2009 School District Rankings - the district as a whole (inspection, restaurant)

[Big G]

Originally Posted by IMATXNATIVE

Or is it something like a percentage of every 'sub-group' has to pass to be exemplary? ... meaning 99 failures in a 1000 member sub-group is exemplary while 2 failures in a 10 member subgroup isn't?

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!!!

Below a certain size for the subgroup, this requirement is not in play. The schools most likely to get jobbed are those with subgroup sizes just barely above the minimum threshold. Get a few kids who don't take the test seriously, just moved into the district a week ago, or maybe are just D-U-M dumb (although we're not allowed to think that of kids anymore - anyone can become President, right?), and your whole school ranking goes into the crapper.

[momof2dfw]

Originally Posted by Lakewooder

I believe there are subgroups for special ed, ESL and then the drop-out rate is the overriding kicker. There are similarities and contrasts for the No Child Left Behind numbers for AYP.



True but then again minority groups may be of different economic levels and parental educational backgrounds, primary language and mobility rates from school-to-school or even within a school. Which can also be true of whites!

Well, the subgroup for hte special ed is going away. They are getting mainstreamed. Like THAT is going to help anyone........


Oh, someone did mention something about the TAKS going away. Well............ yes, they are going to phase them out of the high school level in favor of................(drum roll)................... End of Course Exams. What a friggin novel idea

[momof2dfw]

Originally Posted by Big G

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!!!

Below a certain size for the subgroup, this requirement is not in play. The schools most likely to get jobbed are those with subgroup sizes just barely above the minimum threshold. Get a few kids who don't take the test seriously, just moved into the district a week ago, or maybe are just D-U-M dumb (although we're not allowed to think that of kids anymore - anyone can become President, right?), and your whole school ranking goes into the crapper.

LOL!!!!

My sister got called into the principals office because she had 10 kids that failed and she had been telling the school admin all year that 3 of them were BOUND to fail and had severe disruptive problems. The admin brushed her off until the kids failed TAKS then SHE was the one to blame. Not the parents or the admin. Yet for some reason she was able to get a few other kids that had failed the year before up to speed so that they could pass TAKS. That didn't matter. Those 3 that failed every year and were bound to keep on failing were still HER FAULT! Oh, that was 10 kids out of 90something that failed.

[Lakewooder]

Yeah I don't like blaming all of this on the teachers or even the school - most times it is not their fault. Most teachers I know are wonderful, dedicated professionals.

[loves2read]

regarding move-ins and TAKS--there is a cut off date--
if a student moved into the school from another TX school AFTER the cut-off date--which is about a month before the Feb test date for high school I think--, the score goes to the old district in TX
one day before however and it is your score...so the shorter the enrollment before the cut-off, the less time for remediating bad/weak skills or even knowing what a student's true weaknesses are--
grades don't equate to TAKS preparedness
for students who move from one school in a district to another school in same district--the new school eats the score no matter when the move happens because all schools are supposed to be using same curricula, guidelines, teaching methods--so the student should be exposed to same quality...
not always true but that is the rule

if a student enrolls from another county--there is one exemption from TAKS--if student moves in two days before or one day before the test then that year's test is the exemption...
if the student enrolls for the first time AFTER the TAKS test is given--the first TAKS score does not count for or against the school
but the second year after enrolling--no matter how good/weak the student's English or education level--the score counts in rating the school's effectiveness...

Try living in France for 367 days, starting out as a non-French speaking student, and taking the college prep A-levels in French---good luck

[loves2read]

the gurus at TEA and the legislature have decided that mainstreaming kids is all it takes to make them lose any learning disabilities, educational weaknesses, disruptive behaviors, weak motivations, personality problems...
just wave a magic wand called mainstreaming--make the teachers take them into regular classes--and pretend they are "normal"
that should do it...
yep
just like doing away with the unemployed by doing away with benefits or the hungry by tightening up food stamp guidelines...
change the rules and you eleminate the problem...
obviously none of these people are in classrooms, or even have children with learning disabilities...

the way it goes now ---
if a special needs student is really sub-par in say English or math--and would in past times have been in a class of special needs students--
that student comes into a regular class and the special needs teacher come into the class with the student to act as a tutor...
so the teacher's effectiveness is reduced to working with one student vs a class of say 10 or 12 at the time...
since many of these students are in special classes because they have emotional disorders, not just learning disabilities, they can be disruptive to other students...and they are...which makes teaching a class of 30 that much more difficult
and how objectifying is it to see a special needs teacher in the class--working with ONE individual...
if that is not stigmatization--I don't know what is...
yes--I am sure this new method goes a long way into making those students more mainsteam...
I am so glad I am not teaching now...

most of the time admins are more concerned about being called out for having too high a % of students in special needs classes---
the fact that a student can be tested to determine objectively whether or not a learning disability exists does not mean anything
too many kids in special needs vs total number of enrolled students -- apparently there is some subjective point of view that says there should never be more than a certain %--so if a district has say 30K students it should never have more than X% of special needs--
does not matter if more parents with special needs children move to that district because they heard it has great programs, or that the district is lower socio-economic for majority of students because the housing is less expensive with high ratio of apt and rental units--and that statistically lower socioeconomic families have more likelyhood of having learning disabled children for a variety of reasons...
the reasons WHY that district could legitimately have higher % of students with legitimate learning disabilities does not inter into the discussion--
it is just a fact, jack---you can't have more than certain number of special needs students...period--so kids don't get tested/diagnosed because the admin are fighting to hold the numbers down--
and that means that for every student WITH a profile that moves into the district, there are probably 2-3-4 students who early on will not be tested when teachers see there could be problems--because admins are trying to hold the numbers down...

[IMATXNATIVE]

Originally Posted by Big G

subgroups:
White
Hispanic
Black
Low-Income

Great explanation and great example. I'm not sure who's getting screwed by that system? Everybody I guess.

I thought the politicians and lawmakers formally agreed decades ago that ethnicity and gender were not supposed to be a variable to educational success?

The only category worth breaking out is low income. Everyone usually agrees that is a valid category that typically needs additional emphasis.

Severe mental & medical learning disabilities should probably be broken out or exempted.

I think the data is valuable and quiet interesting, but the process of trying to dumb it down into 4 or 5 categories for a school or whole district just seems to invalidate the data.

I can only find one good thing about this. ... At least they publish the data with some degree of detail. I could very easily imagine how political correctness could hide all of that data to protect the “innocent” and protect the politicians who support this system.

I don’t know what to think. Good grief.

[loves2read]

white is not a sub-group in the sense that it is a minority grouping in most suburban districts--
other sub groups would be Asian, Pacific Islanders and some students can count as doubles--meaning AA/low income or Pacific Islander/special needs

one growing sub-group in Carroll/Southlake are Indians (Asian) either first or subsequent generations--but that sub-group is probably the highest scoring group--sub or not--on average and has helped raise Southlake's scores...

I don't know where anyone would think that ethnicity and gender were not supposed to be a variable to educational success since that is exactly why we have laws to prohibit discrimination using those two factors...if discrimination exists, then it seems logical that the results of discrimination would create unfairness and situations of varying degrees of equality...

before the days of TAKS it was certainly possible for districts and schools to pretend that if the majority of students in their schools were doing ok or even better then it was not that important if smaller groups of minority, lower-socio-economic students struggled ... after all that was what was expected for "those" students...forget that tax-dollars are color blind and Brown vs Board of Education should pertain to any student enrolled in a public school in any state/city...
it was easy for small failing groups to be pushed aside and ignored and forgotten if they just stopped coming to school because school did not address their needs or dreams...
TAKS casts too bright a light into any district and that is good in some ways and not so good in others--data can always be manipulated--
the biggest factor that is probably finagled is the withdrawn/transferred/dropout numbers for any school--
and not all districts are equal in number of students in income or ethnic groups or ability or resources--so TAKS is not fair by any means

in my own district--one of the junior highs with few minority or low-income students frankly did a shoddy job of teaching those few--they focused on the ones they thought deserved quality teaching--not fair, not legal, and totally not what education is supposed to be about--but the principal and staff got away with it for years...often because they did not have subgroups large enough to count at first--
as the sub-groups increased in size, they could not be ignored and finally the district put in a new principal...who has finally started to turn the school's practices around...

[Lakewooder]

Also I am not sure of the percentage/numbers required to have an official subgroup, does anyone know?

[IMATXNATIVE]

Originally Posted by loves2read

they focused on the ones they thought deserved quality teaching--not fair, not legal, and totally not what education is supposed to be about--but the principal and staff got away with it for years...often because they did not have subgroups large enough to count at first--

I don't mean to belittle the categories. I definitely see your point of potentially dismissing those categories if they were not broken out. My initial thought was that breaking out those categories and publicly publishing their results against other categories could be a form of discrimination-baiting depending on the results.