Standardized Test Scores

D.C. State Superintendent of Education takes new job

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WAMU’s Tom Sherwood just reported on X that D.C. State Superintendent of Education Dr. Christina Grant is leaving her post to become the executive director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University. According to today’s news release from CEPR, Ms. Grant has been at OSSE since 2021.

The announcement is fitting and completely in sync with Mayor Muriel Bowser’s schizophrenic view of the District of Columbia. Allow me to explain.

Last Friday I attended the D.C. Policy Center’s conference regarding the release of their study entitled “State of D.C. Schools, 2022-23: Challenges to pandemic recovery in a new normal.” The entire meeting came across as bizarre to me. All in attendance, including educators, local education leaders, and policy people, were in a tremendously good mood. It seemed that everyone was congratulating themselves and each other on the tremendous job being done to teach young people in our city. The opening remarks were provided by Ms. Grant and she stayed throughout the hour-long conference. I had not had the opportunity to observe the State Superintendent in action. I have to say I was impressed. Her words were highly enthusiastic and she remained that way upon returning to her seat. Sitting a few rows behind her I saw the Superintendent shaking her head affirmatively to all that she heard, while often using hand motions or clicking her fingers to show her complete support for the comments of panalists. At various points I thought she might just fly above the room. When I came home I actually commented to my wife that I could not imagine someone over this government agency being so animated as much of what OSSE does revolves around data collection and grant compliance.

There was absolutely no hint by Ms. Grant or others that she had accepted a new position. There was also little regard for the 2021 to 2022 PARCC standardized test results that demonstrated 31 percent of students in D.C. are proficient in English Language Arts, while 19 percent of students are proficient in math. My mood soured as the disconnect between the dismal state of academic achievement in the nation’s capital and the euphoria of the audience looked like a scene depicted in a surrealistic painting.

I have had time recently to watch online Mayor Bowser at various events around town. Her optimistic outlook seems an insult to what many are experiencing recently in the District. Allow me to give you an example. On my way to the Martin Luther King Library to join the Policy Center event, I arrived at 9 a.m., a half hour before the library opened. It allowed me to witness all the people sleeping in front of the structure . As I walked around the block looking for someplace to eat breakfast I saw building after building of vacant storefronts. The smell of marijuana filled the air. The streets were almost completely void of pedestrians. Considering all the crime that has been taking place in the city I was afraid to be there. The only way to describe the scene in comparison to before the Covid pandemic is night and day.

It is probably best that Dr. Grant is moving to Cambridge. I wonder how much longer she could have kept up the ruse.

Increased public school spending in D.C. will lower student test scores

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Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser announced yesterday that she is proposing in her fiscal 2025 budget a 12.4 percent increase in the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula. The change, according to the Mayor’s press release regarding the jump in funding, will bring the foundation amount schools get to educate a child to $14,668. In the same document Ms. Bower demonstrates the irresponsibility of this move:

“Over the past five years, DCPS has added nearly one school-based staff member for every newly enrolled student, with the number of full-time employees growing by 18% compared to a 2% increase in enrollment.”

Is this any way to run an organization?

I can guess as to why schools are desperate for this cash. As part of the pandemic emergency, schools were flooded with an extra billion in taxpayer dollars. As a natural response to a handout, schools added personnel. Now that this revenue stream is disappearing, they have no way to pay for the extra staff.

The public school bureaucracy has never seen a revenue increase it did not like. Here is a typical response from the DC Charter School Alliance’s Arial Johnson:

“As our schools will soon face a funding cliff with federal dollars running out this year, we applaud Mayor Bowser’s historic proposed increase to the UPSFF and her steadfast commitment to investing in our city’s education system. We’re especially grateful for her commitment to ensuring the ongoing costs of educator raises are covered and her focus on supporting the students most in need by increasing the UPSFF weights for students designated at-risk, alternative students, and adult students.”

A city with a 33.7 percent student proficiency rate in English and a 21.8 percent student proficiency rate in math does not seem to prove the hypothesis that more money will solve our academic ills. And if history is any guide, it will not result in the intended impact. Below is a chart by the Cato Institute’s Andrew Coulson demonstrating the inverse relationship between spending and test scores in American schools from 1970 to 2010.

Unfortunately for our town, I only expect these trends to continue.

Cesar Chavez Public Charter Middle and High Schools make DC Bold Schools list for academic achievement

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The month EmpowerK12 released the names of 14 District of Columbia schools that made its annual Bold Schools list. According to this organization’s web site bold schools are identified in this way:

“Schools are determined using the 2022 Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) data and their Percent Proficient Above Expected (PPAE) calculations (using four sophisticated mathematical models) that project what percentage of students are expected to be proficient given a school’s demographics. Bold Performance Schools have proficiency rates for students at least 5.5 percentage points higher than how schools with similar demographics achieved pre-pandemic.”

In addition:

“The 14 schools designated as Bold Performance Schools are DC Public Schools (DCPS) and DC charter schools, across elementary, middle, and high school grades; and serve student populations where students designated as at-risk make up at least 30% of the student population. This year’s Bold Performance Schools have 2022 PARCC proficiency rates that were an average of 9.1 percentage points better than other Bold-eligible schools, and their 2022 PARCC 4+ proficiency rates were 2.6 percentage points better than the pre-pandemic average for schools serving similar demographics.”

As you can see it is quite an academic achievement for these schools, especially coming out of the pandemic. Here is the list of facilities that includes those of both the charter sector and DCPS.

However, I want to highlight one of these schools because of its troubled past regarding standardized test scores. Back in 2017, when the Cesar Chavez Public Charter School for Public Policy faced its 20 year review with the DC Public Charter School Board it was nearly shuttered due to low academic performance.
Instead the PCSB prevented its Parkside Middle School from accepting any new students into its sixth grade with the end result of closing this campus. The remaining schools, Chavez Capitol Hill and Chavez Prep would also cease operations if they did not meet specific Performance Management Framework targets over the next three years. The charter board commented that the Local Education Agency was simply “not meeting its goals and student achievement expectations.”

Facing an extremely dire situation, the Chavez’ board turned to the TenSquare Group for assistance. The charter then started making news for something other than pedagogy. Some teachers at Chavez Prep were working hard to bring a teachers’ union to the school. Then, for academic, enrollment, and financial pressures that I described here in 2019, the charter decided to close Chavez Capitol Hill and Chavez Prep and consolidate these institutions at the Parkside location. The plan was always to one day rebuild the middle school.

At the time I described Josh Kern, TenSquare’s leader, to literary hero Howard Roark in Ayn Rand’s book The Fountainhead. Now we can recognize the magnitude of his team’s turnaround efforts. This year represents the first year since 2017 that the middle school will fill grades six through eight. Now, thanks to the analysis by EmpowerK12, both the middle and high schools fulfill the promise to provide a quality education to any student who needs one.

Michelle Rhee credits charter schools with DCPS academic achievement

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A tremendous thank you to Nina Rees, president and CEO of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, for alerting me on Twitter of the most recent podcast by Education Next. The recording features my new friend George Parker, past president of the Washington Teachers’ Union and now senior advisor, school support for the National Alliance, and Ms. Michelle Rhee, who needs no introduction. The two engaged in a highly fascinating conversation regarding the groundbreaking union contract the two negotiated when Ms. Rhee was Chancellor of Washington, D.C.’s traditional school system in 2010. The contract would eventually lead to Mr. Parker being voted out of his position.

At the start of the discussion, moderator Paul E. Peterson, Education Next senior editor, explains that following the implementation of the labor agreement, DCPS, as measured by Mathematica, experienced substantial gains in reading and math for fourth grade students, and rising standardized test scores in reading in eighth grade pupils, but not a corresponding increase in math. Mr. Peterson asked Mr. Parker to characterize the contract. “It was the first union contract that was focused on the child and the teacher,” Mr. Parker intoned.

As background, please recall that this contract was truly groundbreaking in that for the first time in the history of public education a teacher’s performance evaluation was tied to student academic results. Moreover, it did not play an insignificant part. Fully fifty percent of the final rating was dependent on standardized test scores. In addition, instructors could earn substantial pay bonuses, up to $20,000 a year, for rises in academic marks. The agreement also reduced the power of seniority regarding job transfers and made it simpler to terminate a poor performing teacher.

When is was Ms. Rhee’s turn to speak, Mr. Peterson was most interested in the factors that created an environment in which it was possible to obtain such significant changes in the working relationship between teachers and management. Ms. Rhee recalled the unique educational ecosystem of reform present at the time. She said that the District had one of the bravest politicians she has ever seen in Adrien Fenty being elected Mayor. Soon after coming into office Mr. Fenty was able to achieve mayoral control of the regular schools. Ms. Rhee discussed the additional resource allocation the system was able to realize due to closing of under enrolled sites. She revealed that the sector received new philanthropic dollars to support the new pay for performance. Then, eight minutes and twenty seven seconds into the discussion, she dropped the bombshell.

Ms. Rhee explained that there was a strong choice dynamic in place. There were charter schools and there was the federally administered private school voucher program. She asserted that even for those who did not want change, people realized they had to do something because with these options available for parents “in ten years there will be no D.C. public schools.”

So there you have it. You can listen to the statement yourself. While there has been a highly intense debate in education circles as to what led to the strong academic achievement prior to COVID in PARCC and NAEP scores for students in public schools in the nation’s capital, we now have irrefutable proof of the cause. No one had a closer front row seat as to what took place in classrooms than Mr. Parker and Ms. Rhee.

A splendid return to the past thanks to Education Forward DC

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Last Monday evening Education Forward DC held a conference at the newly renovated Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library entitled “Better Than Before: Building Exceptional Schools Through DC’s Covid Recovery.” There was some extremely interesting information provided at the session, especially by Shalini Shybut, Education Forward’s Partner, Schools and Talent. But the fundamental reason that this meeting was so great is that following the remarks there was a reception that brought attendees back to a time before the terrible pandemic changed our lives.

Prior to the refreshments there was data. Ms. Shybut opined that the 2022 PARCC results are sobering. She showed charts demonstrating that the overall student proficiency rates for English Language Arts, meaning those who score at least a four on the standardized exam, are down to 31 percent for this year, a level we have not seen since 2016. The overall proficiency rate in math is at 19 percent, a number that is lower than we have ever seen in this city since administering the currently utilized standardized examination. When looking into the ELA numbers, Ms. Shybut revealed that a staggering 48 percent of students posted scores in levels one and two, meaning that just about half of our pupils are not able to read.

It was this depressing news that previewed a panel discussion moderated by Jessica Sutter, the current president and Ward 6 representative to the State Board of Education. Participants included Corinne (Corie) Colgan, chief of teaching and learning at DCPS; Hanah Nguyen, school design partner for Transcend; Raymond Weeden, executive director Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS; and Daniela Anello, head of school DC Bilingual PCS. This is when the mood of the room turned around. Strange as it may sound, the discussion was actually uplifting. The star of the show, as is the case anytime you are in her presence, was Ms. Anello, who received practically a standing ovation from the crowd when she announced that the 2022 PARCC scores at her school were the highest they have ever recorded. She attributed the achievement to her staff’s determined focus on the whole child, a theme that united the efforts of all of the educators on the stage. Also impressive was Ms. Colgan from the traditional school system, who is following a strategy similar in scope to what Ms. Anello described. I think that students in D.C. are in exceptionally good hands. I must also compliment Ms. Sutter in her ability to summarize the major discussion points at the end of this segment of the program. A question and answer period highlighted the thoroughly perceptive inquires from two students from TMA who were in attendance.

In closing remarks, Education Forward board chair Reverend Doctor Kendrick Curry brought to the room his skills as a preacher in formally introducing the new chief executive officer of his organization, Bisi Oyedele, who officially started his new job last week. Dr. Curry also lavishly praised outgoing CEO and co-founder of Education Forward DC Maura Marino, which was certainly well deserved. Dr. Curry revealed that Ms. Marino contributed to raising over one million dollars for the group during her six-year tenure.

It was then off to the reception. Waiters and waitresses greeted guests with glasses of wine and passed appetizers, both of which kept coming throughout the night. I had the fantastic opportunity to catch up with long-time acquaintances including Carrie Irvine, CEO and co-founder of Education Board Partners and Naomi Rubin DeVeaux, partner, National Charter School Institute. I laughed with Maura about trying to keep up with note taking during my interview of her five years ago. I discussed the happy occasion of DC Bilingual expanding its permanent facility with Daniela. Finally, I caught up with Dr. Curry, who I happily discovered is working with my good friend Dr. Jehan “Gigi” El-Bayoumi, founding director of The George Washington University’s School of Medicine & Health Sciences Rodham Institute. The Rodham Institute partners with numerous community associations in Ward 8 in an effort to eliminate negative social determinants of health and Dr. Curry’s church is located in Southeast. It was a fitting end to an outstanding occasion.

Time for a new D.C. schools Adequacy Study

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The other day I read a statement by Shannon Hodge, executive director of the DC Charter School Alliance, calling for the Deputy Mayor for Education to complete a revised Adequacy Study. I could not agree more.

The last one was released in 2013 and it was groundbreaking. The research behind the report demonstrated that the District of Columbia was shy 40,000 quality seats, and it mapped the locations were new high performing classrooms were needed. But the most astonishing part of the work, lead by then Mayor Vincent Gray and my favorite Deputy Mayor for Education Abigail Smith, was that it put into print for the first time by the government the fact that charter schools were receiving inequitable funding compared to DCPS. The document pointed out that this was true because although all schools, charters and traditional, were funded at the same level through the Uniform Per Student Funding Formula, DCPS took advantage for free of government services, such as legal, information technology, and building maintenance, that charters could not access. It was a line of reasoning advanced for years and at every opportunity by Robert Cane, the prior head of Friends for Choice in Urban Schools. Mary Levy went on to quantify this disparity to be about $100 thousand to $125 thousand dollars a year.

The blatant unfairness continues unabated today and led to Eagle Academy PCS, Washington Latin PCS, when I was chair of its board, and the DC Association of Chartered Public School to sue the city to try and recover the revenue; a legal action that was eventually dismissed. Attorney Stephen Marcus led the effort. It was not something that charters wanted to do; we believed we had no other choice.

In addition, the 2013 study was extremely comprehensive in nature in that it tried to figure out exactly what the funding level of the UPSFF should be to eliminate the academic achievement gap in our town. It looked at each component of the per pupil allotment, including the much discussed weight for teaching at-risk students.

A lot has changed over nine years and much has not. The amount of tax revenue going to the two education sectors has gone up tremendously, now projected to exceed in fiscal year 2023 2.2 billion dollars annually. However, with this cash has not come the solution to the inequity that all of us involved in education want desperately to solve. When we do get around to testing our children it is almost certain, especially after two years of pandemic learning, that the difference in proficiency between the affluent and poor of 60 points has only increased.

It is imperative to perform another adequacy study. Let’s determine what the proper UPSFF should be. We should uncover how many quality seats the District needs to provide each and every scholar an exceptional pedagogical experience. How will we react if the number comes back again at 40,000?

Empowerk12 recognizes Bold Performance D.C. public schools

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Empowerk12, a D.C. nonprofit that supports data analytics in education, recently released its list of 28 Bold Performance schools that outperform their predicted standardized test scores on the PARCC assessment. The methodology behind the designation of a Bold Performance school is fascinating. From the organization’s website:

“We analyzed the 2019 Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers (PARCC) data and found that at-risk concentration was the most predictive indicator of school-wide PARCC proficiency. Almost 45% of DC students tested in Spring 2019 were considered at-risk. The more at-risk students a school serves, the fewer the number who met expectations on PARCC, our analysis found. Other factors with a statistically significant impact on a school’s proficiency rate after controlling for percent at-risk served include percent special education, English language learners, race, and grade-level configuration. The 2019 model for Bold Performance includes all factors with a statistically significant impact, with at-risk contributing the most weight.

We used an ensemble of machine learning models to project what percentage of students were expected to be proficient at every school given their demographics, and then identified schools with actual proficiency rates significantly higher than expected. The 2019 Bold Performance award-winning schools have actual proficiency rates at least 10 percentage points higher than schools with similar demographics.”

Here’s some of the group’s observation’s about the winning schools:

“KIPP Promise leads the pack with a proficiency rate 33 points higher than similar schools—and combined proficiency higher than a few Ward 3 schools with considerably more affluent populations. At four of the Bold Performance schools, at-risk students have a higher math and ELA combined proficiency rate than non at-risk students District-wide: DC Prep Edgewood MS, KIPP Heights, KIPP Lead and KIPP Promise.

Together, the 28 schools educate 10,759 students, of which 18% receive special education services and 57% are considered at-risk, ranging from 32% to 86%. An at-risk student is a child whose family qualifies for SNAP or TANF benefits, is placed in foster care, or is experiencing homelessness.

Seventeen of the Bold Performance award-winning and honorable-mention schools are located east of the Anacostia River in Ward 7 and Ward 8, three in Ward 6, four in Ward 5, two in Ward 4, and one each in Wards 2 and 1. Six 2019 winners have been Bold Performers each of the last four years, since the awards began: DC Prep Benning ES, DC Prep Edgewood MS, Ketcham ES, KIPP Lead ES, KIPP Heights ES, and KIPP Promise ES.”

Here’s the complete list of schools:

image10

I could not help to notice that 67.9 percent of the schools on this list are charters. Congratulations to all of the winners. Truly fantastic work.

 

Depressing results on the 2019 National Report Card regarding America’s schools

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The 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress results were released last week and the findings were not good. The exam, which tests approximately 300,000 fourth and eighth graders in reading and math, were last reported in 2017. According to the Washington Post’s Perry Stein:

“Nationally, scores for reading in fourth and eighth grades dropped from 2017 to 2019. Declines were recorded among students with the highest scores and among those with the lowest scores. In math, there was a small improvement among fourth-graders but a small drop in grade eight, driven by declines among lower-performing students.”

The Center for Education reform was even more direct in its assessment of scores on the test that is referred to as the “Nation’s Report Card.”

“Only 35 percent of 4th grade and 34 percent of 8th grade students performed at or above the proficient level in NAEP reading, and 41 percent of 4th grade and 34 percent of 8th grade students performed at or above the proficient level in NAEP math, and that’s not reflecting the declining performance of historically low performers, precisely the students we should worry the most about. In what world are these acceptable results?”

The only positive in this examination revolves around performance of pupils in Washington, D.C. Again, according to Ms. Stein:

“This year, the District and Mississippi were the only jurisdictions to improve on three of the four metrics evaluated. And when compared with the 50 states, the District made the largest gains in fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math over the three decades since the test was first administered. . . The District was the only jurisdiction that experienced a significant increase in eighth-grade reading. The score increased to 250 points, still well below the national state average on the exam. “

In fact, the District’s performance lags compared to the national average for proficiency and above in fourth and eighth grade reading and math. Even more unsettling is that the gains made by D.C.’s students come from the traditional school sector. Ms. Stein indicated that the proficiency percentages for charter school students were flat compared to two years ago.

What is going on here? We saw lackluster 2019 PARCC standardized test scores come out from the charters followed by the NAEP. Do we know the root cause of these indicators?

Well please allow me to repeat what I wrote when the PARCC scores were released:

“There are many reasons that charters are failing to perform when it comes to the PARCC. The facility issue is still proving to be a significant drain on the attention span of school leaders. The financial challenges, especially around teacher salaries, are not helped by the substantial inequity in funding compared to DCPS. The pressure placed on these schools by the PCSB in the way of accountability through the Performance Management Framework, and other regulatory burdens, makes it almost impossible for them to be the centers of innovative learning envisioned when they were created.”

These are issues that can no longer be ignored. They are significantly impacting student achievement. It’s time to start over. I need a group of energized and angry education reformers to lead the charge in Washington, D.C. to get our movement on the right track. The alternative is that our charter school experiment may be coming to an end.

The D.C. charter school experiment is over

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Yesterday, the D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education released the 2019 PARCC standardized test results and the findings could not be more disappointing. Coming off an anemic year in 2018, charters failed miserably in an attempt to distinguish themselves from the traditional schools. We will be concentrating today on the percentage of students that scored a four or above on the examination, meaning that they are judged to be career or college ready, which is a measure of proficiency. Let’s delve into the details.

For all students in English Language Arts, charters saw an increase compared to 2018 going from 31.5 percent to 34.2 percent, a 2.7 percent change. However, DCPS students gained 4.8 percent, increasing from 35.1 percent to 39.9 percent. For black students, charters had 29.2 percent of pupils in the four plus category, a jump of 2.6 percent from last year’s 26.6 percent. DCPS had a slightly lower proportion of students in this group at 26.8 percent but the improvement over last year was larger at 3.9 percent. Hispanic students in charter schools were proficient at a rate of 33.8 percent, 1.5 percent compared to last year, while DCPS experienced a 7.4 percent increase in this subgroup’s results coming in at 39.4 percent.

For at-risk students, the proficiency rate in charters is 22.2 percent, similar to DCPS at 20.6 percent. However, again DCPS gained at a faster clip improving by 3.6 percent compared to 1.9 percent for charters. For English Language Learners, charters actually decreased its score by 1.5 percent to 14.0 while DCPS rose in this category by 2.0 percent to 22.2.

In Math the patterns are basically the same. Overall, charters improved from 2018 by just 0.3 percent to 28.7 percent proficient. DCPS improved to 32.4 percent, going up 1.9 percent from the previous year. Black students scored better in charters in this subject at 24.4 percent, compared to 18.1 percent for the regular schools, but for Hispanic students the trend was reversed with charters at 24.5 percent and DCPS at 33.0 percent. In charters, at-risk students came in at 18.6 percent proficient, an upward change of only 0.1 percent from last year. DCPS scored at 14.6 percent, improving by 1.2 percent from 12 months ago. Interestingly, for homeless students in math, charters actually experienced a 3.9 percent decrease for those recording a four or higher, going from 22.0 percent in 2018 to 18.1 percent, while DCPS increased 2.8 percent in this category to 12.8 percent. Again, for English Language Learners, DCPS tops charters at 25.9 percent versus 15.3 percent, respectively.

In case anyone wants to know, the academic achievement gap in the nation’s capital remained essentially the same as last year at 63.9 percent.

How can we tell just how devastating these results are as a group for the charter sector? We need to look no farther than the comments by Scott Pearson, the executive director of the DC Public Charter School Board, contained in an article that appeared yesterday by Perry Stein regarding the 2019 PARCC assessment:

“Pearson also noted that English-language learners are performing better in the traditional public school system — a trend that has endured in recent years. He says he has encouraged charter leaders to learn from the traditional public system’s strategies in working with English-language learners.”

Excuse me, charters are supposed to learn from DCPS how to teach English Language Learners? Isn’t this one of the areas where charters are supposed to excel? Is this what we have come to, charters turning to the regular schools to figure out how best to educate its students? It is truly a sad day.

There are many reasons that charters are failing to perform when it comes to the PARCC. The facility issue is still proving to be a significant drain on the attention span of school leaders. The financial challenges, especially around teacher salaries, are not helped by the substantial inequity in funding compared to DCPS. The pressure placed on these schools by the PCSB in the way of accountability through the Performance Management Framework, and other regulatory burdens, makes it almost impossible for them to be the centers of innovative learning envisioned when they were created.

Charter schools have been charged with siphoning students away from the traditional school system, which results in loss of funds for our neighborhood schools. With test results such as these, it is logical to ask whether they should continue to exist.

D.C. schools standardized test scores go up for fourth consecutive year, results disappointing

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The D.C. Office of the State Superintendent of Education yesterday released the PARCC assessment results for 2018 and there are a few clear takeaways.  For the third year in a row the percentage of students scoring in the four and five range, which measures career and college readiness, went up.  In English Language Arts for traditional and charter schools combined, the proficiency rate is now at 33.3 percent, an improvement of 2.8 points compared to last year.  In math the percentages of those ranking four and five also increased, this time by 2.5 percent, to reach 29.4 percent.  What I also liked seeing is that the proportion of students scoring in the categories of one and two, did not meet expectations and partially met expectations, respectively, decreased with level one going down by 3.4 percent to 21.2 percent and level two dropping by 4.0 points to 23.9 percent.  Quoting directly from OSSE’s findings:

  • Scores are up across almost all grades and subjects.
  • There is especially strong improvement in middle grades in both ELA and mathematics.
  • All major groups of students improved.
  • We are proud of our educators and students for the improvements we’ve made since 2015, however, results remain lower than we need, and we continue to see persistent gaps between groups of students.

This is the fourth year that public school students in the nation’s capital have taken the PARCC assessment.  It is especially encouraging to see participation rates in the exam hovering around the 98 percent to 99 percent range depending on sector and whether it is the math or ELA portion of the test.

The Washington Post’s Perry Stein makes the point that DCPS scored better than charters.  This is true for overall students.  In ELA, DCPS had 35.1 percent of students coming in at the four and five range while charters had 31.5 percent of students in this category.  In the subject of math, DCPS had 30.5 percent of students scoring in the four and five category and charters had 28.4 percent.  DCPS also showed the greatest improvement from 2017 with a 3.2 percent increase in ELA compared to charters 2.7 percent growth.  In math, DCPS went up by 3.1 percent compared to last year while charters increased by 1.8 percent.

These results are almost certainly due to DCPS having a greater proportion of generally more affluent white students compared to charters.  For example, for black students charters scored higher in English with 26.6 percent of students in the four or higher category and for DCPS this statistic was 22.9 percent.  For math, charters were at 24.4 percent proficient and DCPS was at 17.0 percent.  However, for Hispanics charters post results slightly higher than DCPS in English at 32.3 percent proficient versus 32.0 percent, but are behind DCPS in math with 23.9 percent proficient for charters compared to 30.5 percent for DCPS.  For those students designated as at-risk, charters scored better than DCPS in English and math, and for English as a Second Language learners DCPS did better in both subjects.  However, proficiency rates are extremely low coming in at about 20 percent.

Finally, the achievement gap is alive and well for all to see.  For a student living in Ward 3 the ELA proficiency rate is 72 percent compared to a 17 percent proficiency rate for a kid in Ward 8.  For math, the pattern continues with a Ward 3 proficiency rate of 64.4 percent.  For Ward 8 residents this number is 14.9 percent.  These results are depressing.

There are some charter schools that posted some impressive scores.  In English, besides Basis DC PCS and Washington Latin PCS showing strong results, Latin American Montessori Bilingual PCS came in at 59.7 percent of students at the four or five level.  Washington Yu Ying PCS had 58 percent of students in this category, Inspired Teaching Demonstration PCS had 57.6 percent and the District of Columbia International School PCS had 57.0 percent proficiency.  In math, KIPP DC – Promise Academy PCS had 73.5 percent proficiency, KIPP DC – Lead Academy PCS had 69.7 percent of students at four and above, KIPP DC – Heights Academy PCS was at 67.3 percent, and KIPP DC – Spring Academy PCS was at 61.1 percent.

Lastly, the DC Public Charter School Board highlighted schools that increased scores in ELA and math more than twice as high as the overall state improvements.  These include Harmony DC PCS, Friendship PCS – Woodridge International Elementary, Inspired Teaching Demonstration PCS, KIPP DC – Lead Academy PCS, KIPP DC – Will Academy PCS, Cesar Chavez PCS for Public Policy – Chavez Prep, Friendship PCS – Technology Preparatory High School, and Thurgood Marshall Academy PCS.

You have to wonder whether, even with all the union distractions, Ten Square Consulting is having a positive impact at Cesar Chavez PCs.