An anonymous reader made a comment that I think deserves a post in and of itself given the work involved. It is in regard to the Quakertown School District article. The reader found what I did when I made a comparison of similarly sized school districts (see my posts on the PSSAs) - Nazareth was not as high as I thought it would be.
Here it is the comment that was made:
The Quakertown article was an interesting read. Is it possible that people are starting to realize that throwing $$ at schools isn’t necessarily the solution?
On a different note, I was at the bus stop this morning when the teacher’s contract situation came up. One parent continued to “sing the praises” of the Nazareth School District and how the “scores” are the “best in the Valley”. Well, I wanted to believe that, so I took the 2006 PSSA scores and did a little work in Excel.
For my analysis, I used all the districts in Northampton Co (Bangor, Bethlehem, Easton, Nazareth, Northampton, Pen Argyl, Saucon Valley and Wilson), Lehigh Co (Allentown, Catasaqua, East Penn, No. Lehigh, NW Lehigh, Parkland, Salisbury, So. Lehigh and Whitehall). I also threw Quakertown in there because of the article above. The total number of districts in my analysis is 18.
I sorted by grade (they take the tests in 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 & 11) and percentage advanced+proficient for both math and reading. The scores for each grade are the combined scores from all schools in that district. For example the 3rd through 5th grades for Nazareth would encompass (Bushkill, Lower Nazareth and Shafer Elementary). My findings:
3rd grade - Nazareth: 11th for Math; 10th for Reading
4th grade – Nazareth: 9th Math; 8th Reading
5th grade – Nazareth: 8th Math; 6th Reading
6th grade – Nazareth: 8th Math; 7th Reading
7th grade – Nazareth: 5th Math; 2nd Reading
8th grade – Nazareth: 10th Math; 9th Reading
11th grade – Nazareth: 9th Math; 3rd Reading
Do the numbers surprise anyone? I honestly thought better of the Nazareth schools. We were only 2nd in one category and 3rd in another. The rest of the rankings fell right in the middle of 18 districts.
Furthermore, when you break down the schools in the top 3 of each grade for both reading and math, some very familiar names rise to the top.
So. Lehigh MATH (1 first, 2 seconds); READING (2 first, 1 second, 1 third)
Saucon Valley MATH (1/2/2); READING (1/1/1)
Quakertown MATH (2/1/1); READING (1/1/2)
Parkland MATH (1/1/2); READING (2/2/0)
So what’s this say? Maybe Nazareth’s reputation is just that. Reputation only.
End of posted comment.
I think it does raise the issue that Nazareth has a good reputation for many reasons, but that we also need to quantify this belief to ensure it is accurate/true.
So how do you quantify it? Thoughts? Ideas? Other comments related to these score results?
1 comment:
I think these scores and this analysis definitely point to something different than the conventional wisdom around the Nazareth school reputation.
That said, I would live to find an archive of all of the say, past 5 years test score results. Unfortunately, these reports are done at the grade level, and indicated the +/- from the previouse year. What should really be tracked is the at the class level (i.e., class of 2010) and their year over year scores. THIS would give us a true metric as to if scores are really improving or going down as it focuses on individual groups as they progress through the years.
The biggest issue with "standardized" test however, is that they are not really standard. The PA schools do not take the same test as say Virginia, Ohio, Florida, or pick any other state out there, so we really cannot get a true evaluation of how well our students are doing across the board, only in PA.
If we want to look at the only true standardized test, that would be the SAT. It is the same regardless of which state you take it in. Interestingly, I have never seen a report talking about (but I have found some online) that compare the states.
The other factor that is never talked about is graduation rates in how many students started in a class, number that dropped out, number that graduated, number that went on to secondary education, etc.
The PSSA has become too much of a distraction at this point and is given way to much weight in the decision making process.
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