Decatur Schools Stand Out in New State Report Card
Decatur Metro | May 7, 2013The AJC reported this morning on the release of the new statewide report card for schools. As the article summarizes early on…
Georgia’s new report card for schools is out this morning and the grade for most metro Atlanta school systems is above average, with the City of Decatur and Gwinnett County leading the bunch.
The another AJC page explains that “Schools and districts are graded on a 100 point-scale on the index and can receive up to 10 bonus points for a total possible score of 110.”
- The score is primarily (70%) based on “Achievement Points” from that come from CRCT and end of course grades, measures of when students are ready for the next level and graduation rates.
- 15% of the score is based on “Progress points” from academic growth on state tests.
- 15% is based on Achievement gap points – “can either receive points for closing or having small achievement gaps on state tests or for year-over-year gap change”.
- 10% is based on Challenge Points which is explained by the AJC as “schools can receive if they have a significant number of economically disadvantaged students, English learners and students with disabilities meeting expectations or if they exceed the CCRPI state targets in college-ready programs”
Overall, Decatur was one of the top performing districts in the metro Atlanta area, with Oakhurst Elementary ranking #4 among all Elementary schools in the state with a score of 101.7. Clairemont was close behind with a score of 101.1. Winnona Park received a score of 97.1 and Glennwood came in with a 93.1.
According to this “Best/Worst” page, Decatur’s high schools and middle schools also performed at the top compared to other metro school districts.
There’s a lot of data out on the AJC website, so check it out. Dig into the database itself here and let us know what else you find!
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props to the administration, teachers, parents and kids who make our system the success it is.
passion for education + active community involvement + good funding = winning
on a side note, as i was practicing with my 3rd grader son for the CRCT, i was amazed that they were learning about economics at this age: supply/demand, opportunity cost . . . i didn’t encounter those topics until i was a freshman at Emory–not that they aren’t accessible to kids at this age, but the bar has been certainly been raised since the days when i was turning in homework on chiseled stone tablets
And it’s iPad tablets for these kids.
. . . and more field trips than you can shake a stick at.
when i was in elementary school in Columbus, I think we may have had two field trips all year long: a visit to the museum, and a tour of the Flowers Bakery. meanwhile, it seems our kids average one or two field trips every 4-6 weeks.
love the expeditionary learning curriculum.
Flowers Bakery! I went there on a field trip as well. Also from Columbus…
What is this 100 point scale thing? Can someone translate it in to a scale of 8 (or 6) with an IB rubric. Just to make it easy to understand.
Winner!
ding ding ding
#98thpercentile
And… then within the 8-6 there are four or five other measures that are each on a different scale… some 1-10, some 1-6 and others 1-8. And then there is a summative report that’s 1-7 for everything but has factors within it that are 1-9 or 1-10 or 1-6…. and then. But that’s all different than the K-3 report cards that are 1-4.
Looking at the system level, we rank as #7 among Georgia school systems for the high school level, #11 for the elementary school level, and #12 for the middle school level. I’m a little surprised that we didn’t do better at the elementary school level and worse at the high school level, but it’s a weird scoring system.
My suggestion is that we reset our goal of being in the top 20 school systems in the country to something more realistic. Given the longstanding level of public school support in Georgia, there’s no way we’re getting to top 20 nationwide in my lifetime. Wouldn’t it be more instructive to set a reasonable goal like being in the top 5 systems in Georgia for all three categories of elementary, middle, and high school? Then we could focus more specifically on what would get us there. What is different about the top 5 high schools in Georgia and what could we do to get there–we’re almost there.
Of course, this new scoring system has not been validated for reliability, predictiveness, or usefulness. But one could just look at the standard part of the score–the “achievement points”. Or even the old scoring system. My point is that we might learn more by analyzing what is needed to get to a realistic goal rather than shooting for something that is never happening in the state of Georgia.
i like the ambition of Top 20 nationwide, and believe swinging for the fence tends to produce better outcomes than less ambitious goals do when one is capable of that level of achievement.
given the demographics of Decatur and some remarkable accomplishments by our populace: 4-5 Guggenheim Fellows, US Poet Laureate, accomplished artists, world-class beer drinkers . . . I have no doubt we’re capable of meeting that goal over time. and then creating a festival to celebrate it.
i’m a born and bred Georgian, but frankly, bragging rights for being Top 5 in our state is akin to bragging about being the tallest person in Japan.
The tallest person in Japan is 7’5 3/4″.
I see your point, and don’t totally disagree, but I don’t know that both goal sets need be mutually exclusive.
if we aim for Top 20 nationally and accomplish it, we’ll very likely be, by default, #1 in GA.
Probably #1 in the entire South and Southwest, excluding Los Alamos County.
….ok guys, we can keep our top 20 in the country goal so long as setting lofty goals doesn’t become an end into itself. It has to translate into something more than a neat banner on a promotional brochure for CSD. Those kids in Westchester County, New York, Shaker Heights, Ohio, and Lake Oswego, Oregon are pretty tough contenders.
since the mediocrity of football programs tends to be a positive indicator for academic achievement, i’d say we’re headed straight to the top!
Good one! That would be a good discussion topic–Which do you care more about? That CSD rank in the top 20 school systems in the country or that it have a winning football team?
i’m greedy–i want us to have both–want Decatur High to be the Stanford of football and academics.
but forced to make a choice, academics gets my begrudging nod.
i played on some good football teams and know how much it brings to a high school’s culture. that said, our team couldn’t spell “dog” if you spotted us the d and the g, but when you’re the city champs, who cares!?
“i played on some good football teams and know how much it brings to a high school’s culture.”
Sorry , Rick, you’re a good guy and all, but your perspective on football’s contributions to high school culture is skewed by the fact you played. For many of us who didn’t play, I would expect our perspective is far different, and considerably more negative.
point taken, however had I said as a musician I know the contribution a great music program makes to a school’s culture (which I also believe) someone could have taken a contrarian stance against that as well, eh?
yes, we all live in the echo chambers of our subjective experiences–I don’t expect unanimity of opinion.
Speaking of Decatur Schools, tomorrow (Wednesday) is Bike and Walk to School Day, so expect lots of human-powered traffic in the morning and afternoon.
Woot woot…. Kudos to CSD!…. even if the grading system is wonky.
If you look at all schools, Oakhurst was #4 elementary and Clairemont #8 in the state. That’s pretty solid.
Congrats teachers, staff and especially parents whom I believe deserve a great deal of credit. Many of our parents provide great support to their children as well as to our schools.
For those of you who have a favorite teacher, staff member or administrator, may I suggest that instead of the usual coffee mug or “Best Teacher Like Forev!” trophy, you give a small, use everywhere gift card. As a former teacher, I enjoyed the end if the year thank you notes from students but the $15 to $25 gift cards ESPECIALLY FOR CHICK-FIL-A from parents were like “The Bomb”! (Seventies reference meaning really good)
AND … speaking of Decatur schools I was thinking of the report card grading system myself. it would go something like this:
A for ART
C- for PROBABILITY AND STATISTICS
C- for PLANNING AND ECONOMICS
F for CIVICS
F for ETHICS
I’m talking about the ambitious, expensive and controversial master expansion plan that will be voted on 6:30 p.m., Tuesday, May 14 at the regular Board of Education meeting at Westchester School on Scott Boulevard.
A is for pretty pictures based on
C-minus for sketchy population growth numbers,
C-minus for expensive, poorly developed plans and the
F in Civics for trying to ram it all down the public’s throat and get the public to pay for it, without including the public in the process … and if that wasn’t enough
F in Ethics for trying to sneak a vote at a non-regularly scheduled meeting without public notice and then spending a month hosting five sham public meetings in which public comments were shunted off into a black hole.
The Decatur City Schools Board of Education can bring those grades up to straight As by tabling the vote and mounting appropriate public process and amending the plans OR by voting “NO” and moving to launch an appropriate public process to amend the plans.
Since the vote is still scheduled for this coming Tuesday, it’s probably too late to get into the details. Right now what we need is NO VOTE OR VOTE NO. Help tutor the Board of Education in its civic responsibility by writing to:
Marc J. Wisniewski (chair)
Bernadette J. Seals (vice chair)
Valarie D. Wilson
Julie P. Rhame
C. Garrett Goebel
Dr. Phyllis A. Edwards
Let’s show our kids how the world can be made … by engaged people uniting a vision for a noble ideal!
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” ~ Margaret Mead, anthropologist
“The only thing that is needed for evil to flourish is for good people to do nothing.” ~ Edmund Burke (for whom Burke County, Georgia is named)
Hey y’all! Decatur Patch is running a story that Dr. Edwards is NOT pushing for a vote Tuesday and wants input. They’ve got a poll with an option to vote for slowdown included. Now yer talkin!
http://decatur.patch.com/articles/should-decatur-schools-move-ahead-with-master-plan?ncid=newsltuspatc00000001