The Latest School District Report Cards Are In

[Bill Call]

They are preliminary results and they don't make much sense.


http://www.cleveland.com/datacentral/in ... _repo.html

Parma: Excellent

Standards met: 20

Performance index: 96.2

Lakewood: Continuous Improvement

Standards met 23

Performance index: 96.7

Sooo, Lakewood meets more standards and has a higher performance index, gets better test results but is 2 notches below Parma?

[Scott Meeson]

Bill,

Parma's designation for 08/09 = Effective.
Parma's designation for 09/10 = Excellent. (based on preliminary results)
Parma's appears to have advanced one notch on the designation scale.

Lakewood's designation of 08/09= Excellent.
Lakewood's designation for 09/10= Continuous Improvement.(based on preliminary results)
Lakewood's appears to have retreated two notches on the designation scale.

I have a feeling the devil is in those small but important details.

The horse race that never stops going in circles-but you have to stay on the horse!

[Bill Call]

I have a feeling the devil is in those small but important details.

The horse race that never stops going in circles-but you have to stay on the horse!

Hmmmm.

Parma 2008

Rating: Effective

Standards met 25
Performance Index 95.8

2009

Standards met: 20

Performance index: 96.2

Rating: Excellent

I'm just an gnat buzzing around the educational establishment but gee whiz...

how is it that Parma meets 5 fewer standards and has a .3 increase in its performance index which results in an increase in its overall rating to excellent even though ....


those measures are worse than those earned by Lakewood in 2009 which earned it a two notch decrease in its overall rating to Continuous Improvement??

I guess you need a PHD to understand it but maybe someone can humor me and give a try at an explanation.

[David Anderson]

Overall “designations” are based on four different measures: 1- Indicators (standards met), 2 - Performance Index, 3 - Annual Yearly Progress and 4 - Value Added.

The preliminary results posted today only show Indicators and Performance Index. The official report cards on Friday will show all four.

It’s impossible to make sense of “Excellent” or “Continuous Improvement” when only provided with half the data used to reach these conclusions.

"Hang on baby, Friday's coming."

[Scott Meeson]

District News:http://lakewoodcityschools.org/districtNewsArticle.aspx?artID=806

[Paul Schrimpf]

Wow. Can't understand why people aren't up to speed on the state of the schools, with this kind of clarity available ...

[Kristine Pagsuyoin]

Of course, this is preliminary, but I would like to point that only 2 of our schools received an Excellent with Distinction Rating. That is Grant Elementary and Lincoln Elementary.

To me, this once again is evidence that neighborhood schools do work. Our news schools are wonderful and offer our kids a great education. However, I think it speaks volumes that the two schools who haven't had to do much shifting due to construction are very strong and always receive excellent ratings. This is also, once again, more evidence that school districts shouldn't close effective schools. Grant is serving the middle of our city, enrollment is not low; in fact, the students/teachers are squeezed into tiny spaces. (the district will not allow Grant to use the modulars in our parking lot in an effort to save money)

It is perplexing to me that more people are not saying (and saying very loudly) to our BOE, Mayor, and City Council that closing an Excellent rated school in our city is just not the right thing to do. I don't think that in many other cities a BOE could get away with closing a fully populated Excellent Rated with Distinction School. Most Districts, parents/families, would give so much if they had a school like Grant or Lincoln.

[Kate McCarthy]

I completely agree Kristine...even if Grant got a lower rating.

How can we get rid of this state law that bumps a district down to continuous improvement because of Adequate Yearly Progress standards? This discriminates against districts that have more students that fall into the AYP subgroups: economically disadvantaged, Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, non-Hispanic, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Hispanic, Multi-Racial, White, students with disabilities, and students with limited English proficiency. From other discussions on the Deck it has been shown that Lakewood has a greater percentage of students that fall into these groups. I'll be interested to see which groups did not make adequate yearly progress but I would not be surprised if one is students with limited English proficiency...the expectations vis-a-vis the standardized test are often nearly impossible to meet. If those students fall into another AYP subgroup the district gets a double inadequate yearly progress for the same student.

Our community has embraced new immigrant groups and refugees from around the world. My fear is that these discriminatory rules will unfairly make these groups potential scapegoats. I'm sure that was not the intent of the standards but it could be an unfortunate result.

[Bill Trentel]

Knitting several current threads together, Isn't it ironic that a consistent positive feature sighted by outsiders is our communities diversity. (Cool suburb rating)

Yet that same diversity is a negative in the eyes of the education bureaucrats in Columbus and Washington. (district report cards)

And our school board continues to push to put our students into uniforms in an attempt to homogenize the student body. (Dress code)

Bill

[Kate McCarthy]

Knitting several current threads together, Isn't it ironic that a consistent positive feature sighted by outsiders is our communities diversity. (Cool suburb rating)

Yet that same diversity is a negative in the eyes of the education bureaucrats in Columbus and Washington. (district report cards)

And our school board continues to push to put our students into uniforms in an attempt to homogenize the student body. (Dress code)

Bill

Yes. Very ironic.

[Sandy Donnelly]

The criteria for determining a school and district "rating" are quite complex. Following is an explanation of the effect of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) on the district rating, which appears on the Lakewood Schools website:

Joining Grant and Lincoln in Excellent territory is Emerson and Roosevelt elementaries and Lakewood High School, which has been rated Excellent for all but one school year since 2004. Garfield and Harding middle schools, Harrison, Hayes and Horace Mann elementaries were all rated Effective and Lakewood City Academy was rated Continuous Improvement.

Overall, the district improved its Performance Index Rating, bumping up from 96.4 to 97.6 on a scale of 120; met 23 of 26 state indicators, or 88% vs. 86% for 2008-2009; and achieved “above expected growth” in the Value-Added category, which measures how much progress a student has made versus the previous school year. The Value-Added assessment is one that the district is particularly proud of as it shows that Lakewood students are achieving more than one year’s worth of academic growth during the school year.

“We are very pleased with our Performance Index Score. It is the highest it has ever been for our schools,” said Superintendent P. Joseph Madak. “It’s a weighted average of how well all students of all groups in all the tested subjects and grades have performed on the state tests and we are pleased have improved on last year’s score.”
With all this good news and the realization that the majority of our students are learning at an accelerated rate, the State Report Card data is tempered by the fact that our district failed to meet another important required measurement, Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP).

AYP is a federal requirement that says all students in all groups must make a certain measure of yearly progress in their learning. Examples of groups include Students with Disabilities, Hispanic and Economically Disadvantaged. For the 2009-2010 school year, the Lakewood City Schools failed to meet AYP in three student groups. State law dictates that if a district does not meet AYP in more than one student subgroup, it can be rated no higher than Continuous Improvement, which is the rating the district earned for the 2009-2010 school year.

“Given that we did so much better than last year in so many areas, we are disappointed that the technicalities of this rating system are what they are. But we are committed to doing the very best that we can do for our students,” Superintendent Madak said. “We remain very proud of the outstanding educational opportunities we continue to provide our students.”


Hope this helps,
Sandy

[Sean Wheeler]

Sandy, Thanks for pointing us to that important clarifying information.

The value-added data is perhaps the strongest indicator of the progress being made in Lakewood's classrooms on a daily basis. Our current score shows that Lakewood students, on the whole, are making huge strides in their learning in each grade level k-12.
This data is also indicative of the strength of all Lakewood teachers as they work to create a rich,rigorous, and relevant learning experience.

As a parent of a Grant Elementary student, I'd like to extend a public thank you to all of his teachers and the support staff there. We've experienced the excellence for which Grant is now recognized first-hand. Way to go!

[Sean Wheeler]

Sandy, Thanks for pointing us to that important clarifying information.

The value-added data is perhaps the strongest indicator of the progress being made in Lakewood's classrooms on a daily basis. Our current score shows that Lakewood students, on the whole, are making huge strides in their learning in each grade level k-12.
This data is also indicative of the strength of all Lakewood teachers as they work to create a rich,rigorous, and relevant learning experience.

As a parent of a Grant Elementary student, I'd like to extend a public thank you to all of his teachers and the support staff there. We've experienced the excellence for which Grant is now recognized first-hand. Way to go!

[Danielle Masters]

I am pleased to hear that we now have 4 elementary schools rated excellent along with our high school. I am quite impressed. The district has made improvements year in and year out and I know the staff and administration want those commitments to continue. In this day and age of high stakes testing and in a system that penalizes diverse districts Lakewood should be quite proud of our results.

[Scott Meeson]

Annual Yearly Progress: Can any of our school board members really explain(details) it? Can any of our administrators really explain(details) it? In search of the problems and solutions of AYP :

http://www.educationreport.org/pubs/mer/article.aspx?id=10387

http://www.edexcellence.net/flypaper/index.php/2009/02/the-accountability-illusion-an-interview-with-checker/

It may be technicality, except to those who are part of the subgroups.

What can be done, in Lakewood, to correct this problem? What are we doing to correct this problem?

Continuous Improvement...for how long?