WSS Data Compiled by Meg Diaz
Here's a new spreadsheet from Meg Diaz with the WSS data for almost every school in the district for 2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11. We can each draw our own conclusions.
Meg notes that one of biggest hindrances for reviewing the district's data is that anyone wanting to analyze it has to first be willing to sit down and do tedious line by line data entry. It's incredibly tedious, and is a considerable barrier.
I have done some of it myself and I know exactly what she's talking about.
Meg wanted to know what the community makes of this data.
Meg notes that one of biggest hindrances for reviewing the district's data is that anyone wanting to analyze it has to first be willing to sit down and do tedious line by line data entry. It's incredibly tedious, and is a considerable barrier.
I have done some of it myself and I know exactly what she's talking about.
Meg wanted to know what the community makes of this data.
Comments
Also, the budget cuts for Eckstein, Madrona, Leschi, Thurgood Marshall, Northgate, Hamilton, Salmon Bay, Kimball, Muir, Beacon Hill, Concord, Roxhill, and Wing Luke are so extreme that I wonder if they could possibly be right.
I think it shows that Meg Diaz knows and cares more about what's happening in this administration than anyone who actually works there.
One can only imagine the kind of district we'd have if ANY staff person spent this much time on the details.
stu
(I wish the state would get its act together and vote on the freakin' ed budget already...this uncertainty in funding is causing massive havoc in individual schools all around the state.)
It looks to me as if Nova is getting their allocation in the form of cold hard cash. Which... okay, as long as it's enough money.
Overall, it looks as if enrollment is projected to increase. I haven't looked at it by cluster or the 10-year enrollment trajectory by clusters or schools.
A couple of the schools in the top 10 of projected increases are West Seattle Elementary, Rainier Beach, Hawthorne, and Aki. A couple with the largest projected decreases: West Seattle High School, Ballard, Roosevelt, Laurelhurst. There are a couple of outliers in the increases that make more sense. I have an opinion as to why (on weird increases, decreases and possible explanations), but I'm curious to see what other people's conclusions are.
Title schools, in almost every case, are getting significantly less Title money - I expect this is for performance management "intervention." But why the already large amount of centrally held title money, then?
LAP money allocation increased, overall, which is good, since for 2009-10, just over 60% of LAP monies were held back.
I found some of the weirdness in the numbers made more sense to me when I looked at the difference between this year's current enrollment (pulled from October counts) and the 2010-11 projected enrollment, and stacked it so I could look at the difference lowest to highest.
Aurora- NCLB status can be found on a spreadsheet on OSPI.
I'm confused by "total dollars" by school (i.e. $105,000 for View Ridge, as an example). I'm guessing this is some other number than the "total dollars" (i.e. total dollars from some set of sources, not including the enrollment tied numbers?). I'm also confused by the sheets corresponding to "Title I LAP money".
But, wonderful job -- I've been considering trying to collate this info myself (and would not have done nearly as wonderful a job of it), and I'm so pleased to have it available.
Meg was under the weather when she created this so there may be typos.
People complain about displaced staff having access to other programs, rather than being somehow shuffled off, but keep in mind that it is not the teacher's fault if programs are so variable year to year. There is, I bet, a five percent shuffling of staff EVERY year, and this, over ten years, means lots of staff in transition over the course of a decade.
It is like Cleveland - they are aiming for instant school improvement by forcefully shifting populations around.
Let's see how well that works, eh? I know that the private high school applications jumped a lot this year, so that people could avoid the consequences of the district's actions. Meanwhile, those high schools are losing staff and dollars that they desperately need, just so the district can play God.
Jane Addams has only one principal. At one point before it opened they talked about having two, but by the time it opened there was only one.
Why are there no % FRL for Jane Addams?
Not what we need at the moemnt.
I suppose they may theorize that in order to allow all neighborhood students to enroll in subsequent years they have to have a bit of capacity now. Would that be a reasonable excuse?
I guess I had expected that there would be a larger incoming class to schools like Roosevelt when all those in our neighborhood could now get in.
Until zb pointed out that the column is still there, I completely forgot that I started a column about NCLB status, and since I populated the sheet, I can tell you that the data in that column shouldn't be relied upon. I looked over the district's AYP letter, punched in a binary 1-0 based on that, looked at OSPI and the data there is much more robust, but I haven't chugged through OSPI's stuff. The yes-no on NCLB reflects only those schools that families were given a choice to opt out of - it's poorly examined. I can't advise using that column to assist in any kind of analysis.
zb- Total dollars is the sum of all cash allocations for any given school: Title, LAP, copier money, SpEd supplies, blingual textual materials, per student allocations - everything with a dollar sign on a WSS sheet.
I might be able to explain the sheets on title and LAP money... but it would help to know what's confusing to you about it.
Thanks so much. I can hardly wait for the ROI
Return on investment for test score improvement based on spending.
Of course first we much calculate the ROS ..... the return on Shuffling
That is what this is all about right!!! Shuffle the students about to raise the test scores at lower performing schools. The district figured out they do not know much about educating effectively with the MGJ top down power trip.
So draw tiny areas around top performing schools to raise scores elsewhere as students must go there.
The official office of information exactly what we need.
It is becoming very clear there are a lot of things needed that the district does not provide.
But can Super Woman MEG do it all?
Damn... I hope so.
Or can she delegate tasks to us?
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Ann Dornfeld's NPR story on SPS Special Ed airs 3/24 during Morning Edition (probably 6:40 am) and The Conversation (beginning at noon), as well as probably on KUOW Presents in the evening. It'll also be online - transcript and audio.
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I heard the 6:40am broadcast. Largely critical and fairly long spot for radio. Worth trying to catch.
Hi Meg:
I'm confused 'cause when I look at these sheets,
# Non-Title Non-LAP Money
# Title & LAP Money
only data for Meany is listed, and only for the SBOC program. I guess I expected to see each school, with a listing of their LAP & Title I funds, like in the individual sheets for each school (downloadable at SPS).
Thanks. So what's not there, to understand the actual budget is the funds for each allocated staff member, which in turn, would depend on the seniority & role of the individual staff members at the school.
baling
In addition to Dan Dempsey's recommendation about delegating this - how did you become able to do this?
Whom did you have to ask, to find the data?
How did you find what data and resources were already available so that you could pull all of this together?
What data are public, vs. what has been released only internally?
I, too, would like to look at 'official' data, but am surprised how spotty and OLD the published data on the website are.
Thanks in advance,
-g