Modesto Afternoon Focus Group

Assessment and Accountability

November 18, 2004

 

In attendance:

Dave Moll

Ginger Ernst

Margaret Santiago

Eric Anderson

Melissa Schexnider

Becky Rasmussen

Rhonda Tinley

James Tinley

 

Introduction:

Dave discussed the draft copy. The language will be formalized. The leadership team has put this together and if you have some good suggestions for this then let us know. This needs to be readable by everyone.

 

CBED is the one day a year all the schools check their student count across California. This happens the first of October. We are comparing the school year to demonstrate the growth of the school.

 

1. The first one is enrollment data. Notice the change from 2003 -1120. The first year was when we limited enrollment. We were growing as big and as fast as we could which can be challenging with all the programs we are implementing. This is the year that Waterford USD asked us to cap it at 1200. That stabilized the program somewhat.

 

2. Looking at the sidebar with CWCS numbers shows that more students are attracted to our school. Student mobility shows how many are coming to our school. The STAR program shows how many have been with us 1, 2 or 3 years. That box needs a clarification statement. Margaret said that she was not sure what it meant so, if we said the amount of years that theyπve been with us that would help.

 

3. The chart shows 1/3 are newly enrolled. We started this school year with a student survey about where they started. Most students come from San Joaquin County. Can you figure out that pie chart? I think that there is a double line there between the light blue and the maroon and this is Mariposa County which is very small, 7 students. Margaret asked if we have a learning center down in Santa Clara. Ginger said no, ideally we would like to have one out that way.

 

4. Ethnicity: any questions on that?

A suggestion was made to enlarge the boxes and change the color scheme.

 

One suggestion I have is to divide the population k-8 and 9-12. We suspect that many of the 9-12 students coming into our school have not been home schooled during earlier school years. That would be good to know. If many have been home schooled Iπd like to see the ethnicity on them.

 

A comment was made on the questionnaire that they tend to avoid stating that they are behind on their credits or were expelled.

 

5. Academic information: percentage proficient or advanced. There are five levels. I think that the title should be proficient or advanced (the top two). Notice at the eighth grade the WUSD and our students are all on the same level. It is quite a bit different at ninth grade. Someone asked if we are only 30% proficient or advanced. Twelfth grade is a big slide. Eric said that our scores from K-8 are very good and later they are lower.

 

Eric said when he was at Los Banos we spent hours trying to come up with ways to make them buy into working harder on the test. Margaret asked if the third line should be unfamiliar. Notice the bottom chart is the following year. 4^th grade 2003 corresponds to 5^th grade 2004. We are the blue line. Ninth grade is fairly clustered. We fall below both WUSD and the state average there. Looking at the blue line we are below every grade in language and this graphically illustrates that we need to improve performance in these areas.

 

6. Second page in math in 2003 on every grade level we are below grade level. We look very good in every grade level compared to WUSD. In 2004 it looks like in 4^th and 5^th our scores are better relative to the state. I think the state scores reflect that their bright students are taking Algebra 1 in 9^th grade when we are taking it in eighth grade. Margaret said that there are higher students who are taking algebra II in eighth grade in some schools.

 

Looking at the tests specific to algebra one, our eighth grade is below the state and WUSD. Why are they better than us in eighth and about the same by 11^th? Maybe all the good students have taken it by then and now weπre left with the students who are probably struggling at algebra. Diana and Dave wholeheartedly agree.

 

7. Percentage of students testing from 2003 and 2004. What they are trying to show is that WUSD in 2003 was down below 95% in a couple of grades but in 2004 2^nd through 10^th was close to 100%. The bottom line with barbed wire does show and improvement. The target is 95% is the minimum and 100%. You canπt get API unless you have at least 95% test. Then you are in the PIS schools which we donπt want. This is very important to us. Even though we pushed last year we only had 83 or 84% participation in the testing. The percentage of students taking the state test is well below average. We are improving as evidenced as the increase, it should say, percentage participation in 2004.

 

8. A question was asked ≥Who are we giving this to?≤ Dave explained that this is a rough draft. This is a big part of the self study. There is the description/definition of the school, the summarizing self study and then the last part is the action plan which is being developed by the Leadership team. This will be strategies, activities, and even money to strengthen the weak areas. This will be seen by the WASC committee and all stake holders: students, teachers, board members, all staff. It needs to be straightforward. WASC wants to know if we can find our problems and develop solutions. If you canπt find your own problems then there is a bigger problem.

 

9. The next graph shows the testing results, then high school exit exams. Eric related an important point that the students learned they must apply themselves harder for the high school exit exam. This has more of a break-down.

 

It is interesting that the class of 2004 had passed more students than the one coming up. Perhaps what this shows is that the class of 2005 represents those who are taking it again. Ideally you would have 100% pass in 2004 and we have 3 that have not, 91% have passed it. See the math results: it shows a much larger percentage. To get a higher percentage passing in 2006 should be encouraging as that is the lower group and re-takes.

 

What we want to know is of this graduating class what percentage passed. That would be an important statistic than how many passed it this year. The copy this year should explain what each of these numbers mean. If this is 2006 is the first attempt and 2005 is second attempt and 2004 is third attempt then it is helpful. You could add up the numbers and see if it includes all but 3 of our seniors to see how they are doing on the exit exam.

 

Jack said that it does show how many are repeaters. Maybe it shows how seriously the test is taken by all students. Maybe it is catching on at a younger age that this is the system and maybe we should get it done and do what it takes.

 

It was noted that many did not get the preparation in previous years. I am not sure what we are trying to show. It should show something like 75% passed English and by junior year 89% and senior year 99% had passed. Iπm not sure what we are showing here.

 

Margaret said that they may have taken math early on and waited a few years before taking the test. Dave noted that in addition to that the test draws from 7^th grade standards and others so that affects them too as they fall down on number sense from lower grade learning. That is affecting their pass fail percentage. Those students did not get the concepts in those lower grades.

 

10. High school enrollees per year. This is an analysis of the transcript. The following graph shows expected number of credits. It is not clear what this is trying to say. It was explained that what this is trying to show is the percentage of students that come as sophomores that lack 50 credits. They should have at least 50 credits coming into 10^th grade. Follow the 2002 line.

 

The algebra by grade level data should follow the Algebra 1 CST multi-grade graph. That is showing the number of students who in eighth grade are taking different courses. By ninth grade you have 4 taking Algebra 2. Ninth grade and 10^th grade are heavy years for us taking Algebra 1 and that probably skews our results compared to the state.

 

11. English Language Learners. ESL, ELD, ELL. There was question as to what the blanks are representing. In the CELDT results data, explanation for the dashes need to be given. ≥The CELDT tested only students present in early October. Again mobility affects our ability to identify student needs and to address them. This means some students who came in did not get CELDT tested.

 

12. Special Education should include physically and emotionally needy too. We need clarification of resource students and who they comprise. Are they Special Education students? We only offer one service and they get individual instruction, IEP, once a week. Special Day Class is not available Margaret noted as they get service all day. It would also not include SED students I would think. It could still detail what kind of resource student we serve.

 

13. Post graduate survey. This should say students were given a survey but they need to say how they gathered the data ≠ mail, calls, visited. Dave thinks they were telephoned. Margaret had a question about it flowing from English Language learners to

 

Perhaps the Special Ed data will be reported in another section. Those will end up going different places.

 

The reason from choosing CWCS shows 11 came due to being expelled from last school. The number of student with computers is 1128 and use the internet is 1020. This is 92.4% have access to the computer. We have an ESLR for technology. Our chart shows 76% Eric said and Dave said the numbers are incorrect. It is 128 out of our student body who have access.

Parent satisfaction: this chart is all from the student survey. Edusoft survey shows 3 saying it is useful and 6 said no. One good thing is that only 11 out of 132 want a new ES.

 

14. Last page shows survey A, D, and E. To what extent is the culture of the school showing continuous school improvement?

 

15. Any other comments or questions? On the chart on page 16 it caught my eye ≠ can we re-word the items to not look like they are so unsatisfied. Dave said that empirically we should make it exactly the same as the survey. Are they consistent? They will have copies of the raw data available for the WASC team to see if we included all that we found. What we have here should be the same as the survey.