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Ward 4 Education Alliance October 12, 2017 Meeting; Draft NotesAttending: Whittier, Roosevelt, LaSalle, West, Powell, Takoma, Guest: Laura Fuchs, Member of the DC State Board of Education ESSA Task Force; State Board Member Lannette WoodruffSchool Report Cards are the first item that the task force will cover. This work is divided into 2 parts; -------What is on the Report card and then ---How it will lookThere were questions on why the task force is not looking into the growth data for high schools and better measures of school climate which as promised last spring when the vote was taken. OSSE is collecting baseline data on some of the items and figuring out how they can measure these things. PARCC growth measurement for elementary schools and middle is the Medium Growth Percentile – it is based on student expected growth. This is an imperfect measure that many people hope can be improved. Other districts have dropped the value added that DCPS uses. One problem with the rating scales we are using is that they do not take into account the differences between schools. It ranks selective admission schools the same as neighborhood schools. It ranks schools with the funding to do extensive tutoring the same as those who do not have those funds. There is no record of the resources or inputs. The exercise asked participants to rank their top three and bottom three choices in terms of what topics would appear on the report card. Some of these are required by the US Dept. of Education but DC can design the report card as they see fit, showing some data more prominently. These are the topics: English Language learner dataPRE KDiscipline and SafetyCollege readinessPer pupil expenditureRe-enrollment dataAttendanceHS grad rateTeacher dataState assessment growthAdvanced placementState assessment and annual growthThere are significant concerns about the English Language Learner Data – who sets the cut scores? Students who used to score a 2 now score a 1 – this is the same student. It would seem to invalidate the data, certainly any metric that includes growth. How is the report card designed for equity? There is concern that with the limited STAR system the Board adopted that these report cards will not be an accurate measure and will severely disadvantage schools working with a majority of students who are more challenged. State Board Advisory Task force Timeline: October and November – gather dataState Board will meet to discuss on the first Tuesday of every month. These meetings are open to the public to witness.The group broke into small group discussions to brainstorm on what they would like to see on the report cards. The record went straight to the Board. We are working to get a copy of what each group submitted. Announcements: West EC will host a Harvest Festival on October 26th including a haunted house- – Harvest Festival October 26th – Join them at 1338 Farragut St. NWWhittier PTA election on October 19thThey also have a Principal and Community Book Group, they are reading Beyond the Bake Sale right nowThere is also a Children’s Book Club with interventions for struggling readersPowell – will host an online school auction on November 5th it includes a dinner with Powell graduage Diane Rehm among other great opportunities and bargains.LaSalle Bacchus is now a more fully equipped technology school with one to one laptops. They are also pleased that finally every teacher has a school issued computer. In addition they have 17 Promethian boards, one in every classroom. They hosted DCPS leadership team: Antwan Wilson, and Wanda LaGrande and will host Michael Gaal in the near future.City Blossom is helping with a school gardenBefore school program has been institutedThey have started a program in conscious discipline and will visit the Henderson School in Boston to see it in full operation. Equity Excellence grants helpful but too small a window to do the planning and engage our communities. It would be very helpful to have some evaluation of programs like these. Enrollment: There are specific challenges with enrollment for ELL and Special Education students. They may try their luck with the lottery and then come back to the neighborhood school when the services they need are not really provided. For example a Special Ed student who qualified for 27 hours of specialized instruction returned after the funding had already been established. The school is expected to meet this need with no additional funding. For schools with ELL students there is always a big increase November to January because of when the school year falls in Central and South American countries. This is also after the funding has been established. There is a lot of mobility and gaming with pre-school and the lottery especially with open waiting lists that are constantly pulling students from one school to another. UpdatesThe Council policy for full time nurses in every school was approved unanimously by the Committee, including Council Member Todd’s affirmative vote. It will now move to the full Council for a vote.The Cross sector task force is considering options that will have a large effect on all of our schools. This includes looking at adopting something similar to a plan used in Denver that evaluated schools based on their PARCC scores as part of the planning on school siting, opening and closings. There will be a chance for community input after the task force has finalized their recommendations. This is a different process that the Student Assignment or boundary approach where the community was consulted at different junctures. We will keep you posted. Next Meeting will be at Powell ES on November 9th. There will be a presentation on the program and planning for schools in ward 4 by DCPS. ................
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