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Message |
    
peteglider
Citizen
Username: Peteglider
Post Number: 487
Registered: 8-2002
| | Posted on Thursday, March 4, 2004 - 4:04 pm: |     |
CHS has ISS (In-school suspensions) as well as the regular "don't come to school" kind.
WHile somewhat conjecture -- based on what I hear the kids talking about -- it seems that ISS is used more as punishment, while after school detention perhaps not as much?
If that's so - could account for the high numbers.
Pete |
jfburch
Citizen
Username: Jfburch
Post Number: 1321
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, March 4, 2004 - 5:14 pm: | |
Hi bobk. Busy day. I can hardly wait to get hold of the numbers too.
amandacat, DFG info and list is at:
http://www.state.nj.us/njded/finance/sf/dfg90.shtml
adding to what parkbench said, remember also that for the 4th grade test, not only are the cohorts different, but the test is too, so direct comparisons to the previous year are not possible. |
ffof
Citizen
Username: Ffof
Post Number: 2033
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, March 4, 2004 - 5:23 pm: | |
greeneyes- it still doesn't have a definitoin of what a school considers a suspension.
Peteglider - thanks.
If 25% of kids were getting suspended - the out of school kind - we, as a community, would know about it, and since my oldest is a sophomore, and I've never heard of epidemic-size suspension numbers, then I'll stand by what I said before. |
6yearrez
Citizen
Username: 6yearrez
Post Number: 18
Registered: 9-2001
| | Posted on Thursday, March 4, 2004 - 10:54 pm: | |
I was wondering if anyone had any info/ideas about why the number of students seems to be dramatically decreasing in successive grades -looking specifically at the high school. Why is there an increasing drop in the number of students in successive years? (Follow the diagonal for each class, over successive years-I'm using the link provided in one of the postings above to look at the CHS data.)
I'm just trying to understand where the kids are going... thoughts?
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John Davenport
Citizen
Username: Jjd
Post Number: 139
Registered: 2-2003
| | Posted on Friday, March 5, 2004 - 12:56 am: | |
The question is where the kids whose parents can afford private high schools are going, and how we can get them back and restore true balance and socioeconomic diversity in our high school. A nice PR campaign will not do it when we have riots in front of the high school at 3PM with out of district kids coming in to fight our kids. The answer, I suspect, is more curricular rigor, discipline, and a smart dress code for starters. |
bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 4880
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Friday, March 5, 2004 - 4:38 am: | |
6 - there is a thread on this. A lot of it has to do with students "retained" in grade. |
J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 947
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Friday, March 5, 2004 - 11:52 am: | |
Bobk, thanks for the directions. I was somehow blind to the "details" links.
I had a very small bit of time earlier to compile the following data on black student performance in Language Arts from the report cards for our elementary schools. As Burch points out, the instrument is different this year (NJASK as opposed to ESPA last year), making year-to-year comparisons difficult. Moreover, even though the percentage of black students scoring Proficent or higher in Language Arts was nominally down in every school except Clinton, which saw a 1.2% increase, most of the decreases were within five percentage points, which I don't believe can be considered significant with cohort sizes under 100 students, even when the test instrument is the same from year to year.
But there is one major outlier this year, and it is South Mountain. In 2001-02, the Partially Proficient percentage for black students was at only 5.3. This was surely the impetus for the advertisement the school took out in the News Record, crowing that it had closed the achievement gap. It certainly appeared to have done.
But something happened. The 2002-03 scores are strikingly different. There are no such disparities for scores in the other schools (or none that I’ve noticed yet). The Partially Proficient percentage (i.e., the failure rate) for black students at South Mountain in ’02-03 was almost three times what it was in ‘01-02. Strangely, the Advanced Proficient percentage also nearly trebled.
Here's the data on black student performance for all five elementary schools:
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bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 4887
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Friday, March 5, 2004 - 12:53 pm: | |
First off I don't think the tests are exactly the same year to year and as such the results have to be compared to other districts. The new state report card added results for our DFG as well as state averages and I think this is very helpful, especially with the disaggregated results.
I have no idea what happened at South Mountain, although it seems strange that a school that in 2002/3 the advanced proficient numbers are great, but apparently at the expense of the middle, because the partially proficient group increased greatly. This may be because of redistricting, but I don't think that happened.
All of this makes me glad, very glad, that I ain't an educator, or even worse a statiscian.  |
J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 948
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Friday, March 5, 2004 - 1:25 pm: | |
"First off I don't think the tests are exactly the same year to year..."
Yes, I said that. In general, our scores have no meaning except as compared to other districts'. (See Fringe's site for that comparison; I haven't yet done a comparison of us with Montclair, which is the only district I know of that might really be comparable to ours, except that I think it may have a larger economically disadvantaged black population.)
Nevertheless, the discrepancy is so large at S. Mtn that something must be up (or there were errors of some sort, although I checked the state's Errata page and found nothing pertaining to SOMA there).
Like you, my first thought was that SM got redistricted. But I don't remember hearing about that. Other options: black families likely to have high performing children that were districted for SM are sending them to Seth Boyden; the death of Nancy Murray at SM sent shock waves through the teaching staff and we're now seeing the results; students in previous years were coached on the test and now they aren't; the SES demographic in South Orange has downshifted suddenly (doubtful); the small sample size produced skewed results because of a few exceptional students (which would be more plausible but for the AP trebling at the same time PP trebled).
In any case, it's all very curious. |
J. Crohn
Citizen
Username: Jcrohn
Post Number: 951
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Saturday, March 6, 2004 - 12:44 am: | |
OK, I think I've figured out what happened at S. Mountain.
Last year, the cohort of black fourth graders tested in language arts totaled 38 kids. Addtionally, there were too few Students With Disabilities, including learning disabled kids, for the school to report. (Practically speaking, this means there were fewer than 11 disabled kids in the fourth grade last year.)
This year there were 16 disabled 4th graders (of any race) in S. Mtn., and of these, 62.5% (ten students) failed to achieve Proficiency on the NJASK.
Moreover, there were only 29 black fourth graders tested. If six of the ten disabled students who scored only "partially proficient" on the NJASK happened to be black, they would account for the entire ~21% of black fourth graders scoring PP on the exam.
So basically, it appears the test scores in this case probably result from a) statistical effects of a very small sample, and/or b) the fact that S. Mtn has more students with learning disabilities this year, and so there is a possibility that of the 10 "disabled" students who did poorly on the language arts portion of the NJASK, 60% were black and thus skewed the percentage of black students overall who did poorly on the NJASK.
The more than 250% rise in AP scores among black students at S. Mtn may be indicative of something more encouraging, though, as test scores often drop in a year when a new testing instrument is used. But, again, we're looking at all of 29 kids, and it doesn't seem improbable that the six who scored very well could simply have come from well-off, well-educated black families in South Orange. |
Joan Auer
Citizen
Username: Joan
Post Number: 37
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Monday, March 8, 2004 - 10:39 am: | |
Sorry to post such a long message, but I don't know how to make a link. Anyway, below is a chart of how our elementary schools compare to others in our DFG and the state.
New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge(NJASK4)
LANGUAGE ARTS LITERACY: 2002-03
Partial Advanced
White Seth Boyden 5.3% 5.3%
Tuscan 18.6% 11.6%
Jefferson 3.4% 13.8%
Clinton 4.5% 13.6%
South Mountain 8% 12%
DFG 6.7% 8.5%
State 13.1% 5%
Black Seth Boyden 22.6% 3.2%
Tuscan 37.5% 0%
Jefferson 28.3% 5%
Clinton 31.5% 0%
South Mountain 20.7% 20.7%
DFG 24% 3.7%
State 41.8% 0.8%
New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge(NJASK4)
MATHEMATICS: 2002-03
Partial Advanced
White Seth Boyden 5.3% 36.8%
Tuscan 18.2% 45.5%
Jefferson 5.2% 72.4%
Clinton 9.1% 54.5%
South Mountain 10% 58%
DFG 13.8% 39.8%
State 21.3% 31.4%
Black Seth Boyden 48.4% 12.9%
Tuscan 59.4% 12.5%
Jefferson 38.3% 23.3%
Clinton 48.1% 16.7%
South Mountain 44.8% 31%
DFG 41.1% 16.1%
State 57.8% 8.4%
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Joan Auer
Citizen
Username: Joan
Post Number: 38
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Monday, March 8, 2004 - 10:56 am: | |
How our elementary schools compare to others in our DFG by race.
White Students
Language Arts
-3 of 5 of our elementary schools have less partially proficient than our DFG
-4 of 5 of our elementary schools have more advanced proficient than our DFG
Math
-4 of 5 of our elementary schools have less partially proficient than our DFG
-4 of 5 of our elementary schoools have more advanced proficient than our DFG
Black Students
Language Arts
-2 of 5 of our elementary schools have less partially proficient than our DFG
-2 of 5 of our elementary schools have more advanced proficient than our DFG
Math
-1 of 5 of our elementary schools have less partially proficient than our DFG
-3 of 5 of our elementary schools have more advanced proficient than our DFG
From the above it seems that our white students are performing at almost the same level as other white students in our DFG. However, our black students lag behind others in our DFG in more categories than not.
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bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 4911
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, March 8, 2004 - 1:30 pm: | |
All of which, along with possible financial considerations, is a good arguement for us to be in a lower DFG. |
msuewillis
Citizen
Username: Msuewillis
Post Number: 73
Registered: 7-2001
| | Posted on Monday, March 8, 2004 - 3:49 pm: | |
Did anyone see the article on the Achievement Gap in the Essex Sectrion of Sunday's (3-7-04) Star-Ledger? It has a box that shows all the various groups broken out-- and South Orange Maplewood's kids, by group, did just about the best of anyone in Essex County. That is to say, our White kids beat out Livingston (and even our Asian kids did!) Our Black kids were at the top of their group, etc. etc. Of course, it also should be noted that a lot of the top scoring schools don't even have enough kids of color to count. It would be better, obviously, if everyone, all ethnic groups, all colors, all socio-economic groups, were at the same high level. That's the goal. But for the moment, we are doing better than just about anyone else.
The article is online, but without the interesting statistical box, at http://www.nj.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-4/1078651181128640.xml?starledger? nex
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bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 4915
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Monday, March 8, 2004 - 3:57 pm: | |
Thank you MS, I read the article and was going to post it, but forgot. It is especially interesting because it appears to average all three tests; Elementary, Eight Grade and Eleventh Grade.
However, looking at the results at the state website is probably more rewarding, because it shows how we compare to our DFG peers, especially as respects black students and gives a somewhat different picture. That our minority students score better than Newark, Irvington or East Orange isn't that surprising. |
wharfrat
Citizen
Username: Wharfrat
Post Number: 1005
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Monday, March 8, 2004 - 4:06 pm: | |
And did anyone else notice that according to the disaggregated data, Madison, which has Open Court, has the same percentage of partially proficient 4th graders we have, and 1/2 the number of advanced proficient caucasian kids we do?
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jfburch
Citizen
Username: Jfburch
Post Number: 1329
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Monday, March 8, 2004 - 6:18 pm: | |
There's another interesting piece on the racial Achievement Gap: Achievement gap persists
at:
http://www.nj.com/news/times/index.ssf?/base/news-1/107865408539821.xml |
harpo
Citizen
Username: Harpo
Post Number: 1338
Registered: 6-2001
| | Posted on Monday, March 8, 2004 - 9:19 pm: | |
Thanks. I'd read the Star Ledger but must've missed the box. The article from the Trenton Times is helpful. |
msuewillis
Citizen
Username: Msuewillis
Post Number: 74
Registered: 7-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 9, 2004 - 8:21 am: | |
Just wanted to mention, vis-a-vis the Essex County box scores in the Sunday Star-Ledger article, that it isn't comparing our black kids to Irvington that counts-- it's comparing them to schools much more like ours, namely, West Orange and Montclair, which are actually good-sized, racially mixed districts. |
fringe
Citizen
Username: Fringe
Post Number: 322
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 9, 2004 - 8:48 am: | |
Last night candidate for higher office Huemer repeated the mantra espoused by Ms. Willis above that our white students are doing fine in comparison with the NJ scores of other whites and are black students are doing well when compared to other blacks. It's only when the scores are combined that a somewhat different picture emerges - see http://hometown.aol.com/njfabian.
When this CCR doctrine first emerged last year, I asked for verification that black parents were onboard with the implications of this approach -- especially those whose children have contributed to the overall comparative improvement of the District's position on some of the tests - see 4th Grade Language Arts - Advanced Proficient.
I should say that in an off-the-record conversation with a local black leader, he/she saw nothing wrong with the approach since he/she believes the situation here no different from that nationally. But, he/she had no explanation for the South Mountain scores.
As there is evidence here and elsewhere that the gap is closeable, it is incumbent to find out what has caused the successes we've had and replicate those solutions district wide to the extent possible.
JTL |
Joan Auer
Citizen
Username: Joan
Post Number: 39
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 9, 2004 - 8:29 pm: | |
Comparison of Maplewood and Montclair schools-- 2002-2003 test results.
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sac
Citizen
Username: Sac
Post Number: 1010
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Tuesday, March 9, 2004 - 9:10 pm: | |
This only compares "Partially Proficient" unless I am reading it wrong. Where are the other results? |
bobk
Supporter
Username: Bobk
Post Number: 4934
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 10, 2004 - 4:38 am: | |
Sac, that was my first reaction as well. However, I think Joan is trying to make a point. We often focus on the kids who score Advanced Proficient and forget that many children, especially children of color, don't "pass" these tests.
I think that the purpose of public education is to get students into the Proficient area. Advanced Proficient is at best a bonus. |
sac
Citizen
Username: Sac
Post Number: 1011
Registered: 5-2001
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 10, 2004 - 9:15 am: | |
It seemed that the point of the post was to compare two school districts. If so, then all of the categories need to be shown to make a meaningful comparison. Just showing the Partially proficient doesn't help us to compare how we are doing vs Montclair on that goal. |
Joan Auer
Citizen
Username: Joan
Post Number: 41
Registered: 6-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, March 10, 2004 - 10:05 am: | |
Sac, Sorry I just didn't get around to it as it takes a while to put these charts together. However, as you asked I did make one up. We have more advanced proficient white and black students in 22 of 24 categories compared to Montclair. In the other 2 categories we're basically even. Both of our school systems have a huge achievement gap between white and black students.
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Closed: New threads not accepted on this page
Black Student LA Scores, grade 4
Maplewood/Montclair