This is not breaking news. When you look at 2015 English scores from the CAASPP, the top 10 districts are very wealthy:
Out of the list above, Arcadia has the highest rate of socioeconomically disadvantaged students (20%) while the 9 others are all under 8%. Compare this to Montebello at 86.1% or Compton at 81%.
So how correlated are socioeconomic population and ELA test scores?
Just on their own, there is a pretty moderate correlation. There are some fun outliers to look at: Whittier, El Monte, Rosemead and Alhambra all have pretty good bang for their buck when it comes to socioeconomic status – outperforming the trend line by over 15 points each.
Just as I did with the FO’REAL score, by the end of this week, I plan to regress the scores and get a model that really evaluates whether your district outperformed or underperformed given its demographic make up.
Looking at this and earlier posts…i’m sure the trends are accurate, but questions: are FRMP and “disadvantaged” one in the same? how are they determined? i’ve always been a bit skeptical of the FRMP numbers, assuming they are based on parents filling out a form with no evidence to back up income claims…for example, Alhambra Unified is basically the cities of Alhambra and Monterey Park. according to the US Census, median income is 53-54K with poverty levels around 15%…what FRMP and “disadvantaged” numbers are you working with for these cities?…i’m also curious what the ELA meet/exceed percentage is for AlhambraUSD since you cited it as an outlier….and then i’m also curious if you can pull ELA data for the City of South Gate as a whole….according to the Census, median income there is 43K, with 21% poverty…do you have different income numbers?
Disclosure: I teach in South Gate and live in Monterrey Park (2 kids).
FRPM is based on self-reported family income. The income levels can be found here: http://www.cde.ca.gov/ls/nu/rs/scales1516.asp. it is based on income level and family size, not just income – and I find that to be a more accurate measure of poverty than simply using median income. To be fair though, it is self-reported so there is the possibility that people lie so that they can get free lunch (But in personal experience, I have not found that to be a very often occurrence).
The levels of FRPM can be found embedded in the testing data, and that is where I get my FRPM levels from.
As for pulling data for South Gate, in order to do that I would need to know exactly which schools are considered South Gate schools – which can be a bit controversial. For example, I believe State Street Elementary pulls from parts of Huntington Park, South Gate and Walnut Park. If you gave me a list of schools, I could put it all together.
Hope that helps!