From the editor
Beginning with this issue of the HeadFirst e-newsletter, we will feature once each month lessons from West Denver Preparatory Charter School. Last year was the school's first, and it got off to a great start with its inaugural class of sixth graders. West Denver Prep's student population, demographically identical to neighboring public middle schools, dramatically outperformed those schools on the 2007 Colorado Student Assessment Program (CSAP) tests in reading, writing and math. West Denver Prep also beat the overall DPS averages on the CSAP, despite having a poverty rate among its students more than 15 percentage points above the overall district rate.
Denver's traditional (grades 6-8) middle schools are educationally bankrupt. So it's especially important to glean whatever lessons we can from middle grades schools that are showing promise.
In the coming months, look for articles from various players at West Denver Prep, on topics ranging from test scores (see below) to operational issues, from educational strategies to challenges dealing with the district bureaucracy.
Anyone from a non-charter DPS middle school who would like to offer a similar series of essays in this space should contact me at
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-- Alan Gottlieb
A better way to analyze CSAP scores
By Alexander Ooms
In
Colorado, the August ritual of CSAP analysis is conducted in several ways: as a state- and district-wide report card; as a tool in an abstract policy discussion; and as a facile way to divide schools into winners (high scores) and losers (low scores). Given the mind-numbing reams of numbers (the full Denver Public Schools report was 102 pages long), what does an individual school do with the data? At
West
Denver
Preparatory
Charter
School, we decided to make some pictures.
The most important CSAP measure to us is to see how we compare to schools serving similar student populations. To do this, we produce a simple scatterplot graph of test scores against the percentage of free and reduced lunch (F/R) students, with a trend (regression) line. Here is an example for 6th grade reading: each data point is an individual school, West Denver Prep (WDP) is the red square (we will get to the arrows in a minute).
For example, now look at the two schools indicated with red arrows. Both have the same proficient and advanced score of 57%. However, one school serves a F/R Lunch percentage of 27%, while the other serves a F/R Lunch population of 78%. The school on the right is significantly above the regression line, and is outperforming almost all of its peers with a similar student demographic. The school on the left is well below the trend line for similar students. While they have the same reading CSAP score, these two schools are not providing the same educational value given their student populations.
What is important here is how each school performed relative to the trend (or regression) line. Looking at this graph provides another view of individual school performance.
Take this examination a little further. There are three schools with scores under the DPS average of 47% that are above the regression line (and outperforming their peers, even if only by a little). All three have fairly high percentages of F/R lunch students. In contrast, there are six schools that scored above the DPS average, but have fairly low percentages of R/F lunch students, and are below the trend line, underperforming their peers. The traditional view of winners as schools scoring above average, and losers as schools scoring below average does not account for student populations, and leaves a lot to be desired.
So, what did this chart tell us at West Denver Prep? In reading, we are above the regression line, but performing about the same as several other schools. We are off to a good start, but clearly need to do better if we are going to meet our internal goal of 75% advanced or proficient in 8th grade. No reason to radically reform our approach, but we need to take a hard look and see where we can do better. We have started this process and will look at several internal measures to gauge our progress.
Shining in math
Reading, however, was the subject where we performed the least well. Here is the same picture for sixth grade math:
Math was clearly our best subject -- we tested well above the regression line, and exceptionally well compared to our peers with similar student demographics. Here we are doing something right, and we need to both do more of it and retain our high standards.
How did your school do in 6th grade? Examine the data here and see for yourself.
---Alexander Ooms is the Board President at
West
Denver
Preparatory
Charter
School and a member of the A+ Denver commission.
Blog highlights
The Schools for Tomorrow blog increasingly is being recognized as a key website for people interested in
Colorado education issues. Last week, the blog was mentioned twice -- once each in The Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News (read them here and here).
We introduced a new blogger last week, who is going by the pseudonym Visionary Teacher. This blogger teaches in a
Denver
Public School, and offers keen insights from a classroom perspective. Here is a post from Visionary Teachers, as well as a couple of other highlights:
Monday, August 20, 2007
Written by: Visionary Teacher
The publication of the recent CSAP scores seems to paint the same dismal picture. Once again, we begin to brainstorm great system overhauls and focus on new, innovative ways to re-structure what we've created.
Yet maybe the answer to raising test scores lies not in focusing on the whole school scores, but instead changing our lens to view the specific classrooms that continue to raise test scores year after year. Those teachers who get results know how to teach to the state standards, not water down the curriculum, and use real assessments to determine instruction in the classroom. Most importantly, these teachers work collaboratively with the other adults in their building to plan instruction and intervention systems.
How do we change the flat CSAP scores across the state? Study the classrooms and ask the teachers who have produced results.
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Written by: Pol Econ Ed
It was great to see this blog noted, and Blogfather quoted, in today's David Harsanyi column in the Denver Post. But, I'm afraid I have to disagree with Blogfather, in terms of the sense and sensibility of possibly using bribes to encourage low income students to score higher on tests and to learn more.
Roland Fryer's experiments to see if paying students for results actually works are fascinating (so is Fryer's own personal story, as chronicled partly in Freakonomics and in the New Yorker " a former street kid turned star academic, so he has some street cred on this topic). But, are such payments appropriate and will they work?
I understand an immediate aversion to bribing students to learn, when they should have more intrinsic motivation, something far more likely to last when the payments dry up or stop. But, economic analysis tends to be refreshingly amoral, and the key issue about such policies is whether or not they work.
Call it an incentive, call it a bribe, call it a sidepayment, (more of a technical economic term), but if it enhances economic utility and welfare, it's all good. Now, under ProComp, we pay teachers more for higher performance by their students, enrollment bonuses are on the table for principals, and most of us get somewhat higher paychecks if we are doing a good job. Shouldn't we be intrinsically motivated to do these things, without bribes? Is it really different for students?
Forty years ago, the prominent urban scholar Ed Banfield argued in The Unheavenly City that many social ills were caused by the inability of low-income familiies to defer gratification in the same way that higher income families learn to do. Banfield was attacked as racist, elitist, etc. and those attacks may have been partly on target. Still, there is something to the idea that the concept of a middle-class American life has something to do with deferred gratification -- learning to do things now that you don't necessarily love (studying to get good grades, to get into college, passing on buying the new car model to save more for retirement, etc.).
But, clearly if you are a low-income urban kid and you don't see lots of signs of successful middle-class lifestyles around you, it will be harder to develop that skill. Maybe rewards for instant gratification can gradually be modulated into rewards for longer term, gradual successes (such as the DPS scholarship program for low-income kids who graduate from DPS, to get college paid for, in a sense, a longer term bribe or incentive), and maybe instant gratification rewards for learning can actually build a more intrinsic enjoyment of the process.
So, for me, this is an empirical question -- do immediate financial bribes for grades and scores actually work? The New York Times had a thoughtful op-ed a few months ago by a psychologist suggesting that they may not. But, let's remember that we don't have lots of good, obvious solutions to improving education for low-income urban kids right now. Let Fryer try these experiments, and if they work, at least consider adding them to our toolkit.
One Response to Pay kids to learn? What have we got to lose?ā€¯
- Van Schoales Says:
August 22nd, 2007 at 12:03 pm e
Well it is worth considering and doing some pilots. I'm glad to hear NYC is stepping out with some applications. I do hope that there is some real investment in the evaluation of these efforts so that we can get a better handle on what works and what are the limitations or drawbacks.
I do worry that Pol Econ Ed and other economists may be missing some important aspects of education and schools by only using a traditional rational economics lens to view individual and organizational behavior. I strongly disagree that an economic analysis is amoral.ā€¯ It is only a different framework for looking at people. It's kind of like saying physics is purer than biology. They are both critical to understanding our world.
I think we really need the best thinking in a number of fields (e.g. education, psychology, sociology and economics) to better understand the right set of strategies to improve education for poor kids. I'm no sociologist or economist but I do recall much of the dot.com bubble had more to do with privileged elites believing the hype offered by the
Silicon Valley culture on
San Hill Road, not a lot of rational behavior. It seems to me that there are large portions of the population in all economic classes that behave in ways that might be described as short term and self destructive. It has something to do with our heads, culture, class and family.
We need to understand a bit more about poverty and education before concluding that the poor are less able to postpone gratification as compared to other classes, and therefore develop schools where poor kids are paid to go. It's worth trying but I'm not convinced that it will result in developing the habits of mind that will enable poor kids to become successful adults.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Written by: Alan Gottlieb
So much is written, here and elsewhere, about our educational system's chronic inability to educate low-income children effectively. Indeed, that is one of the greatest challenges facing our nation in the coming years.
But this article from USA Today makes me wonder about kids at the other end of the spectrum, and whether they will ever be functioning adults. A quick synopsis: helicopter parents (those that hover eternally over their children) of incoming college freshmen have taken to researching their little darlings' roommates on Facebook, the social networking website. If the roommate appears to be of the wrong sexual orientation, racial, ethnic or socioeconomic background, or appears to indulge in alcohol or drugs, the parents, in large numbers, have been contacting the college to demand that their baby be assigned a different roommate.
This is horrifying on so many different fronts. My biggest concern, though, is what this says about my generation's inability to let go, to let their children become adults and manage their own lives. How can we expect these elite students ever to fend for themselves, to be productive, fulfilled adults, if their parents manage every aspect of their lives?
Clearly, the most disturbing revelation in this story is that these parents seem so willing to impose their prejudices " their bigotry, really " on their children, without their consent. But other messages give me a chill as well.
I've thought for a while now that, if our parents' was the greatest generation, then ours is the lamest. Too many of these same helicopter Baby Boomers treat their children as status symbols, over-programming them with sports and lessons and tutoring, so that the parents have plenty to boast about at cocktail parties. This may be harmless enough, in some ways.
But treating your college freshman like an entering preschooler is dangerous, for the child's future and for society's as a whole.
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