The Louisiana Department Of Education just released the 2011 School Performance Data. As New Orleans has been hailed as a ‘miracle’ district, I was eager to see the results. As you might know, after Katrina the lowest performing schools were assembled into a district known as ‘The Recovery District’ (RSD) which has become a grand experiment in what would happen if an entire city was taken over by charter schools with a high number of Teach For America teachers.
When I downloaded the data I learned that 87% of the 68 schools in the RSD got either a D or an F on their State Report Card. This did not seem very impressive.
But then I read the press release from their website, which I’ll quote here:
While state officials point to significant overall improvement from 2010 to 2011, among the highlights noted is the growth of schools in the Recovery School District, which assumes responsibility for chronically failing schools. Specifically:
For three of the last four years, Louisiana’s school turnaround model has been ranked highest for the percentage of gains achieved from one year to the next.
Schools in the RSD Improved to Achieve An Average Gain of 6.7 Points or 11 Percent — More than Three Times the Average Statewide Gain for All Schools (2.2 Points, or 2.4 Percent).“The mission of the RSD is to transform failing schools,” RSD Superintendent John White said. “And given that our students have made more progress than students in any other district, our schools are on their way to achieving their mission.”
There was a time that the corporate reformers talked about how demography was not destiny and how there were so many 90-90-90 schools that prove that. When I, and others, started debunking the supposed miracle schools, the corporate reformers started focusing instead on ‘growth.’ This turns out to be a statistic that is very easy to use to make no progress seem like a lot of progress.
Here is the dramatic chart, straight from the press release:
The top ten most improved districts, based on the percentage increase in their District Performance Scores from 2010 to 2011:
|
*District |
2010 DPS |
2011 DPS |
Percentage Increase |
|
Recovery School District (All) |
58.4 |
66.7 |
14.21% (8.3 Points) |
|
East Carroll Parish |
79.4 |
88.5 |
11.46% (9.1 Points) |
|
Cameron Parish |
93.1 |
100.6 |
8.06% (7.5 Points) |
|
Franklin Parish |
77.6 |
83.7 |
7.86% (6.1 Points) |
|
Red River Parish |
86.8 |
93.6 |
7.83% (6.8 Points) |
|
St. Bernard Parish |
98.4 |
105.9 |
7.62% (7.5 Points) |
|
Iberville Parish |
80.3 |
86.2 |
7.35% (5.9 Points) |
|
City of Baker School District |
62.8 |
67.3 |
7.17% (4.5 Points) |
|
Orleans Parish |
110.3 |
118.0 |
6.98% (7.7 Points) |
|
Plaquemines Parish |
104.1 |
110.8 |
6.44% (6.7 Points) |
White says that “given that our [Recovery District] students have made more progress [the 14% stat] than students in any other district” which sounds very good until someone with a trained eye takes a look at the numbers behind that claim.
When we see that big Fat Tuesday 14.21% increase it seems pretty convincing at first. But when we look at that number alongside the 2010 baseline score, we get a more accurate picture of what that number means.
Feel free to download the excel files from the links at the bottom of the press release.
Out of 70 districts in 2010, The Recovery School District (RSD) ranked 69th out of 70 districts in their District Performance Score (DPS). The DPS score is something that can be as high as about 120, and the goal is that all schools get to 120 by 2014. The RSD score in 2010 was 58.4. This score is so low (Channeling Johnny Carson here) Altogether now, HOW LOW IS IT? It is so low that the average and median scores for the 70 districts was around 92. It is so low that ANY increase, whatsoever, would amount to a large percent increase. So, yes, they had a 14% increase up to 66.7. And with this score increase, with such a high percent increase, they have catapulted themselves to … 69th out of 70 districts in 2011. Now the average and median scores for the 70 districts is around 95. This 66.7 is still so low that only 5 districts even have a score under 80.
So they can brag about their 14% percent increase, but the statistic means nothing. Had there been a district that had started with a baseline score of 5, and they got their score up to 7, that would be a 40% score increase. As another example, this is why it is silly to compare two districts’ percent increases: Nearby Orleans Parish had a 7.7 point gain compared to the similar 8.3 gain of RSD. But because Orleans Parish had a 2010 score of 100.3, their ‘percent increase’ is only 7% compared to RSD’s 14%. But since they are trying to get to 120, Orleans Parish is the more impressive gain since they had so little to go, yet under this comparison RSD has twice the ‘gain’ as Orleans Parish. This is a meaningless stat, and an excellent example of what the corporate reformers do to make it look like they’re making progress when they are really not. They make up as many crazy stats as they can until they find one that makes them look good.
There are scenarios where this ‘percent change’ stat would be meaningful. For instance if you have a healthy 160 pound man and a healthy 110 pound woman. It is generally about as difficult for the man to gain (or lose) 16 pounds as it is for the woman to gain (or lose) 11 pounds and both are a 10% change. So the time that a stat like this is meaningful is when the ‘difficulty’ to increase a certain percent does not depend, at all, on the starting point. But that does not apply here. It is much easier for a school to increase twenty percent if they are going from 50 to 60 (a ten point increase) than if a school is going from 100 to the completed goal of 120 (a twenty point increase). I can definitely argue that it is actually easier for a school with a lower score to get the same absolute point increase as a school with a higher score so that the percent change is actually skewed in two different ways to make the school with the lower starting point seem to have the better gain. It’s easier to get the same point gain and then that point gain is also a bigger percent of the lower starting point.
The corporate reformers are desperate. They have no proof that any of their theories about how to improve education are working. They have been given the power to experiment with needy kids and they should be ashamed of themselves. Their arrogance to ignore all statistics that prove they don’t know what they are doing is awful and if we stand back and let them continue, we share, a bit, in the blame.
What the data really proves is that it takes a lot more than a bunch of untrained, but intelligent, teachers to overcome the effects of poverty. This is something anyone who knows anything about how students learn and how schools improve could have, and did, predict.
anonymous
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The only “miracle” in New Orleans is how the Shock Doctrine has been successfully used to privatize virtually the entire public school system and turn it over to corporate locusts, while simultaneously using intelligent but easily duped young people to convince themselves and others that it was in the service of the children and local communities, communities that are being systematically dispossessed.