If the ways of grading schools get any more varied, and any more laughable, I’d almost have to cry. The whole thing is so confusing that I wouldn’t know what to believe if I was a new parent trying to decipher my way through the whole public-private school maze again.
The interesting news is that even as Woodrow and Long administrators and parents plan to meet Sept. 12 and Sept. 20 to discuss the Texas Education Agency’s recent “unacceptable” ratings for the schools, the Dallas Morning News publishes (behind its paywall) an analysis that labels Woodrow as a school that “exceeds expectations”. How’s that for confusing?
There’s not much point in going into the TEA ratings anymore. They don’t make a lot of sense, they’re based on a test that is in the process of being replaced, and they seem to be more effective at scaring people than doing anything to improve schools or the way those the TEA identifies as deficient work to educate children.
The DMN’s ratings are another story, though, because that analysis works to group schools that face similar student population challenges in terms of poverty — it addresses the essential unfairness of most educational ratings, including TEA’s, and tries to level the playing field. The shorthand version of the analysis is that Woodrow, for example, is grouped with other schools that have “high poverty” student populations, and those schools are then analyzed for their students’ “college readiness” to determine which schools “meet”, are “below” or “exceed” expectations of the similar group of schools.
Using the DMN’s analysis, Woodrow “exceeds expectations” with a college readiness percentage of 47, even with 56 percent of the student popular low-income and 68 percent of the students at-risk. Using the same comparables, W.T. White High School in Preston Hollow also “exceeds expectations”. The DMN’s analysis puts both high schools on-par with the more celebrated, better funded DISD magnet high schools, which is even more remarkable since the magnets are allowed to hand-pick their student populations using test scores, while Woodrow and White — as neighborhood schools — have to take all comers.
None of this should be seen as an apology for Woodrow or any other DISD school, because there continue to be significant deficiencies in how DISD educates students. But the analysis does provide a ray of hope to those parents who believe a public school education is important for their kids, and it also should give some comfort to neighbors (with or without kids) because it states something almost unbelievable given the typical PR spin on DISD: Woodrow and some other DISD high schools may actually be doing a better-than-expected job of meeting their challenges.
The DMN analysis is worth reading, even if it carries absolutely no weight with the TEA, which will continue to bear down on Woodrow, Long and the other schools currently in its crosshairs. If you’re a parent trying to figure all of this out, good luck. I can tell you from personal experience that if you base your decision solely on TEA numbers, you had better start saving your money for private school right now.
