Tuesday Open Thread
Like pouring over test data? You're in luck because the Public Data Ferret just released data on Washington State achievement test scores. The headline reads, "WA Achievement Test Pass Rates Mostly Stagnant since 2006."
New petition to tell Senator Rodney Tom to fund our schools and reduce class sizes.
Big shout-out to our classified school employees, thanks for your hard work!
Chief Sealth kicks off its annual World Water Week next week starting on the 19th.
Beacon Hill International School Principal Kelly Aramaki was named this year’s Washington State Elementary School Principal of the Year by a panel of principals representing the Elementary School Principals Association of Washington (ESPAW), a component of the Association of Washington School Principals (AWSP). Congrats Mr. Aramaki!
Musical groups from Roosevelt rose to the top in three divisions at the 40th Annual Northwest Orchestra Festival.
From the heartwarming file:
In an unusual twist, the Roosevelt Symphony Orchestra performed in the finals competition under the baton of a student conductor. Director Edwards explained to the audience that a family emergency – the death of her father – had caused her to miss 10 days of school in the weeks leading up to the festival. Edwards commended the musicians for their hard work in her absence, and in recognition of that dedication, invited student conductor -- bassist Will Langlie-Miletich -- to conduct the orchestra in its finals performance of the fourth Movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.
The Roosevelt performance took top honors, Kamiak High School from Mukilteo, Wash. placed second and Seattle’s Garfield Symphony Orchestra was third.
CLIMATE CHANGE FOR FAMILIES
Begin the most important conversation on earth:
What's on your mind?
New petition to tell Senator Rodney Tom to fund our schools and reduce class sizes.
Big shout-out to our classified school employees, thanks for your hard work! Chief Sealth kicks off its annual World Water Week next week starting on the 19th.
Beacon Hill International School Principal Kelly Aramaki was named this year’s Washington State Elementary School Principal of the Year by a panel of principals representing the Elementary School Principals Association of Washington (ESPAW), a component of the Association of Washington School Principals (AWSP). Congrats Mr. Aramaki!
Musical groups from Roosevelt rose to the top in three divisions at the 40th Annual Northwest Orchestra Festival.
From the heartwarming file:
In an unusual twist, the Roosevelt Symphony Orchestra performed in the finals competition under the baton of a student conductor. Director Edwards explained to the audience that a family emergency – the death of her father – had caused her to miss 10 days of school in the weeks leading up to the festival. Edwards commended the musicians for their hard work in her absence, and in recognition of that dedication, invited student conductor -- bassist Will Langlie-Miletich -- to conduct the orchestra in its finals performance of the fourth Movement of Beethoven’s 5th Symphony.
The Roosevelt performance took top honors, Kamiak High School from Mukilteo, Wash. placed second and Seattle’s Garfield Symphony Orchestra was third.
CLIMATE CHANGE FOR FAMILIES
Greenwood Library
Thursday, March 14th 6:15 - 7:30. Begin the most important conversation on earth:
A free slideshow and
discussion for kids (4th grade up) and parents. Come see the most recent
data on how humans have changed the climate, the observed impacts, the
solutions we need to implement today, and what you as a family can do.
Michael Foster, M.Ed.,
has adapted Al Gore's 2012 slideshow for this event to allow kids and
parents to engage on how we can and must overcome the greatest challenge
facing humanity. Let's get started.
Please RSVP to make sure space is available to: mifostr@gmail.com
For more info: ClimateRealityProject.org. What's on your mind?
Comments
There is a legend at the bottom that describes the icons that should appear indicating a Missing assignment, not they aren't working.
Also, the students ID no longer appears. And all the other links just bounce you back to the old Source.
Seems half implemented (at best), yet by all the back pats from the district you would think there is some amazing new Source for parents.
Sundquist told voters he did not support charter schools.
Argh
Also in the Strategic Plan Task Force, we were given data that indicated that WA public school students are actually faring quite well, nationally.
So something doesn't add up here.
Ben
HP
Yeah, that would be a great idea. The CCRE is bad enough, all we need to have now is for the schools send out personal data about our kids to companies who make no apologies that their entire business revolves around scanning emails (and any other data they can get their hands on) to create personal profiles of everyone they can. At least the CCRE and their ilk have to pretend that they're going to keep it private.
Sheesh, glad you're not in charge of technology for the district. :-(
Separate question: PowerSchool is a Pearson product. Does anyone know what role they play as far as having access to SPS (kids') data? Are they hosting this "new source" or is it hosted locally with SPS? If I'm not mistaken, they are huge P20 fans and student data gatherers. If they are hosting, there's a good chance they have access to the data. Is this yet another potential kid data leak?
First, I'm talking about class notification mails not personal ones about any particular student. Secondly, there are off the shelf group mailers that guarantee privacy. (Honestly, the sps email system could probably be used as well) I used my example as just that. Finally my main point is that custom apps like the source don't work as well as simpler/public technologies. Most people can operate an email-list. I can't say the same for teacher's use of most of the source's features. What seems to happen most again anecdotally is the whole package is just ignored and we get no information instead.
Ben
He will infer causation between "high quality" teachers and income in later life, for example. First, Duh. Second, what does "high quality" even mean? Third, wouldn't high academic scores tend to correlate to to higher incomes in life, whether a teacher is good or bad? What causes the high test scores? Can you prove it's the teacher, Mr. Goldhaber? Please Mr. Goldhaber, for once, show your work. WSDWG
First, I'm talking about class notification mails not personal ones about any particular student.
Much confusion. The conversation was about The Source (and it's replacement), not general classroom notifications. Many teachers maintain email lists for exactly that purpose, and in elementary they're often handled by parents anyway. But those don't help one iota with the valuable information on the Source -- unless you're saying the teacher would send out an email blast every time they updated the grade book, but that should be nearly every day if done diligently.
Secondly, there are off the shelf group mailers that guarantee privacy.
Uh, nope. They might guarantee that they don't harvest your data, and they might even be able to guarantee in-transit encryption from their server to your client, but other legs will typically be sent in the clear, and as soon as it lands in your gmailbox (as a worst case example), then they've just sent it to the biggest data harvester of them all. Of course one would presume that you've given them permission to do so, but make no mistake, there is absolutely nothing private about email unless you require users to use something other than their standard account(s).
(Honestly, the sps email system could probably be used as well) I used my example as just that.
No idea what you're talking about here.
Finally my main point is that custom apps like the source don't work as well as simpler/public technologies.
There is an aspect of truth in what you're saying, but it's not relevant. Email is not a replacement for a tool like the source and vice-versa. Everyone can use a hammer, but you can't use a hammer to build a TV. The Source is not a notification (push) system, it's a necessarily much more complex tool than email, and it's designed as a data store, and a natural pull system for parents. I don't think the Source is a great tool (and the new one looks worse), but you're really mixing things up.
Most people can operate an email-list.
Hahahahaha! I could spend half the night giving firsthand counter examples to that comment. Many tech-savvy people can. I'll stop at that.
I can't say the same for teacher's use of most of the source's features. What seems to happen most again anecdotally is the whole package is just ignored and we get no information instead.
On your last point we can agree. The previous Source was finally, over the years, being used by more and more teachers on a regular, dependable basis. I wonder how many years it will take to catch back up to where we were at the beginning of this year.
Wow, that describes our former (very unqualified) head of REA...shoot, what was his name, ex-Broad resident policy guy (no, not Bernatek. The OTHER one).
Anyway, re: Pearson. If there is money to be made and markets to monopolize, Pearson is there!
Left with many questions
JSIS parent
Our Garfield child reports that points were somewhat arbitrarily deducted from its score in the orchestra competition due to nonmusical factors. Specifically, because some cello and bass cases were left in the wrong place (a hallway), Garfield's score was lowered to the extent that they didn't make the finals. Our child says that there had been a three way tie prior to the final round, and so those points deducted for the misplaced cases turned out to be decisive.
It seems crazy and unfortunate to me that the adjudication isn't just based on musicality.
Of course, maybe they all sounded good, and so they come up with arbitrary rules just to break a tie.
SPS Fan
d I also heard that Roosevelt students discussed on the bus as they were riding home whether they should have said something in defense of Garfield. I'm sorry that happened (I agree, the performance should be the only factor) but again, we have great bands/orchestras in this district and I applaud them all.
For example, the threshold for an Assistant Principal has been raised to 600 weighted students at the elementary level next year. I believe the threshold is around 480-500 this year (someone out there can probably confirm or correct that).
I don't have other examples, but since the district has a multi-million dollar deficit to make up, it's not suprising. It's not right, but it's not surprising.
Her band adjudications do take into account whether everyone has the same uniform, is attentive and orderly etc.
It is a bummer but is to be expected...
Thanks,
curious about WSS
COmputation of Weightling Factors.
I'm not sure I agree that the musical performance should be the only factor (see mirmac's note below), though I hope it would be by far the main factor.
I'm happy to hear that at least some of the Roosevelt kids were sympathetic to Garfield's situation. Not sure what they could have done about it, but speaking out would have been nice, especially because of how it happened (below).
My child's piano adjudications take into account posture, appearance (sunday best) and other things.
Her band adjudications do take into account whether everyone has the same uniform, is attentive and orderly etc.
It is a bummer but is to be expected...
Fair enough in those cases, so one can understand a conclusion like that drawn from generalized thinking or incomplete information. However, the results in this case should not have been expected, and shouldn't have happened.
The main problem was simply that they didn't do a fair job judging the orchestras. All three orchestras were given 199 points out of 200. I believe one judge gave them all 100/100 points and the other 99/100. Come on! I hope they learn from this in the future, because when you're "too nice", unfair things happen. Garfield was (from what I heard) noticeably better than either of the other orchestras. Their performance made one of the judges cry, or at least brought tears to her eyes, which was acknowledged at the time. The other orchestras were good, but there was a definite pecking order.
So they were all tied at 199, right? Yes, except for a misunderstanding about where the instrument cases were supposed to be stored. In previous years they kept instruments in a room that they now say is technically supposed to be an emergency exit. So they asked the Garfield kids to move their cases to another room. Fine so far, right? But there was not enough room to reasonably put all the cases in that room, so a couple (few?) were left in the hallway outside that room. And for that, Garfield was dinged 1 point from their performance. Nothing to do with posture, appearance, uniforms, attentiveness, etc., let alone music.
If the performances were fairly graded, then 1 point wouldn't have mattered. As it was, it made enough difference that the best performance was ranked as the worst score.
Granted, this isn't a huge deal in the grand scheme of orchestral endeavors, and congrats are in order for all the schools, but it's really sad when stuff works out unfairly for kids because of adult foolishness.
Need to Know
Thanks,
Researching
See Computation of the AP / Counselor Weighting Factor for weighted population numbers (not the same thing as AAFTE), and Weighted Staffing Standards Changes FY 2013-2014 for the new allocation categories.
We don't know that reasonable feedback was not given. Some years ago my student was in GHS orchestra. Turns out that two of those years GHS did not win the competition. I never heard any parents complain that the entire day and cost was a waste of money. Sometimes stuff happens, stuff we don't agree with nor like but things don't always work out in a preordained manner or the way we think that they should. Don't diminish the accomplishments of Roosevelt, Kamiak, and GHS. Quite honestly, I teared up when I read that the Roosevelt director gave her baton to the student who'd lead rehearsals in her absence. Bravo to the maestros and especially the student.
Former GHS orchestra parent.
I don't have my child do these things so she wins. I see it as excellent practice of getting up in front of a group of (friendly) judges and doing their best. That lesson alone is worth the money, the time, and everything else. And my child is not crushed if she comes in second or eighth. I know whether she did her best, prepared and practiced. That should be good enough. And no, I'm not talking about getting a medal for showing up and "everyone's exceptional" BS. Just my opinion (like always)
If I understand correctly the MAP by using adaptive technology attempts to predict the possible grade level achievement. It, of course, never attempts to prove grade level achievement.
What is most important for me is the definitive proof of achievement (through formative assessment and placement tests) so I would never assume I had proof by a formula intended to predict.
My question is...how efficient is the MAP adaptive technology?
Denise
How does MAP correlate with other test such as MSP, cogATand Iowa Basic skills, WIAT-II.
My son was not tested using the MSP and by default because the school needed an assessment for advanced placement the school used cogAt and Iowa Basic skills. We also had a private psychologist test him using the WAIT-II. There was a remarkable discrepecy between the cogAT and Iowa Basic skills, WIAT-II as compared to MAP scores. MAP scores appeared 10 -15%pts lower.
My question is..does the MAP correlate with other achievement tests?
Thank you for your time. I know the answer to my question could be rather extensive. Please feel free not to answer in layman terms. I can do my own remedial work to figure it out. If not I'll just ask!
Denise