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The school does, however, have detailed information on how students were performing the previous year which they can use without tarnishing themselves with this

The school does, however, have detailed information on how students were performing the previous year which they can use without tarnishing themselves with this "statistically useful proxy" that happens to also amount to political suicide. The problem with doing that isn't that it is difficult, it's that it doesn't introduce enough misdirection for them to get away with what they're trying to get away with. What they're trying to do, naturally, is the accounting trick of paying for lack of progress by disadvantaged kids with the inevitable progress of privileged kids. They're trying to obscure their inability to teach effectively by throwing in the racial component. It's bullshit, and people are right be outraged by it, and the administrators responsible for it should be made to pay for it.

anigbrowl 14y ago
No, they don't necessarily have that information. It's not available for either first-graders, and not reliable for transfer students without knowledge of the standards employed at the previous school. What they're trying to do, naturally, is the accounting trick of paying for lack of progress by disadvantaged kids with the inevitable progress of privileged kids. That's a completely illogical argument. If that was their goal, it would be more sensible to ignore race and just aggregate the numbers together so that failing students would become invisible. Breaking results out by race highlights any differences in achievement over the measurement period.
- fusiongyro 14y ago
  You need two data points to measure progress. First graders are the first data point. Transfer students alone are not a dominating element of the population. Pointing to an inability to get reliable test results from other districts is trying to excuse failure with more failure. The accounting trick works because it's about comparing percentages rather than raw numbers. The preponderance of disadvantaged kids would swamp the progress of the privileged kids otherwise. This trick lets them point to substantial performance improvements in substantially less than half their students and use it to write off the lack of progress on substantially more than half.
  - anigbrowl 14y ago
    Your accounting argument simply makes no sense. Try stating it with specific groups and numbers to see why. How do you write off a lack of progress for one group when it's there in its own category for everyone to see? And what backs your assumption that there's a preponderance of disadvantaged kids in every school?
    - fusiongyro 14y ago
      Their reasons are malformed whatever they happen to be. My argument is merely that they chose this malformed option over other more obviously malformed options because they hoped it would better disguise their malfeasance. If they had grouped students by performance instead it would amount to saying nothing: poor performing students continue to perform poorly, and good ones well, and excellent ones excellently. Of course as you say, a better way to actually hide poor teacher performance would be to group everything together, which is probably what the other 49 states did and why we are not discussing them today but instead talking about Virginia. They certainly didn't choose to do something so obviously and outrageously stupid as to segregate the students by race, statistically or not.

anigbrowl 14y ago

No, they don't necessarily have that information. It's not available for either first-graders, and not reliable for transfer students without knowledge of the standards employed at the previous school. What they're trying to do, naturally, is the accounting trick of paying for lack of progress by disadvantaged kids with the inevitable progress of privileged kids. That's a completely illogical argument. If that was their goal, it would be more sensible to ignore race and just aggregate the numbers together so that failing students would become invisible. Breaking results out by race highlights any differences in achievement over the measurement period.

fusiongyro 14y ago
You need two data points to measure progress. First graders are the first data point. Transfer students alone are not a dominating element of the population. Pointing to an inability to get reliable test results from other districts is trying to excuse failure with more failure. The accounting trick works because it's about comparing percentages rather than raw numbers. The preponderance of disadvantaged kids would swamp the progress of the privileged kids otherwise. This trick lets them point to substantial performance improvements in substantially less than half their students and use it to write off the lack of progress on substantially more than half.
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  Your accounting argument simply makes no sense. Try stating it with specific groups and numbers to see why. How do you write off a lack of progress for one group when it's there in its own category for everyone to see? And what backs your assumption that there's a preponderance of disadvantaged kids in every school?
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    Their reasons are malformed whatever they happen to be. My argument is merely that they chose this malformed option over other more obviously malformed options because they hoped it would better disguise their malfeasance. If they had grouped students by performance instead it would amount to saying nothing: poor performing students continue to perform poorly, and good ones well, and excellent ones excellently. Of course as you say, a better way to actually hide poor teacher performance would be to group everything together, which is probably what the other 49 states did and why we are not discussing them today but instead talking about Virginia. They certainly didn't choose to do something so obviously and outrageously stupid as to segregate the students by race, statistically or not.