The end of the year is upon us! Teachers are packing up their classrooms, students are getting their yearbooks signed, and the state test that they took a few weeks ago is probably the last thing on most people’s minds. Unless you are me. Most schools have already received their preliminary data, and I love […]
CAASPP Scores
The Low-Growth Schools of Los Angeles
Before I dive into some disappointing facts, let me say this: when I talk about low-growth or negative results , I am not doing it to single out individuals or teams. What I am trying to do is point out a weakness so that people can come together to make change. That being said, there […]
The High-Growth Schools of Los Angeles
When I looked at the growth data I presented last week, I was struck by the variety of results that schools got. Take Aspire Firestone Academy, a charter school in South Gate. Their data is all over the place. Most schools in Los Angeles are like this. There are some grades that had high growth […]
The Grade-By-Grade Growth Dashboard
TLDR: Compare school growth with a fun dashboard. When I last discussed CAASPP scores, I lamented at how lame they are. They are simply measures of proficiency, not growth. And what I proposed was twisting around the data to make a growth score for every school. This method has a lot of flaws, but at […]
How I will evaluate CAASPP Data
Let’s face it. The public data we get back on the CAASPP tests is awful. I don’t mean the numbers are dismal and depressing. That is probably true too. But the actual type of data that we get tells us very little about how schools are helping students. The primary data that the California Department […]
Where does 6th Grade Belong – Elementary or Middle School?
6th grade is a turning point. For most students in Los Angeles Unified, they begin their middle school career in 6th grade. For most students, it is the first time they will have multiple teachers, separate periods, electives, and a much larger school environment. But not for all LAUSD students. Some 6th graders stay in […]
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Low-Income Elementary Schools: Who Does it Best?
A few weeks ago, I looked at low-income middle schools to see which schools are the top performers. Now, let’s set our sights on Elementary Schools. Elementary is kind of a loaded word. Unlike middle school, there are several grades of elementary school that are not tested by the state test. Kindergartners, 1st and 2nd […]
Why the CAASPP Website Is Awful and How I Tried To Fix It.
This post is kind of a work in progress, and more of a test to see what people think. Let me know if you have questions, please write comments. I’ve got beef with the CAASPP website. They give the same score reports as they did last year, but now they also include this neat little […]
K-8 Schools Outperform Traditional Schools
Last week, I posted a list of high performing and low performing low-income schools in English and Math. One of the most interesting comments came from Heather from Camino Nuevo: I’d encourage you to consider “K-8” schools performance in middle school. For Example, Camino Nuevo Academy #2 would definitely make the top 5 of the list […]
Low-Income Middle Schools: Who does it best? Part 2: Math
*Updated Yesterday, I looked at which low-income schools performed best and which performed worst on the recent CAASPP scores. When I wrote that post, I made an assumption. I assumed that the list would be similar in both English and Math. That assumption was generally correct. Of the top 20 low-income schools in English, 15 of […]