality" just gives me a break down of disciplines and chronic absenteeism by race (which looks even to me). Am I missing something??
Regardless, our neighborhood school, which was a 10 when we bought our house, is now a 6. That coincides with the tenure of an awful principal. The parents actually petitioned to get rid of her and she retired. She's part of the reason we switched Ben to a GT school (which gets a 9, up from an 8). A new principal started this year, so I hope to see improvement before Stella starts.
What’s the percentage of low income students? Is it too low for it to be reported?
The school our old home was zoned to remains a 10. The school we moved to get into moved up to a 9 I think it was am 8. Based on my experience and reports from friends great schools still has it wrong. Even though the equity score of school 1 is high, the test scores of black kids are low and the administration isn’t concerned about it. They get away with it because the scores are increasing from really shitty to shitty. So it shows up that they’re closing achievement gaps. The principal ascribed the low test scores to black kids in a particular subdivision but said it was ok as the rezoning would soon get rid of those kids. I sold my house and got the fuck away from that school.
The school that DS now attends is school 2. They actually implement strategies aimed at improving achievement for all their students. Their test scores are high across the board for both minority and low income students but because there isn’t much movement year on year, it looks like they don’t get credit for closing achievement gaps. Their equity score is a 6 whereas school number 1 is a 9.
Both schools have 60% white, 20% hispanic and just under 10% black students.
I checked it out again because I know it's significantly higher than negligible. The site is completely different on my phone versus iPad. I can see all the info now. I hope the new principal at my neighborhood school is looking at this data, too.