D204 to reveal proposed Metea boundaries - Part 2

[gatordog]

brad204 said:

gatordog said:

Our district has been showing incr in lower performing schools.

Okay, this is a good reason to get over all this drama and get the board and administration focused back on education. That is not good.

If you are saying dont get hung up over a point or two of these test scores, I agree.

My quote above about lower perfroming schools is there tests scores were increase higher relative to the high performing ones. Closing the achievement gap in the classroom. That is good, we all agree.

[gatordog]

brad204 said:

gatordog said:

The million dollar question to me is what S and SW growth do we need to plan for with these boundaries now so we dont overcrowd NV? For example, my no split MS case with Peterson going to Crone then NV had possible NV enrollment of 4600. Is this acceptable?

Kinda makes you wish they would put a new school with capacity for the growth near the SW side instead of trying to re-architect the world Sorry, I could not resist.

Back to my starting point on boundaries....I believe you would have had several split MS's then.

You have to say this about the north site. It gives us very good chance to have no split MSs. Many have placed a high value on this for the students benefit.

[doctorwho]

gatordog said:

brad204 said:

See, this is why I do not do models. It takes a certain amount of dedication Thanks for punching these up. One question I have is what is the variance of the test scores year over year? Or are these averages over a certain time period. If the deviations are high (like +/- 2%), I wonder if this is just a silence in time calculation?

I appreciate the acknowlege meant from you, and others. I wont say it was fun.....but it was interesting!

Test scores are just a snapshop, last year's ES ISAT. Yes they are changing over time. Our district has been showing incr in lower performing schools. It might be idea at some to feed in scores from a few years ago and see the variance. I will put this on to-do list. (I dont feel like wading thru school report cards this weekend.)

here ya go GD - just plug thee into the columns and re qeight ( check first as I though I just hid 03-04 instead of deleteing when I sent sheets )

or doa 4 yr avg

school 03-04 04-05 05-06 06- 07
SB 94.0 91.1 95.9 95.7
Clow 92.8 94.2 95.1 95.1
Fry 93.4 92.4 95.4 95.9
Wht/Pet 89.8 89.1 94.9 96.1
Brooks 88.5 88.2 94.9 93.0
Steck 91.0 90.1 93.5 93.8
Watts 90.7 90.8 94.1 94.9
Kendall 92.2 89.6 93.6 93.6
Patters 92.6 92.0 93.6 95.2
WE 89.9 90.7 93.5 94.8
Graham 89.7 91.8 93.3 93.8
Owen 86.0 87.9 92.9 93.2
Welch 88.0 85.1 92.2 91.6
Builta 85.6 87.9 89.2 90.4
Young 86.6 83.1 89.6 96.3
BD 91.9 85.7 87.0 90.7
Cowl 81.6 77.7 84.1 92.1
McC 78.9 79.4 83.5 81.2
Gombert 78.1 75.3 82.5 82.1
LW 75.2 69.2 78.2 78.3
GT 79.8 76.6 76.3 80.9

[WeBe204]

gatordog said:

brad204 said:

Kinda makes you wish they would put a new school with capacity for the growth near the SW side instead of trying to re-architect the world Sorry, I could not resist.

Back to my starting point on boundaries....I believe you would have had several split MS's then.

You have to say this about the north site. It gives us very good chance to have no split MSs. Many have placed a high value on this for the students benefit.

That really was more of a joke. I completely agree on minimizing splits. As far as location and splits, I can not comment since I do not run the numbers. But its a mute point anyway.

I do not think splits are going to be a reality regardless of location. I just think double splits are troublesome. Also, as I said before another reason I do not do boundary calculations is I will be unable to pull out my personal bias. It's nice that you can

Alright off to the gym...

[rew]

You cannot calculate an achievement score or a low income percent, once you split ESs, unlesss you have data by neighborhood. Once you split ESs, you could be sending 90% of the pool one way and 10% the other. The enrollment numbers are doable, but the other two can't be calculated.

[doctorwho]

gatordog said:

brad204 said:

Kinda makes you wish they would put a new school with capacity for the growth near the SW side instead of trying to re-architect the world Sorry, I could not resist.

Back to my starting point on boundaries....I believe you would have had several split MS's then.

You have to say this about the north site. It gives us very good chance to have no split MSs. Many have placed a high value on this for the students benefit.

the problem is you already have MS's where some ES's are split off from their land community - keeping them with the same group separates them for 7 years instead of 3 now --


so for us it perpetuates that scenario, as well as moves the worst commute in the district to us instead of fixing the worst commute. Great

[sleeplessinnpvl]

rew said:

You cannot calculate an achievement score or a low income percent, once you split ESs, unlesss you have data by neighborhood. Once you split ESs, you could be sending 90% of the pool one way and 10% the other. The enrollment numbers are doable, but the other two can't be calculated.

I agree. How do you know the 20% of school A isn't the higher achieving part of the school than the 80% of school A. The board used the same ISAT score for McCarty when it split them in the last boundary run, and I believe this is inaccurate. When I see the ISAT scores from 2003 vs. 2006, I see every school but one has increased their test scores in those years. And no one was bussing them to a different ES to get the knowledge. If the SB would just focus on increasing the poorer performing schools' scores, the achievement gap would close significantly. But I guess since it is a criteria for the admin, we need to examine it. I also think the whole system may have to be reworked. In 2009, neighborhoods may be sending their kids to different ES's so that there isn't a split when they go to MS. This whole thing of examining only the ES as they relate to the HS in 2006 was done in a hurry to get the referendum passed. People didn't think much about the fact that there would have been restructuring after the vote. Now we are realizing the whole system must be looked at and we have the time to do it right (hopefully).

[researching]

Wow you all have been busy! Thanks everyone for the continued hard work!

I must go on record saying that I absolutely OPPOSE using achievement as the main criteria for establishing the boundaries. In looking over the scores, it is obvious that the only real gap between our 21 ESs exists in the bottom 4 schools. Even then in these 4 schools 80% of students tested meet or exceed standards. I am not saying to ignore this. I am just saying that it shouldn’t be the #1, 2, or 3 criteria met. . While I am not opposed to trying to work that out AFTER enrollment numbers are applied and the geographic criteria are applied, I truly believe that the issue needs to be addressed at the ES level long BEFORE these students go off to MS or HS. I also think that too many factors should be weighed in judging these scores. How many students are ESL students? What do their test scores end up looking like later, heading into high school? Using these criteria is too ambiguous. I oppose it completely.

[sleeplessinnpvl]

I agree with "researching". We shouldn't make that top priority. IMO we can do any kind of arranging and it will be better than it is now because we will have a third HS. We already know from old pre-referendum boundary 5A that the SB was willing to accept a gap that went from 7.4% to 5.0%. As long as the new boundaries produce a similar gap, I don't think it's an issue. Enough about achievement gaps. Back to boundaries.....

[rew]

Using 2007 test scores the current gap is 5.24 and the predicted gap with BB boundaries would be 3.9.

I am not expressing an opinion one way or the other regarding balancing...

But when the SB positions itself heralding a "new Waubonsie", haven't they obligated themselves to narrow the gap further??

I would say that implies moving some WV schools to NV.

[proschool]

gatordog said:

confused said:

I know this was a ton of work, GD and it does a nice job of balancing achievement. The one thing that jumps out at me in both this one and the one above is that there is a LOT of splitting of ES's. Also, Scullen is the closest MS to NV and it seems a little wild to have it be a WV feeder. It does balance the achievement well, though.

Good questions, no doubt. In regard to split ES, I think this does decent job of minimizing them actually. And per proschools Gombert example, I hope the splits make sense and can be handled with ES reorganization, as proschool said.

Remember, my starting point was no split MS. Without knowing the ES plan,i think it may be very hard to 100% comply with no ES splits and no MS splits. But my primary rule here was concerning the MS's.

At the HS level the only ES splits are:
with Still as WV fdr: Steck/Mcc and Welch walkers
with Still as NV fdr: Steck/Mcc, Gombert, and Old Wheat walkers

And yes there are ES splits going into MS. That was done to balance enrollment capacities.

Concerning Scullen as WV feeder (and then Still not being WV feeder), I agree geographically it is weird. But it is a possibility and feasible. In my mind, the main feature of this is it allows for Peterson growth to go to WV, while maintaining reasonable MS assignment with no split.

The million dollar question to me is what S and SW growth do we need to plan for with these boundaries now so we dont overcrowd NV? For example, my no split MS case with Peterson going to Crone then NV had possible NV enrollment of 4600. Is this acceptable?

Gatordog I appreciate the work you put into
this.

The problem with geography is that geography was thrown out the window when MV was placed at MWGEN/AME. Since geography is gone there is no reason not to have balance.

There are a couple of things I see. I am sorry that I am not crunching the numbers myself.

RE: Steck and McCarty walkers. What is the harm in placing them AT MV with the rest of their classmates. Won't we get money for in transportation funds. Won't most of them be able to hop on busses already in their neighborhoods.

Re: Steck walkers. If I there is bus transportation provided for a student and he/she/ can walk to school if so inclined is that student being counted as a busser or a walker? I would say its a busser.

Did you consider Welsh North of 87th (Mission Oaks etc.). Welsh is very crowded so would things work better if we moved some students out of Welsh now.

Did you consider sending the Aurora Cowlishaw students to different schools? They are from multiple subdivisions and they are separated between north and south by a large lake. One subdivision (Diamond Bay) is split between two schools.

[concerned]

I think when you try to achieve closing the gap it makes for very messy boundaries. Those test scores will change over time. They should continue to work on the curriculum to increase the scores in the lower performing ES. Bussing these kids around does not FIX the problem for the children. I am for geography which minimize splits and will make for boundaries that can last a long time.

[sleeplessinnpvl]

rew said:

Using 2007 test scores the current gap is 5.24 .......

Amazing. So when we were shooting these numbers around in 2006, the current gap was 7.4% for ISAT scores back then (source: Summary of HS Boundary Option 5A on IPSD website)
and now the current gap you say is 5.24%? Well, that just proves that it is the students that make up the school!! Congrats to the current WVHS kids to close the gap themselves without any help from the school board. Jeez, using the ISAT score provided by docwho, Cowl went up 8% and Young went up 6.7%. So do we really need to be bussing them around? OK, I keep digressing about achievement gap but it irks me to no end...

[proschool]

concerned said:

I think when you try to achieve closing the gap it makes for very messy boundaries. Those test scores will change over time. They should continue to work on the curriculum to increase the scores in the lower performing ES. Bussing these kids around does not FIX the problem for the children. I am for geography which minimize splits and will make for boundaries that can last a long time.

There are no boundaries that make geographic sense with MVHS going where its going to be.

[doctorwho]

rew said:

Using 2007 test scores the current gap is 5.24 and the predicted gap with BB boundaries would be 3.9.

I am not expressing an opinion one way or the other regarding balancing...

But when the SB positions itself heralding a "new Waubonsie", haven't they obligated themselves to narrow the gap further??

I would say that implies moving some WV schools to NV.

I wish the phrase New Waubonsie had never been coined-
but the new boundaries are insinuated by the 7 so called northern schools ( really 4 ) - leaves WVHS with the lowest ISAt combo after they throw out Watts & Cowl --
I fail to see how that makes sense with all the rhetoric.

I guess it means Fry 95.6 and WE 94.2 are more important to WVHS than Watts 95.0 - with all due respect to my neighbors and friends there, I find that somehow insulting to my area. Our tests scores as good as anyones over the past 4 years - yet others are more capable of turinng the perception of WVHS around ? Also many atheletes, musicicans amd very involved parents -- I guess we didn't do a good enough job.

Can someone explain what I am missing here ? Exactly what part of the perception fix am I missing ?