THIS AND THAT FOR SEPTEMBER

Boise Students Comprise 50% of Idaho's National Merit Semi-Finalists

Forty-seven (47) Boise District juniors qualified as 2017 National Merit Semi-Finalists, according to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. That's half of the qualifiers in the State of Idaho. Boise has about 9% of the students in the state.

The West Ada District had the second highest number of Semi-Finalists, with 11. 

From the NMSQ press release:

"About 1.6 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2017 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2015 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state. The number of Semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors."

New York Times Magazine Features Boise Refugee Students

Los Angeles-based professional photographer Angie Smith, who has deep ties to Boise (both her mom and dad live here) has published a photo-essay collection in the New York Times Magazine that features refugee students from the Boise and West Ada Districts. It's a truly remarkable piece.

Picture from the Stronger Shines the Light Inside website

The Stronger Shines the Light Inside website provides some background on Angie and writer Hanne Steen, and several stories of refugees in Boise. Her work is featured in downtown Boise for the month of September, at 3 locations:

• City Hall, 150 Capitol Blvd.
• 10th and Bannock
• The Grove Plaza, 826 W, Main St.

First Tee Program Comes to Hillcrest

The First Tee of Idaho is a non-profit program dedicated to promoting positive values and character traits among young people through the game of golf. In conjunction with the Albertson Boise Open, First Tee brought several web.com professional golfers to Hillcrest School on Monday, September 12.

The golfers worked with Hillcrest 4th graders on various principles, volunteering their time with our students. The kids had a blast learning from the pros!

The First Tee of Idaho has donated over $10,000 of equipment to Boise Schools over the past couple of years. Thanks First Tee!

BOISE PRE-K ROCKS!

The Boise District's partnership with the City of Boise, United Way, and other non-profits and donors in the community has resulted in many beneficial programs, including the addition of Pre-K programs at two schools, Hawthorne and Whitney.

In 2015-16, Hawthorne had morning and afternoon sessions of preschool, and Whitney had a morning session. With the administration of the fall Idaho Reading Indicator to kindergartners at the two schools, it's clear that the Pre-K programs were a smashing success.

Hawthorne and Whitney both have high percentages of students qualifying for free and reduced lunch. We know that poverty is linked closely to lack of preparedness for school. In 2015,  just over half (52%) of entering kindergartners at the two schools scored a "3" on the IRI, indicating that they were ready to read.

We were excited to see the impact that having preschool instruction at the two schools would have on the preparedness of the children involved in the program. Here are the results:

83% of the entering kindergartners who completed Pre-K at Hawthorne and Whitney scored a "3" on the Fall kindergarten IRI, compared with half of those who had not had Pre-K. That's 20% higher than the Boise District as a whole in 2015, and 30% higher than the 2015 percentage for the state of Idaho.

Four students moved out of district or out of state over the summer. Nine are enrolled at other elementary schools in the Boise District (the scores for these in-district students are included in the Pre-K category in the above chart).

We know that the numbers are small for this first year. 15 of the students in last year's Pre-K program were too young to start kindergarten this year, and so will get another year of Pre-K k at Whitney or Hawthorne. And Whitney has added a Pre-K session for 2016-17.

It's exciting to see such outstanding early results from the Boise Pre-K program. Of course, a ton of credit goes to our two outstanding Pre-K teachers, Grace Ruddy at Hawthorne and Shelia Dengler-Shaw at Whitney, and their support staffers. Thanks to our community partners and to the city of Boise and the United Way, as well.

We will continue to follow this group of kindergartners, and successive groups of Pre-K students, to assess their short and long term progress. What a great start!

IDAHOANS VIEW PUBLIC SCHOOLS FAVORABLY

A new poll from Dan Jones and Associates, published this week in Idaho Politics Weekly, shows that 2/3 of Idahoans view public schools favorably or very favorably. The percentage with those views is higher than that for private schools, charter schools, online schooling, or home schooling.

The percentage of Idahoans choosing a rating of "5" (very favorable) or "4" for Public Schools was 66%. For Private Schools, the percentage was 63%; for Charter Schools, 55%; Online Programs, 41%, and Home Schooling, 38%.

Even when looking at the average ratings for the different options, Public school came out on top in the Jones survey:

The random survey was conducted with 601 respondents, and has a margin of error of +/- 4%.

The Jones survey results would appear to directly conflict with the results of a survey conducted by the Albertson Foundation in 2015, which indicated that "public schools fall short".

THIS AND THAT FOR AUGUST

Here are a few interesting articles from across the web for the month of August.

Seattle School Board requests alternative assessment option

As reported in the Seattle Education blog, the Seattle School District Board of Directors adopted a resolution requesting the authority to pursue an assessment alternative to the Smarter Balanced Assessment. 

The Board vote was 5-1 in favor of the resolution, which says, in part, "This resolution calls upon the state to take all actions necessary to allow Seattle Public Schools to move forward with the use of an alternative assessment."

The Seattle Education blog is written by Sue Peters, A Seattle School Board member, and Dora Taylor, President of Parents Across America.

The blog also references research done by San Jose State University Professor Dr. Roxana Mariachi, and links to an article she wrote about the California SBAC implementation. Dr. Marichi is more than critical of the SBAC; her research indicates that it is an invalid test. The article is a fascinating read.

Public School Paradox

In The Atlantic.com, Alia Wong writes an interesting feature entitled "A Public School Paradox : Why do so Many Presidents Send their Kids to Private School?". which examines the pattern of U.S. Presidents sending their children to elite private schools while in office. 

From the article: "When President Jimmy Carter assumed office in 1977, he did something remarkable: He enrolled his 9-year-old daughter, Amy, in a predominantly black Washington, D.C., public school...Amy became the first child of a sitting U.S. president to attend a public school since 1906. She still is."

Community Schools Initiative in New York City

From the National Education Policy Center in the School of Education at the University of Colorado-Boulder, a research review of the Community Schools Initiative in New York City.

The Boise District will embark on its own Community Schools Initiative this fall, in partnership with the United Way of Ada County and other community partners. The Boise initiative is modeled on the Family Community Resource Center Project in the Vancouver, Washington School District.

American Schools - More Unequal Than We Thought

The outstanding New York Times research section The Upshot featured another article by Michigan State professor Dr. Susan Dynarski, indicating that the typical measure of poverty used in education, free and reduced lunch, does little to reflect the "persistently disadvantaged", and that their performance on achievement measures is far lower than what is predicted by free/reduced lunch calculations.

Dynarski writes: "...It appears that years spent eligible for subsidized school meals serves as a good proxy for disadvantage. When we look back on the early childhood of persistently disadvantaged eighth graders, we see that by kindergarten they were already far poorer than their classmates."

(Not) the Answer to Teacher Shortages

Pennsylvania English teacher Peter Greene writes an insightful blog called Curmudgucation, which is one of our favorites. In his most recent post, Greene writes about the Utah State Board's decision to allow anyone with a degree to teach in the state.

From the post: "The board says it's not so bad because local districts can still set whatever job requirements they want. But let's think about this. Which districts will be able to recruit actual teachers by offering better conditions for employment, and which districts will be left even further behind in a talent bidding war? Which districts do you suppose will end up filling classrooms with unqualified faux teachers? Yes, this is a plan that will further shaft students and families of poorer communities."


Well it's not just Districts that are poorer, but also those that are less well-funded and thus have less capacity to hire the best. The net effect is that while Boise may have about the state average in terms of free/reduced lunch students, and perhaps more students who are persistently disadvantaged, Boise patrons are willing to fund education at a higher rate than most in the state, and the District has a supportive culture for its teachers. So, where will the most qualified and best prepared teachers eventually land?

ADVANCED PLACEMENT: THE BEAT GOES ON

Student participation in the Boise District's Advanced Placement program continues to grow, both in terms of tests taken and number of students taking tests.

The District offers the most complete Advanced Placement program in the state of Idaho; each comprehensive high school offers at least 24 A.P. courses, allowing students to choose coursework in a variety of subjects. Here's a complete list of AP coursework offered in the District.

Students

Student participation in the AP exam program has increased dramatically since the inception of the program in 1980, when the program, then just at Boise High, had 50 testing participants. Here's the data n student participation since 1995.

The growth in student participation in the AP exam program is truly remarkable. 


Here is the same information broken down by high school. The information for the year 2000 is interesting because Timberline opened in 1998, so Boise's participation was lower in 2000 than in 1995. Participation rates for all four comprehensive high schools have grown substantially since then. It's also important to note that enrollment at the 4 high schools at the time of testing was Boise 1524, Borah 1474, Capital 1243, and Timberline 1107.

And there is something new this year: 24 9th graders at Hillside Junior High School took the course and the exam for AP Human Geography. It's our first effort at offering an AP course for our junior high students.

Exams

Many students take more than one Advanced Placement examination; in fact, a number of students took five exams this year, and a few took six or even seven. So the exam number is much higher than the number of students taking exams.

And the number of exams has grown dramatically. In 2016, Boise District students took 8 times as many AP exams as they did 20 years ago.

Here's the exam information. This is a story of continuous improvement, and of providing access for more and more students to rigorous coursework as time has gone by. 

So, how does this information impact the college entry level of students? Since over 95% of colleges nationwide provide credit pr waivers for passage of AP tests, the impact is considerable. Here are a couple of hypothetical examples of the total credits that students would have earned in 2016, using the AP credit policies of the University of Idaho.  Of course, not all students would have been able to obtain credit for particular courses - depending on major fields, some credits would not count in fulfilling prerequisites or the core requirements. But this is an indicator of the impact passing AP tests can have for our students. (Note: Boise State and Idaho State have similar policies - this is just an example.)

So, students could have the opportunity to obtain over 9000 college credits based on AP test performance. And, since AP credits are accepted by almost all universities and colleges, students don't have to worry about acceptance policies at particular schools - they can check it out on-line at the AP Central Credit Policy website.

WHAT THE SAT ITEM ANALYSIS TELLS US 

(AND THE SBAC DOESN'T)

THE SAT

The "new" SAT was administered to juniors across the state of Idaho in April. The test has been revised substantially. The major changes are:

• alignment with the Common Core
• two subtests ( Math and Evidence-based Reading and Writing) instead of three (Reading, Math and Writing)
• improved resources for improvement of instruction
• new "cut" scores indicating probability of success in college (EBRW = 480, Math = 530)
• altered definition of readiness for college that includes 2 and 4 year colleges

The College Board, which administers the SAT, has released the actual test for a number of years after that year's administration is complete. However, though they have offered an item analysis for the PSAT (Preliminary SAT) for several years, this year was the first time the College Board has provided question analysis for the SAT.

The item analysis will prove extremely valuable for the improvement of instruction. Here's why.

For each of the 154 questions on the SAT (96 EBRW and 58 Math, the College Board provides access to the answer given by each student who took the test, district, school, and state performance on that item, percentages of students who chose distractors and the correct answer, the difficulty level of the problem, and the general question category. 

The item analysis is available for each high school, as well as for the district and for the state as a whole. The College Board also provides an explanation of the correct answer for each question. 

Here is the display of the information for question 9 on this year's Math subtest:

How does the distribution of student answers help us to improve instruction?

Well, 28% of District juniors answered "D". While we might speculate as to why they chose that answer, the fact is that 55+9 does not equate to √55+√9. Can we improve instruction so that more students understand this principle? Sure. And the item analysis gives us the tools to improve instruction and student performance.

College and university personnel can also use the statewide item analysis to isolate performance on each question and then use performance on a series of questions to determine placement in Math or Language Arts courses.

THE SBAC

Comparatively, the SBAC gives only top-level information that is of little use in improving instruction, Here's an example of what teachers receive as feedback from the SBAC:

It's clear that the SAT provides a much more useful examination of student responses that can help us with improving instruction in high school than does the SBAC. We need an assessment at the elementary and junior high level that provides the same level of feedback.

States are required under federal law (ESSA) to test all students in math and language arts in grades 3-8 and once in high school. At each decision point about the adoption of assessments, we must consider use of data for improvement of instruction first. Then and only then will we adopt an appropriate assessment.

2016 SAT STATEWIDE RESULTS

The SAT Schoolday exam was administered to Idaho juniors in April. Over 17,000 students took the revised exam, which consists of two subtests, Evidence-Based Reading ad Writing and Mathematics. Each subtest has a maximum score of 800, for a total possible score of 1600.

We requested statewide district and school scores from the State Department of Education, along with SAT participation numbers. The SDE also provided recent 11th grade enrollment numbers from across the state. Kelly Everitt from the State Department of Education graciously provided these results. Then, we added free/reduced lunch percentages for each school and district to the mix. 

It's important to consider indicators of poverty in analyses such as ours, since the SAT (and the SBAC) are highly correlated with poverty. Then, we can assess the status of schools in comparison with the expectations that might be associated with the level of poverty at that school/in that district, and use data from some "outliers" to help those that might not have fared so well.

Results

Here are scattergrams portraying SAT results for the total test, and for the two subtests. We used SAT "percent prepared" percentage as the "y axis", and free/reduced lunch percentages on the "x axis"

These percentages are often misused. It's important to remember that SAT scores are just one indicator of preparedness for post-secondary pursuits. In fact, grades are the best predictor, and should be the first indicator used in assessing preparedness. Rigor of coursework, level of math courses taken and passed, extra-curricular participation, and other factors are also important. However, many colleges and universities use SAT and ACT scores as part of their admissions processes.

We used a threshold of 75% participation for including schools in the analysis we did, which left out three high schools (Lakeland - 71%, Wood River - 69% - and Weiser, - 71%). In addition, we excluded alternative high schools and magnet schools, since we were interested in comprehensive high school performance.  Two charters, Compass Academy, and Idaho Virtual Academy, made the 75 student cutoff and exceeded the 75% participation mark.

Evidence-based Reading and Writing

Here are results of the Evidence-based Reading and Writing subtest. Boise, Timberline, and Moscow high schools are typically among the high performing high schools in the state, and continued that pattern in 2016, and Compass Charter's performance was quite good, as well. However, when we factor in free/reduced lunch percentages, some other schools show excellent performance: Twin Falls, Timberlake (Lakeland District), Capital, Century (Pocatello), Sandpoint, Centennial, and Post Falls did well in this comparison among schools with 30-50% free/reduced populations. And Jerome, Canyon Ridge (Twin Falls District), Columbia, Vallivue, and Idaho Virtual were high performers among districts with 60-80% free/reduced lunch.

One factor that's not considered in this comparison is the Limited English population of a school. Though the vast majority of LEP students qualify for free/reduced lunch, they are also just learning the English language, and the SAT and SBAC present a complex range of tasks that often make the test almost impossible. With the focus in Common Core on reading even in the math section, these Core-aligned tests are extremely difficult for our LEP students, and few do well. However, as these students grow more comfortable with the English language, and participate in programs such as AVID (available in Boise and Vallivue), many do well in college pursuits.

Schools such as Timberlake, Sandpoint, Coeur d'Alene, Post Falls and many others have few LEP students, or may even have none.

That being said, for a school like Borah, with the highest percentage of LEP students in the state, the scores of the LEP population artificially deflate the school's performance. When Borah's LEP scores are taken from the total, it's "readiness" percentage would be much higher. Even with the scores included for the LEP students (some of whom are in their first or second year in the U.S.), Borah's performance is above expectations.

Math

In the math comparison, many of the same schools performed well. Madison, which has historically performed very well in math, shows up in this comparison. On the 50%+ free/reduced comparison, Emmett and Buhl appear as high-performers, as does Caldwell, which has nearly 80% free/reduced, as well as a high percentage of LEP students.

Since SAT and the SBAC results correlate highly with poverty, it's important that teachers receive specific results from the test that allow them to pinpoint curricular strengths and weaknesses so that they might improve results over time.

Do the two tests provide such information? That's the subject of our next blog post.