City schools making faster progress (lots left to do) (Pittsburgh: how much, school district)

[BrianTH]

A+ is out with their annual report on the City school district, and generally it suggests the City schools improved more rapidly last year by most measures, including making faster progress on closing the achievement gap:

A+ Schools: Equity: Reports To The Community: 2010 Report (http://www.aplusschools.org/eq_reports_11.shtml - broken link)

PG article:

Pittsburgh schools see improvement in achievement gap

Nonetheless, there is much more the City schools need to do to be considered successful overall. And as always, there were very significant differences in result school by school, so to further accelerate progress it makes sense for the district to look at what is working in some schools and try to duplicate that to the extent possible in schools that are lagging. I might note that one particular long-standing area of concern is the dropoff in results at the HS level, and while it is early yet, so far there are some promising results in the 6-12 schools.

As a final note, if you look at enrollment trends, the upper grades are still trending down but kindergarten seems to be in an overall upward trend. That fits what we know about the changing demographics of the City overall, and obviously it is important for the City schools to overall achieve at least a stable enrollment situation.

[gg]

It is a shame it is so bad. Science in particular. WOW! I am surprised they allow a racial breakdown and disclose that.

[BrianTH]

The state reports test scores by demographic subgroup for all the public districts and schools:

School Assessments

[gg]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

The state reports test scores by demographic subgroup for all the public districts and schools:

School Assessments

That is rather obvious. As you can see by my post, I am surprised they separate by race. If there was no political correctness in the world, one would say, we need more Asians in the Pittsburgh Schools to help them along. I don't think they should report by race. What would be the benefit of doing such a thing?

[ex-burgher]

NCLB act requires reports be separated by race. From executive summary:
"Assessment results and State progress objectives must be broken out by poverty, race, ethnicity, disability, and limited English proficiency to ensure that no group is left behind"

[BrianTH]

I'm confused--ethnic subgroups are among the subgroups reported by the state (edit: as another poster noted, this is also required by federal law. unedit), so if one knew that, I don't understand why one would be surprised at that data showing up here.

Anyway, the main reason people are tracking such things is that there are observed correlations between measurable academic results and ethnicity, a set of observations that often goes by the shorthand "the achievement gap". It has become a major policy goal in public education to "close the achievement gap", which basically means improving the measurable results among the ethnic groups with worse results such that they are closer to the results among the ethnic groups with better results. Note this is a kind of moving target situation, because the results are also improving among the ethnic groups with better results (by design), so the ethnic groups with worse results have to improve that much just to stay even, then improve some more on top of that to actually close the achievement gap.

So that's the background, and the results are being reported by subgroup in part so that responsible parties can track how much progress they are making in closing the achievement gap. But of course individual parents may want to use that information as well when picking schools or districts.

[Craziaskowboi]

Let's just hope that the Pittsburgh Public Schools aren't pulling an Atlanta on us.

[ElijahAstin]

Originally Posted by BrianTH

Anyway, the main reason people are tracking such things is that there are observed correlations between measurable academic results and ethnicity, a set of observations that often goes by the shorthand "the achievement gap". It has become a major policy goal in public education to "close the achievement gap", which basically means improving the measurable results among the ethnic groups with worse results such that they are closer to the results among the ethnic groups with better results. Note this is a kind of moving target situation, because the results are also improving among the ethnic groups with better results (by design), so the ethnic groups with worse results have to improve that much just to stay even, then improve some more on top of that to actually close the achievement gap.

So that's the background, and the results are being reported by subgroup in part so that responsible parties can track how much progress they are making in closing the achievement gap. But of course individual parents may want to use that information as well when picking schools or districts.

These tests can also be culturally biased. Without stratifying results on racial and socioeconomic terms, there's no effective way to account for such biases. We can't even begin to correct these disparities until we acknowledge their existence.

[steindle]

Originally Posted by Gnutella

Let's just hope that the Pittsburgh Public Schools aren't pulling an Atlanta on us.

Please explain.

[Lobick]

Originally Posted by steindle

Please explain.

Fairly well-reported cheating scandal.

Investigation into APS cheating finds unethical behavior across every level *| ajc.com