Another insightful take on a situation that others seem to fear like it’s the third rail of the El. These are most definitely not the D-64 and Maine South schools for a decade or two ago, and they certainly are not better.

Keep pointing out that the “emperor” is starkers, and may eventually people will start getting it.

Apparently the “best” school districts with the highest scores in past had “performance” issues with this new test. Seems park ridge schools are not alone. See below regarding winnetka school testing.

Without context, the PARCC scores released statewide appear to show that very few Illinois students are prepared for college and careers,” said New Trier Superintendent Linda Yonke. “Our students, 98 percent of whom attend college and do very well there, routinely perform among the top in the country on the ACT and other high-stakes tests. Last spring’s PARCC test was only implemented at the ninth grade level and only in the subjects of English and Algebra I. Assessing students’ college readiness with scores from this test is invalid. This baseline year of PARCC results cannot be used to judge the performance of any school.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: No “educator” ever willingly accepts accountability for any failure by their students, including the ones from the best schools – as the New Trier Supt.’s comments demonstrate.

But just because “educators” beef about tests their students botch doesn’t make comparisons of those test results between districts invalid. Consider it grading on a curve, where the 70% “A” earned by a New Trier or Wilmette D-39 is still better than the 60% “B” earned by Maine South or D-64.

I posted quote from winnetka school district. Below is quote from glen view school district.

Tsoumas added that this increased rigor also explains why it is common for PARCC scores to be lower than ISAT scores, and this does not necessarily mean that schools are performing worse or that students are learning less. It means that the tests have changed and are measuring different things—such as how well students are developing critical-thinking and problem-solving skills and whether they are on a path to success.

“A drop in proficiency scores does not reflect a drop in performance, but rather a raising of standards to reflect college and career readiness in the 21st century. We are pleased with where we are beginning as a district in terms of our baseline scores and expect results to improve over the years that the assessment is in place,” she added.

Over time, PARCC results will be used to provide valuable feedback to teachers, parents, and schools/districts in a way that has never been available. This is because, for the first time, the state-mandated assessment is directly aligned with the state-mandated implementation of Common Core State Standards. This means that the district will have a tool to directly measure its instructional practices.

EDITOR’S NOTE: See Editor’s Note to your previous comment.

Highland park school district (one this blogger says consistently outperforms pr schools) says this:

A. Fundamentally, we believe we lost instructional time last year and that is certainly a shame. PARCC connotes that it can make some statement about the college and career readiness of students. I don’t believe the test can make that statement in any sort of valid way.

Ninety six percent of our Deerfield High School students and 94 percent of Highland Park High School students attend two- or four-year colleges and some of these colleges are the best in the nation. They stay in college, they graduate from college.

Our PARCC results indicate much lower proficiencies than we see on a daily basis in our classroom instruction and assessments, performance on standardized tests, our college admission and retention rates. All of this other data shows a very different picture than what our PARCC results suggest. The only thing we can make of that is that the students did not see any benefit. The results don’t have significance, they aren’t actionable and all we did was lose instructional time and that’s a crying shame.

Q. What plans does the district have for next year’s testing?

A. We’re choosing to shift our cohort and we’ll be giving the test to mostly freshmen. We’ll be testing students enrolled in Algebra I and freshmen English so that the results can be more actionable. We will have the students for three more years, as opposed to testing juniors who at this point in time are nearing the end of their first semester as seniors. That is the primary shift we are making.

We also are shifting to the technology format. All of our students will have Chromebooks. Those schools that were using the technology platform got their results sooner. We want to get our results as soon as we can, and use these results as another indication of what our students’ capacities are and where there might be learning gaps. We welcome that.

[email protected]

Thousands of Illinois students skipped standardized test last year

Copyright © 2015, Chicago Tribune
High Schools Colleges and Universities Education PARCC
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EDITOR’S NOTE: See Editor’s Note to your previous comment.

Here is some more context -and quotes about test results from the usually high scoring districts in Illinois:

Diane Rado and Jennifer Smith Richards report for the Chicago Tribune that elite schools such as New Trier, Adlai E. Stevenson, and Hinsdale Central reported never-before-seen low scores. Under half of the test takers at these schools passed PARCC math exams, according to results released by the state.
At several hundred schools, less than 10% of students passed, and some schools had not one student who passed the math and English Language Arts tests. In other schools, so many students did not take the tests that officials said it was difficult to know how to measure PARCC scores and were unsure how the scores will indicate the extent to which a school is performing.
At Arlington Heights-based Township High School District 214, the director of research and evaluation Jeffrey Smith said sparse participation will skew results in some way. Township High School District 214 had a large number of students who skipped the exam, which included 90% of Rolling Meadows High School students.
The tests were dubbed meaningless in other schools, which may cause students to be less motivated, which in turn will bring scores down further. The Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers is a Common Core-based test focused on problem-solving and critical thinking skills and replaced previous standardized tests, the Illinois Standards Achievement Test (ISAT) and Prairie State Achievement Exam (PSAE). It is designed to be taken online, but last school year paper and pencil tests were still an option.
– See more at: http://www.educationnews.org/k-12-schools/illinois-parcc-test-results-show-lack-of-college-career-readiness/#sthash.7T4OYQJE.dpuf

EDITOR’S NOTE: See Editor’s Note to your previous comment.

You ain’t getting it. Those other school districts got B’s too and some of them had many students opt out meaning those “better” districts may have actually gotten a B- or lower if more kids took the test. Goes to show you test scores shouldnt be so heavily relied upon. So the whole premise of your current blog is faulty. The test scores don’t show that there is a problem at d64 and d207 bc if that were true then winnetka highland park hinsdale Arlington hts etc all have problems due to their B level scores.

EDITOR’S NOTE: No, YOU’RE not getting it – because neither Heinz nor Wallace appear to have made any comparisons of their districts to Winnetka, Highland Park, etc.; e.g., Heinz’s quote:

“I have not looked at how our results are compared to other schools.”

Very true re comparisons between districts. The previous commentator must be a D-64 or D-207 board member or administrator who wants to excuse more poor student performance.

All of these schools, according to the various news articles copied and pasted in the previous comments, “reported never-before-seen low scores”. Could this indicate that modern methods of public education are failing our children?

EDITOR’S NOTE: FWT, you could’t possibly be suggesting that all those new theories of education that get rolled out every few years – like “project-based learning,” “facilitative group learning,” “collaborative learning,” “constructive reading,” “congnitive apprenticeships,” “portfolio assessement” and that tried-and-true educational silver bullet, “critical thinking” – aren’t getting the job done, could you?

Should we take seriously a defender of public education who cannot comment with proper punctuation and sentence construction?

EDITOR’S NOTE: Typos happen, whether by the writer or the quoter.

Teachers and administrators hate standardized tests and hate the competition that those tests make possible, whether its from comparisons to other teachers or other schools or other districts.

As you point out, this is not about whether the test is good or bad but how Park Ridge schools compare to other districts.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Exactly. Until very recently, every time D-64 did worse on IGAPs or ISATs than comparable communities, the D-64 Board, administrators and teachers would claim that was because those other districts “taught to the tests” – as if that was some sort of cheating. That was such a stupid comment, however, that they stopped making it and just adopt silence about such disparities, in the hope that the less they say the less attention people will pay.

You haven’t read much in the topic so guess you need some educating mr dog, read how the “powerhouse schools” did and how some schools had many kids opt out which gave them ability to maybe score higher than those that had little to no opt out.i looked at comparisons and while many say it’s not apples to apples fair to compare these scores park ridge school did do better than other highly ranked schools so your whole premise is wrong.

Here is a quote from a trib article, more to follow.

Powerhouse schools New Trier, Adlai E. Stevenson and Hinsdale Central posted unheard of low scores — less than half of test takers at those schools passed the PARCC math exams, according to 2015 results released by the state this week.

EDITOR’S NOTE: And yet those “powerhouse schools” are all rated higher than Maine South, so what does that say about Maine South?

And please provide your data for claiming that “park ridge school did do better than other highly ranked schools so your whole premise is wrong.”

More quotes:

Still, the picture is muddied because tens of thousands of students skipped the 2015 exams, as a testing rebellion surged across Illinois last school year. With so many kids not taking the exams in some schools, educators say it’s unclear what PARCC scores mean and how well they reflect on how a school is performing.

At Chicago’s Northside College Prep, a perennial top performer, between 80 and 90 percent of students skipped exams, leaving only five students to take the math exam and 38 to take the English exam. Of those 38 students, 92 percent passed.

Get facts straight before you jump to conclusions:

More quotes (and if disagreeing with pudog means I must be a school board member that is just deflecting – even if I were (I’d be too busy with crazy Twitter posts) facts are facts) more quotes:

At New Trier’s ninth-grade campus in Northfield, 77.1 percent of students passed the PARCC in English, but only 41.4 percent passed the Algebra 1 exam.

New Trier spokeswoman Nicole Dizon said in an email to the Tribune that the ninth-graders tested in Algebra 1 were generally those who were not in advanced math in junior high. Higher-level math students entering high school usually take geometry or even higher-level math and therefore did not take the PARCC test, she said. Even so, Dizon noted that the 41.4 passing rate was much higher than the 18.7 state average for high school math on PARCC.

Likewise, Adlai E. Stevenson High School spokesman Jim Conrey said it wasn’t surprising that students taking the Algebra exam at the Lincolnshire school posted a passing rate of 45.1 percent. “I think it is fair to say these students tend to be at the more basic level in terms of math knowledge,” he said. The English results were a lot higher — 74.3 percent.

“You want to judge the success of your school on how the most vulnerable students are learning,” said Pamela Bylsma, assistant superintendent for academics at Hinsdale Township High School District 86. She said the district chose to test the ninth-graders who were not advanced in math, and the school was prepared for lower-than-usual passing rates. Hinsdale Central’s passing rate was 42.7 percent in math, and Hinsdale South’s was 27. The English results were higher.

EDITOR’S NOTE: If you’re not a school board member or overpaid teacher/administrator, why not identify yourself to remove all doubt that your comments are just alibis for your incompetence and self-interest?

But since we’re stuck with your cowardice for the time being, riddle us this: if “[a]t New Trier’s ninth-grade campus in Northfield, 77.1 percent of students passed the PARCC in English, but only 41.4 percent passed the Algebra 1 exam,” how did Maine South’s ninth-grade students do?

Or compared to Hinsdale Central’s “ninth-graders who were not advanced in math” and had a passing rate of just 42.7 percent in math”?

Are these tests, PARCC, ISAT, etc. a true measure of what’s been learned? Seems like there’s a lot of emphasis on “teaching to the tests” and not on learning. Just asking.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Our understanding is that they are supposed to be a measure of what’s SUPPOSED to have been learned. And we suspect the same thing could be said about the SATs, ACTs, MCATs, etc.

Besides, isn’t every classroom examination effectively “teaching to the test”; i.e., the teacher knows what he/she wants to make sure the students learn so he/she teaches to those ends and then measures success by a test of what he/she taught to during the year?

Maine south and glenbrook south pracc scores came out the same for instance though you keep saying glen view gets more value for their schools. Those pracc scores however are not necessarily apples to apples since you need to check how many kids opted out among other factors. North side prep (usually ranked number 1) had a handful of students take the test so their scores are skewed especially if only top students from that selective enrollment school took the test.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Do you mean “PARCC” scores, or is “pracc” a new kind of test?

Fine, concede that Northside Prep is not a good comprison in this instance – or, if it can be established that NP let “a handful” of its “top students” take the test, let Maine South pick out “a handful” of its “top students” and compare the scores that way. And do the same for Glenbrook South.

But of course you know that kind of comparison is just about the last thing in the world Maine South and the D-207 admin. wants.

This post is typical PubDog propaganda, pontificating on subjects about which he knows absolutely nothing. Even a cursory background search would have shown that the PARCC test has been fraught with problems and controversies, he clearly wants an excuse to jump on our school districts yet again. Kind of how constantly jumps on the library staff while being clueless about how libraries actually are supposed to be run. So predictable. And laughable.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Oohhhhhh, some tough talk from another anonymous coward. So predictable. And laughable.

When it comes to D-64 and D-207, EVERY test is “fraught with problems and controversies” – at least when it comes to comparing their schools’ results with other districts with comparable socio-economic demographics. But so long as our home-town school boards, teachers and admins (to which group do you belong?) can keep bamboozling the taxpayers, and parents are willing to accept underperformance so long as its “free,” we’ll continue to pay for “prime” while only getting “choice.”

And if you ever want to come out of the coward’s closet and debate the Library, library policy and operations face to face with this editor, just let him know.

No, every test is not fraught with problems the way the PARCC has been. But nice attempt to twist my response to suit your narrative. Again, your ignorance is predictable and laughable.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Sorry, you’re right: we meant every STANDARDIZED test.

Which is why our local school districts used to make such a big deal out of how they didn’t “teach to the [standardized] tests” and, therefore, had plausible deniability for not doing as well as those district that did so.

Why do so many comment makers talk in generalities without the actual data? I am one person who, 15 years ago, chose park ridge as my home in part based on how their school test scores compared with similar surburban communities. Let’s looks at the data that is available these days to compare the schools…

School… %meet/exceed
comp english math
MSHS 41 50 29
NTHS 69 77 42
GBN 46 47 46
GBS 40 50 30
york 43 50 29
lths 52 60 41
hinsdale 56 66 35
Naperville 64 68 60
wheaton 47 51 11

My analysis – we are about even with GBS and Elmhurst (york) but much worse in test scores than most of the rest of our “competitive field”. I’m sure if we look at Hersey, we are worse, but better than schaumburg, mt prospect and the rest of arlington heights but didn’t take the time to look it up. As a parent of 2 MSHS grads and one current, I can say my opinion is that our math department is a failure, and the data proves that out. I know of MANY classmates of my children that need extra tutoring in math to get up to a respectable level.

I’ll hang up and wait for the response of those know-it-all who will try to pick apart the data to their response.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks…that seems to jibe with what we understand.

But could you please identify the site(s) where you found this data so that the folks who insist on blowing smoke up their own kilts about the wonders of Maine South and D-64 schools can easily find it?

The data is found in;
http://www.illinoisreportcard.com/Default.aspx

This site has a boatload of data about each school or district and is focused on a “report card” for that entity rather than comparative tables of scores across multiple entities. Once you pick a school, you can click on the PARCC results amongst other measures.

To create my little table, I quickly moved through each of the schools or districts listed and searched specifically for their PARCC data. Since my youngest is an 8th grader, I wasn’t as closely keen to the D64 comparisons, but someone can do the same and compare to other competitive elementary districts.

And yes, this type of data was available via internet way back in the early 2000’s when we chose park ridge. I entered data for multiple communities (even particular schools in a district when we narrowed down to 3 communities) into an excel sheet and it was one of the primary factors we used when moving from Chicago when our kids were moving into the school years.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Thanks for the info, Meatman.

The Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times used to do similar comparisons whenever new standardized test scores (IGAP, ISAT) came out, but as best as we can tell the Tribune stopped in 2012, when it ranked only Carpenter among its “Top 50” elementary and middle schools (at No. 28). And the Sun-Times’ “Top 50” for 2014 listed no D-64 school.

As a quick comparison of PARCC numbers
district … %meet/exceed
comp english math
d64 PR 54 57 50
d34 GlenviewS 55 60 50
d27 northbrook 79 81 76
D28 northbrook 62 66 58
D30 glenviewNh 74 74 74
D29 sunset-northfield
. 76 80 72
D35 Glencoe 72 76 69
D36 Winnetka 63 65 60
D37 Avoca Northfield
. 72 77 67
D39 Wilmette 71 64 66

Looks like D64 compares fairly poorly compared to these other similar districts with the exception of D34. (Note D34 includes the glen area plus areas west, all the way across the river)

EDITOR’S NOTE: We have to assume that the D-64 Board and Administration will have several explanations for its poor performance that they are busy working on with their spinner extraordinaire, Bernadette Tramm. And we can’t wait to hear them – assuming they’re not going to stick with Heinz’s lame dismissal of such test results as merely a “snapshot in time” and her ridiculous “we surpassed the state of Illinois average in both language arts and math” brag.