Screwy reporting of SOL scores?
I got an email from former school board member Carol A.O. Wolf (you know, your second favorite elected official) with a link to quite the fascinating post on her blog. I’ve included an excerpt of it here with some key points in bold. Please visit Save Our Schools to read the entire post. When my […]
I got an email from former school board member Carol A.O. Wolf (you know, your second favorite elected official) with a link to quite the fascinating post on her blog.
I’ve included an excerpt of it here with some key points in bold. Please visit Save Our Schools to read the entire post.
When my son, a sophomore at Maggie L. Walker Governor’s School for Government and International Studies (MLWGSGIS), asked why it is that his school is not listed in the U.S. News and World Report as one of the “Top High Schools in the Nation,” I told him that I didn’t know, but that I would be happy to find out.
I honestly believed that it had to be a simple oversight, one that could easily be explained and corrected. After all, everyone knows that Maggie Walker is an excellent school with plenty of national honors to prove it. I also saw getting an answer to my son’s question as the perfect opportunity to dispel a persistent rumor that was so preposterous that I thought it had to be one of those Richmond Public Schools “urban myths.” I recall being told in hushed tones by several teachers over the years that they thought it was “downright dishonest” for RPS to take the SOL scores of the children attending the Governor’s Schools and calculate said scores into the SOL numbers of the zone high school nearest the students’ respective addresses.
Boy, was I ever wrong. After several conversations with people in positions to know — and thanks to a couple of Freedom of Information Act requests submitted by my friend, John Butcher — I managed to obtain some facts. But, facts are stubborn things which inevitably give rise to more complicated questions. So, what follows is what I know, don’t know and would love to know:
U.S. News and World Report doesn’t list it as an outstanding “high school” because the Virginia Department of Education doesn’t identify it as “a school” on their website. If VDOE does not recognize Maggie Walker as “a school” and allow it to report its accreditation numbers, how is it that the “program” is legally authorized to issue diplomas? How do we fix this?Astonishingly, RPS really does take the SOL scores of students who take the tests at Maggie Walker and calculates them into the scores of the comprehensive high school nearest the students’ home address. How is this honest in any way? Is this misrepresentation of these scores legal?
What does this do to the AYP numbers that VDOE is required to report to the federal government? For example, John Marshall and Huguenot each received more than a 5 percent boost in the number of children allegedly taking the SOLs at their schools. Thomas Jefferson received a whopping 9.76 percent boost and George Wythe received a 2.32 percent increase. The only high school that did not add in SOL scores of students at Maggie Walker was Armstrong.
Each of the various districts that send students to Maggie Walker claim those students as part of their own ADM count. There has to be an honest way of reporting this. It makes no sense whatsoever to represent that these children are enrolled at their respective home “zone” high school, when in reality they are not! Surely, the fine minds at VDOE can help the Superintendents figure out a way to do this so their gifted students can continue to avail themselves of a more rigorous and academically challenging education.
For those of you not familiar with No Child Left Behind acronyms:
AYP = Adequate yearly progress, a state’s measure of yearly progress toward achieving state academic standards. Adequate yearly progress is the minimum level of improvement that states, school districts, and schools must achieve each year, according to No Child Left Behind.
ADM = Average daily membership, the average number of students belonging each day in a room, school, or school system for within the period of data collection.
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Valerie Catrow
Valerie Catrow is editor of RVAFamily, mother to a mop-topped first grader, and always really excited to go to bed.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
Who cares? We will have ‘serious fun’ when Center Stage opens. And a Shockoe Bottom ballpark will solve all of Richmond’s problems. Richmond Tea Party, oh yeah! Whheeee!
Sorry, my scarcasm sometimes takes over my entire ability to be shocked any more by Richmond’s sense of ‘truthiness’.
What has this snafu has to do the CS & SB?
Per Mark Twain, there are lies, damned lies, and statistic. The important thing is that MLW is one of the best schools in the country whether it is listed or not.
If it is guarenteed that the students that go to MLWGS would go to their home school, then maybe keeping this system could be discussed. However, those same students could go to a private school where there are no SOLs. Moreover, aren’t the SOLs partly used to test individual schools’ progress and effectiveness? If this is the case, then it is unethical to use MLWGS’s students’ scores because they aren’t instructed by the teachers at the high schools where the scores are going. What is sad is that the high schools are hurting their students by misrepresenting their scores. As a graduate of MLWGS, this should change. For now, I guess we are Sore Out of Luck.
I don’t know why any of us are shocked or surprised anymore.
Can someone explain to me why RPS is on this huge PR campaign to get more kids to attend the schools wehn they didn’t really allocate for an increase in the City of the Future plan for RPS.
Seems to me there seems to be a disconnect. Usually when you go on a PR campaign you’ve got some bragging you can do. Well…..
Sure RPS has some positive things happening. for instance we had 7 of our schools participate in the VA elem. all state choir. Total of 30 schools across the state and 7 were from RPS! None from any of our surrounding counties. When a reporter tried to call to get permissio to talk to some of these music directors, the PR rep for RPS never returned the call. REALLY!
You have to complete step 1-9 before you can jump to step 10. RPS is not at step 10 (pr comapaign). Sorry for dragging on, just frustrated
There are 18 Governor’s schools in Virginia – I imagine they are all handled in the same manner? So are none of the other schools listed in the U.S. News list? Interesting…..
I asked about this back in teacher school, though I don’t recall if it was in reference to the Governor’s schools or the IB programs. The answer as I remember it was that to treat the SOL scores otherwise ends up punishing schools for sending students to the elite programs by siphoning off what are guaranteed to be passing scores.
John M’s comment accurately reflects the RPS mindset, one with little regard for logic. The city high school which the Governor’s School student chose NOT to attend had nothing to do with the student’s performance because the student never went there. It is hardly being “punished.” John M’s suggestion makes about as much sense as a Chevy dealer’s reporting as revenue purchases made from Toyota because the Toyota customer lives closer to the Chevy dealership.
The purpose of publishing the collective SOL results of a given school is to see how that school’s students performed, not to guage the performance of kids who happen to live in the neighborhood but chose not to attend the school. Proper measurement is a management tool and encourages accountability. The RPS method of measuring and reporting a school’s supposed SOL scores simply insures that the data, which RPS spends a fortune to collect, has very little reliability or usefulness. Kudos to Carol Wolf for bringing this fraud to our attention.
Taking the SOL scores of Maggie Walker students and calculating them into a school they don’t attend is cheating. The SOLs test the performance of everyone from the students to the teachers to the administration. I thought that was the point -to make sure everyone was doing their job. A school cannot take credit for the high scores of a student they didn’t teach.
If Armstrong can rely on it’s own students’ scores so can the other high schools.
*won’t go into now, but I dislike the SOLS (for numerous reasons) and the whole system of punishing the poorest by withholding funds. If a school is suffering, it means they need more help, not less. The current system and structure breeds corruption.
The administration’s answer implies that there is at least a passing concern about managing the data, rather than a total concern for educating the children enrolled under their purview.
I understand the point John Murden brought up, but it gets so tricky. Those children weren’t educated in those buildings by those teachers.
eh, john m’s point is just a bunch of bureaucratic mumbo jumbo. i agree with valerie.
i think rps should be ashamed. for this and so much more.
To see if this anti-RPS pigpile is really necessary, answer this: how do the other systems that send students there handle SOL reporting? Is RPS handling this any differently than Henrico, Chesterfield, Hanover, or any of the other 8 districts who send students to Maggie Walker?
The cranky Mr.Butcher lays this on the VA DOE, not to any special trickery on the part of RPS.
A comparable RPS-only situation would be the scores for students that attend Open, Community, and Franklin. The scores for these students are not tied back their zone schools.
The entire point of having SOL’s is ensure schools are doing their jobs. To include scores of students who have never been in the school is duplicitous and shows that when there is an opportunity to cover up poor performance, it will be taken.
Yet another example of the fact that schools, as well as many other institutions and businesses, are concerned with “looking good”, as opposed to actually “being good”. For far too many, perception has truly become reality.
I consider giving the “home” schools the SOL scores of Maggie
Walker kids the price to pay for RPS (and other districts?) not
only losing that kid’s high score, but also paying the cost to
Maggie Walker for that kid.
Not an ideal set-up, but at least the brightest kids aren’t held by the home school in an attempt to keep the school’s scores up. Glad mostly that the brightest kids get an opportunity to go to Maggie Walker
and excel.
I think all of you are off base. If you happened to have a child go to any high school such as Maggie Walker, Open high or Community, consider yourself BLESSED. Those kids have made the grade. They will actually learn something extra and move on to be successful. Mine is struck in the madness of money and numbers, because that what the SOL’s are really about. There’s nothing realistic about. Everyone can not fit into the same circle. It’s has nothing to do with real education. When children grow up learning to take a test, they’re not really learning. They’re not been teach to use their own mind for thinking, to use logic, to create, to invent. Just learn the test, to get the scores up, to save a school system that failing our children, so the people who make the test and materials for the test, GET PAID. It’s like the TOXIC ASSETS on the Bank’s. You’re complaining about not being mentioned in the news papers. Get a grip! If you are 30 and above, you probably received a descent education. My youngest will be 31 this year. I went to school here all my life and was educated. All of my kids were educated here also. But the kids are being taught to a test. That’s not education. Their future is questionable. This county gave up on our children for the love of MONEY. Talk about that, and where were you when we needed you to help the past administration understand that. Get Real!
John M, the whole system is pigpile. This type of cheating I’m sure is being conducted nation wide. The bottom line is that your school will lose funding and eventually close unless everyone passes this test (ultimately the test tests how well you take tests, not whether or not you know anything). Spoke to a teacher from Fairfield Court elementary recently and she said they conduct every four week testing -that’s insane. That’s all those poor kids do. If your kid is a poor test taker, then your kid is shit out of luck. And if your kid is a good test taker, he’ll make it for a while until he is handed something that is not multiple choice. It’s a rude awakening. If anyone is wondering why kids aren’t ready for middle school, just look at the elementary SOLs that were drilled into little childrens’ heads.
@ gray you say “the whole system of punishing the poorest by withholding funds. If a school is suffering, it means they need more help, not less. The current system and structure breeds corruption.”
If the children are in a failing school the school should close and send the kids to a successful school. Isn’t it wrong to make the kid stay in a failing school? They should have choice. To me the corruption part is when failing schools continue to fail no matter how much help(aka mo money)we the taxpayers give them. The more you need “help” the bigger your budget.
johnm,
I appreciate what you are saying here, but I don’t think that Mrs. Wolf is bashing RPS. In the “teacher school” I went to, we were taught to be role models for our students and to instill in them the confidence that they could take any test and honestly ace it if they devoted enough time to studying.
Let me ask you this: if you were teaching in one of the high schools and you were told that your “class” would receive the SOL scores of 10 of the top scorers at Maggie Walker, would it bother you to have them included even though you never taught those children?
And, it doesn’t matter how many other districts are doing this. It still doesn’t make it right. It insults me as a professional that anyone from RPS central administration, or from VDOE, would think that I “needed” these scores to make my school and/or students appear better than they are.
This is not new info. Our 25 and 20 yr old sons were both lucky enough to get into the TJ and later MLW schools.
Every year we received the Conduct of Behavior Code from John Marshall HS, and were aware that their SOL scores (which the MLW kids consider a joke–and consistently do quite well with) went to their home RPS high school.
Back in the day, I felt it was a much needed boost for the home HS. I now agree that the time has come for RPS high schools to stand on their own two feet.
@RPS Teacher – I’m not try to justify this either way, just explain how it works. I had the same question in grad school, that is the answer that I received. Please don’t shoot the messenger.
Personally, though, I do take Ms.Wolf to task for painting this as something that RPS does exclusively when all of the other districts that send students to MLW are doing the same. Considering the tone of the comments that followed, this is an important distinction to make.
If you see a problem with the way that the scores are being reported, your complaint should be with VDOE not RPS.
johnm,
I ask that you re-read what I wrote carefully and reconsider your comment that I “painted” this as something RPS does “exclusively.”
Please note especially these comments:
“Each of the various districts that send students to Maggie Walker claim those students as part of their own ADM count. There has to be an honest way of reporting this. It makes no sense whatsoever to represent that these children are enrolled at their respective home “zone” high school, when in reality they are not! Surely, the fine minds at VDOE can help the Superintendents figure out a way to do this so their gifted students can continue to avail themselves of a more rigorous and academically challenging education.”
I admit that having served as a dedicated member of the Richmond School Board for six years (and before that I was a dedicated parent-volunteer in the schools for 20-plus years), I do see the world first through the eyes of my neighborhood, city and school district.
I appreciate that your dedication to building community through the network of community blogs you have created, and by walking into Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School to teach history everyday gives you an equal, if not greater, claim to wanting the very best for our students, school system and city.
But, as my neighbor, the good Dr. Dan Lawrence noted: “..the time has come for RPS high schools to stand on their own two feet.”
I took to heart the comment you sent to my blog the other day concerning what the surrounding counties do with the scores and asked John Butcher (whose math skills and analytical abilities are far greater are far greater than my own) to calculate what the impact of “the boost” of these scores does not only to Richmond’s numbers, but to our neighbor’s scores as well. You should check out his research on that point by clicking his name in the excerpt that Valerie posted above.
Butcher’s analysis shows that RPS high schools DO NOT NEED the boost that comes from these scores being applied to the neighborhood zone schools.
Perhaps, VDOE needs to rethink its own “soft bigotry of diminished expectations” that is at the heart of its own misguided policy of falsely reporting these scores back to the home districts and schools of Governor’s School students.
I would hope that you would agree with the remarks of “RPS Teacher” above, who said, “it doesn’t matter how many other districts are doing this. It still doesn’t make it right. It insults me as a professional that anyone from RPS central administration, or from VDOE, would think that I “needed” these scores to make my school and/or students appear better than they are.”
I must amend my remarks above.
There is NO “perhaps” about it at all — VDOE needs to rethink its own “soft bigotry of diminished expectations” that is at the heart of its own misguided policy of falsely reporting these scores back to the home districts and schools of Governor’s School students.
Why?
Bottomline: it is dishonest.
It not only does a disservice to the children, teachers and staff in the home district schools that receive the scores they did not legitimately earn, but it denies to the Maggie Walker students, their teachers and staff the integrity of their own work and accomplishments.
Ms. Wolf makes some great points, as does Scott Burger (even with the sarcasm). Thers’s real problems with what goes on with the Govs Schools. I personally dont like having MY Richmond tax dollars subsidize the [admittedly excellent] education provided to students from lots of other areas. Thats not the big issue in this discussion, though. Do know that one of my own sons graduated with high honors from TJGSGIS (TeeJay Govs School].
For MLWGSGIS [Maggie Lena Walker Govs School] to NOT be considered a genuine school is a serious injustice to each student and teacher there. That just belittles the accomplishments of the students and teachers [mostly GREAT teachers] at MLWGSGIS while seeking to perpetuate what seems to be the Richmond Public Schools’ [RPS] ongoing policy of maintaining “DROPOUT FACTORIES” at some of its schools. RPS schools will not soon stand on their own feet as Ms. Wolf and Dr. Lawrence have mentioned because RPS still keeps a top-heavy administration at the expense of education. The RPS School Board still has little real power and that may be part of the problem as well. We need reform. Now.
Can’t you all find other things to talk about. You seem to focus on the negative too much. This is so sad!
Tammy, Below are several good articles from the NYtimes today. Open discussion of the state of public education in this city and nation should be encouraged.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/opinion/22wed3.html?_r=1&ref=opinion .
The gaps are costing us:
“It is not that we are failing across the board. There are huge numbers of exciting education innovations in America today — from new modes of teacher compensation to charter schools to school districts scattered around the country that are showing real improvements based on better methods, better principals and higher standards. The problem is that they are too scattered — leaving all kinds of achievement gaps between whites, African-Americans, Latinos and different income levels.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/opinion/22friedman.html?ref=opinion
If squeezing one’s eyes shut and saying only positive things could fix Richmond’s public schools, we would have the best system in the nation.
Face facts, people — we don’t.
It is way past time to reconsider regional consolidation of the school systems and to reward school districts that embrace the approach above and beyond schools just for the best and the brightest.
You’re right Tom, you don’t face facts. You put your kids in private schools or move to the county rather than improve the schools in your backyard.
I am for a regional approach that makes a real committment to ALL students and their families. That means ADA, solar panels, and computers for all schools. That also means renovating and updating Richmond City school buildings, which are among the oldest in the state.
I agree! That would certainly be the way to make Richmond truly “The Choice”!