2011 TEA School Rankings Released (San Antonio, Anton: credit, move, special education)

[rrjr]

Important or not - here they are 2011 Accountability Rating System

[Mrs.JT]

My husband just emailed me info on RRISD. I was SHOCKED to see that my son attends one of the two schools in the district rated as "Academically Unacceptable." Wow.

He attends Cedar Ridge High School. It's a new school which just opened its doors last year, and I'm thinking wow...maybe he was better off at Hendrickson High School (PISD).

[Trainwreck20]

Bah, a brand new school probably has trouble just from the data analysis part of the equation. If he is doing well and seems happy/comfortable there, I would not worry too much about it.

[Mrs.JT]

Originally Posted by Trainwreck20

Bah, a brand new school probably has trouble just from the data analysis part of the equation. If he is doing well and seems happy/comfortable there, I would not worry too much about it.

Yes, I agree. I was just slightly taken aback when the principal of the school, himself, said he was surprised at the low rating. But he also said that he anticipated that their TAKS scores wouldn't be as high as other high schools since the school was only opened to freshman and sophomores for the first year. There were no juniors to balance the scores.

I questioned our move for other reasons, but overall, I think he's comfortable at the school.

[austinnerd]

What's more important is _why_ it was rated "Academically Unacceptable" --

"Cedar Ridge High School had two student groups not meet the 65% passing requirement on the Math portion of the test with 52% of African American students and 58% of Economically Disadvantaged students passing Math."

As has been mentioned, pulling a kid when they are doing well because some other socioeconomic group is faring poorly is probably not a prudent decision. If your kiddo isn't doing well, then this bit of news may bring a bit more information to the table.

[Bo]

Here in San Antonio, we've been warned to expect that more schools would be rated unacceptable because the criteria was changed. So it's difficult to determine whether any schools new to that rating truly are worse or just affected negatively by the TEA pulling the standards rug out from under them.

[Mrs.JT]

Originally Posted by austinnerd

What's more important is _why_ it was rated "Academically Unacceptable" --

"Cedar Ridge High School had two student groups not meet the 65% passing requirement on the Math portion of the test with 52% of African American students and 58% of Economically Disadvantaged students passing Math."

As has been mentioned, pulling a kid when they are doing well because some other socioeconomic group is faring poorly is probably not a prudent decision. If your kiddo isn't doing well, then this bit of news may bring a bit more information to the table.

I didn't say I was going to pull him from the school. I merely questioned if he would have fared better at his previous school. That's all. I would never hastily pull my son from a school without thoroughly considering all factors. It was difficult, overall, because my son attended PISD until this past year. It was somewhat overwhelming for him to transition to a new school right after 9th grade. He has adapted fairly well, though. He did well in his classes, but his TAKS scores weren't that great.

[Mrs.JT]

Originally Posted by Bo

Here in San Antonio, we've been warned to expect that more schools would be rated unacceptable because the criteria was changed. So it's difficult to determine whether any schools new to that rating truly are worse or just affected negatively by the TEA pulling the standards rug out from under them.

This is good to know.

[h886]

Originally Posted by Bo

Here in San Antonio, we've been warned to expect that more schools would be rated unacceptable because the criteria was changed. So it's difficult to determine whether any schools new to that rating truly are worse or just affected negatively by the TEA pulling the standards rug out from under them.

Yes, the same is true across the state. They stopped giving schools credit for how they predicted scores would rise in the future (which is reasonable, IMHO), and each year TAKS standards get tougher and a higher percentage of students have to pass. So any individual school may very well have done the same as it did the year before, but been graded lower because standards are now higher.

And like others have pointed out, often it's not that the school overall is poor, just that any one sub-group scoring poorly on one part of the test will knock down the rating. In some schools, you may only have a few dozen students in that sub-group, so if 2-3 individual kids bomb science, it can yank the entire school down in the ratings. And of course, that's even before we go into the argument of whether test scores should be everything.

[centralaustinite]

Yes, Bo is right. They have changed the underlying statistical model (AGAIN!) which makes year-to-year comparisons nearly impossible. Last year the rankings were skewed high, this year the rankings are skewed to the low side.

MrsJT, it only takes one sub-group doing poorly on one sub-set of the test to get the dreaded "unacceptable" label. You have drill into the data to see if it meaningful.

AISD has too many special education students taking the tests with accommodations (per TEA) and that messes up the ranking of the whole district. Insane!