Achievement Gap Widens

[gatordog]

avengingeagle said:

It makes no sense to bunch 3 out of 4 of the struggling schools at WVHS, while MVHS gets 1 and NVHS has NONE.

to followup on 204family suggestion:

What if you did most extreme case, swap Georgetown with Springbrook? I took those for no other reason than to go on either extremes of your list to get the best possible "balance" bang. I get:

test scores
MV=91.5
WV=91.4
NV=91.9

low inc percent
MV=7.1
WV=4.0
NV=3.3

Can you do this without making islands? How do busing and travel times work for something like that? How do MS assignments work now? Is this fair to Gtown? to SB? (in my example)

What do we gain? People can walk the halls of WV knowing their avg test score in this bldg is 91, not 89? They can say 4% of the population is low income and not 7%? Or NV is "bearing a burden" or "help with the cause" by having their test scores drop from 94 to 92?

My opinion here is might look good on a spreadsheet or seem like you are "accomplishing" something. But in reality, what is the difference in the character of the school? Is it worth the cost to some (with an "extreme" HS assignment) so we have a nice even number in a spreadsheet? I just cant see real progress by making a one-off swap such as this.

If you want to talk about doing this ground-up as the flat-out driver for boundaries, I think that is a point that could be argued, with merit. However, I think it was pretty clear for last time, from both public and the SB, not to use this as the major criteria.

This is not something that can be done in some ad-hoc fashion after the fact. You cant just grab a couple of ES's and reassign them and "solve" this problem. This point, I believe was settled when the criteria was set using geography. And this was driven by much public input and commentary from Jan 2006, I believe.

[doctorwho]

gatordog said:

avengingeagle said:

It makes no sense to bunch 3 out of 4 of the struggling schools at WVHS, while MVHS gets 1 and NVHS has NONE.

to followup on 204family suggestion:

What if you did most extreme case, swap Georgetown with Springbrook? I took those for no other reason than to go on either extremes of your list to get the best possible "balance" bang. I get:

test scores
MV=91.5
WV=91.4
NV=91.9

low inc percent
MV=7.1
WV=4.0
NV=3.3

Can you do this without making islands? How do busing and travel times work for something like that? How do MS assignments work now? Is this fair to Gtown? to SB? (in my example)

What do we gain? People can walk the halls of WV knowing their avg test score in this bldg is 91, not 89? They can say 4% of the population is low income and not 7%? Or NV is "bearing a burden" or "help with the cause" by having their test scores drop from 94 to 92?

My opinion here is might look good on a spreadsheet or seem like you are "accomplishing" something. But in reality, what is the difference in the character of the school? Is it worth the cost to some (with an "extreme" HS assignment) so we have a nice even number in a spreadsheet? I just cant see real progress by making a one-off swap such as this.

If you want to talk about doing this ground-up as the flat-out driver for boundaries, I think that is a point that could be argued, with merit. However, I think it was pretty clear for last time, from both public and the SB, not to use this as the major criteria.

This is not something that can be done in some ad-hoc fashion after the fact. You cant just grab a couple of ES's and reassign them and "solve" this problem. This point, I believe was settled when the criteria was set using geography. And this was driven by much public input and commentary from Jan 2006, I believe.

but yet geography was overridden inthese boundaries ( see Steck - McCarty ) and the fact that 3 schools will now go to the furthest HS from their house.

[Avenging Eagle]

gatordog said:

to followup on 204family suggestion:

What if you did most extreme case, swap Georgetown with Springbrook? I took those for no other reason than to go on either extremes of your list to get the best possible "balance" bang. I get:

test scores
MV=91.5
WV=91.4
NV=91.9

low inc percent
MV=7.1
WV=4.0
NV=3.3

Can you do this without making islands? How do busing and travel times work for something like that? How do MS assignments work now? Is this fair to Gtown? to SB? (in my example)

What do we gain? People can walk the halls of WV knowing their avg test score in this bldg is 91, not 89? They can say 4% of the population is low income and not 7%? Or NV is "bearing a burden" or "help with the cause" by having their test scores drop from 94 to 92?

My opinion here is might look good on a spreadsheet or seem like you are "accomplishing" something. But in reality, what is the difference in the character of the school? Is it worth the cost to some (with an "extreme" HS assignment) so we have a nice even number in a spreadsheet? I just cant see real progress by making a one-off swap such as this.

If you want to talk about doing this ground-up as the flat-out driver for boundaries, I think that is a point that could be argued, with merit. However, I think it was pretty clear for last time, from both public and the SB, not to use this as the major criteria.

This is not something that can be done in some ad-hoc fashion after the fact. You cant just grab a couple of ES's and reassign them and "solve" this problem. This point, I believe was settled when the criteria was set using geography. And this was driven by much public input and commentary from Jan 2006, I believe.

Now we're talking. Good suggestion...all 3 avg. scores are the same, but more importantly, the struggling students are dispersed evenly among the performing students and they will assimilate like Borgs.

However, if you aggregate all the struggling students in one place, they will continue to struggle and the relatively lower percentage of performing students at that location will pay the price and bear too much of the burden, and the camel's back may break.

And about the busing.....as Dr. Who would say...we in 204 are busing magnates...we bus kids everywhere for the sake of busing it seems. Our kids should earn frequent busing miles and cash them in for containers of dramamine after 10,000 miles. (1 month)

How many walkers to Neuqua are there anyway? If they are not walkers, they are being bused.

[jwh]

Again, we aren't taking test score disparities of 10% between schools. It DOES NOT MATTER.

[gumby]

jwh said:

Again, we aren't taking test score disparities of 10% between schools. It DOES NOT MATTER.

If you're talking about AE's post. Read it again. I don't know about you, but it made me grin. I think that was partly the point.

[204family]

My love of NV is based solely on the scores. It's the only objective way to judge a school when you have really young kids. I could care less how old or new the school is. I like the idea of equal schools. Assuming we aren't getting crazy and bussing kids all over to make it happen...oh wait, we're already doing that.

[jwh]

204family said:

My love of NV is based solely on the scores. It's the only objective way to judge a school when you have really young kids. I could care less how old or new the school is. I like the idea of equal schools. Assuming we aren't getting crazy and bussing kids all over to make it happen...oh wait, we're already doing that.

1 or 2 % difference between schools means nothing.

[Arch]

jwh said:

204family said:

My love of NV is based solely on the scores. It's the only objective way to judge a school when you have really young kids. I could care less how old or new the school is. I like the idea of equal schools. Assuming we aren't getting crazy and bussing kids all over to make it happen...oh wait, we're already doing that.

1 or 2 % difference between schools means nothing.

Each family is free to pick/choose what is important to them and their children.

Everyone's priorities don't have to and never will match.

[fence]

jwh said:

204family said:

My love of NV is based solely on the scores. It's the only objective way to judge a school when you have really young kids. I could care less how old or new the school is. I like the idea of equal schools. Assuming we aren't getting crazy and bussing kids all over to make it happen...oh wait, we're already doing that.

1 or 2 % difference between schools means nothing.

Then why do we need a "new" WV? Why would the SB be totally indignant that a new WV was one of the drivers for the site selection, only to present a complete mash up for boundaries that made things worse when it comes to balancing (incrimentally, granted, but still worse)?

Anyway, it doesn't really matter - WV will be the same WV as it is now, and we all seem to feel like it's fine the way it is. I just don't understand all the drama by the SB to act like they really give a crap about selecting a site to create a "new" WV. Whatever. I am just infinitely disgusted by this entire process.

We were going to go to WV either way, no surprise, and we don't have any major problems with it. What is a surprise are the rest of the boundaries. If it wasn't so brutal it would be funny. I hope we're not supposed to take this seriously. Any other solution would be an upgrade, so maybe they're intentionally aiming low on their first pass....

[oakhurstmom]

1st time posting.
Does anyone have the test score numbers for the middle schools. It looks to me that the achievement gap is wider at the middle schools than the high schools.

[refbasics]

oakhurstmom said:

1st time posting.
Does anyone have the test score numbers for the middle schools. It looks to me that the achievement gap is wider at the middle schools than the high schools.

--------------------------

..'achievement gap is wider at the middle schools?..."

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo..................

[casey]

thebeefeater said:

Nequa is nequa. I do not believe in busing lower achieving schools to drop nequa. I do however believe in doing everything you can to balance then WV with MV. That is why they are pulling Brookdale, Longwood, parts of Gombert and parts of McCarty out of WV. Plus it works geographically (but we should discuss that on another thread).

By the way, Nequa isn't nequa. IT'S NEUQUA!!! And if you think that the SB is "pulling Brookdale, Longwood, parts of Gombert and parts of McCarty out of WV" to balance WV with MV, you're wrong. Those schools are headed there because of the crazy location of the MWGEN site. How else could they fill a school at the far northern location? As should be clear by reading so many posts on this board this location is just so wrong for the majority of the district!