DC Public Charter Schools Show Significant Achievement in PARCC Assessment
Remarks at PARCC Press Briefing
Scott Pearson
Monday November 30, 2015
Thank you Mayor Bowser and Deputy Mayor Niles for your leadership. Thank you to my colleague Kaya Henderson for being such an outstanding chancellor of DCPS. And to all the school leaders, thank you for your hard work and fierce commitment to the success of all of our students.
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As we acknowledged during the release of the High School PARCC results a month ago, this year’s results set a baseline from where we will improve. What we know now is that about a quarter of our children are at or exceeding standards, and another quarter are approaching these standards. While there is no question that these results represent tremendous improvement over where we would have been five years ago, we also have no illusions that we have a long way to go. We are committed to meeting that challenge.
The results also show that DC public charter schools, on the whole, continue to outpace the state on most of these results. I point that out not to thump our chest, and I do so with the full knowledge that public charter schools aren’t strictly comparable to public schools of right. But it’s important to highlight this performance because it shows that public charter schools are fulfilling their promise of delivering results for DC’s families.
These results are due to the hard work of the teachers, staff and leaders at the public charter schools located throughout the District. To honor that work, we invited representatives of the 24 public charter schools where the percentage of students who met or exceed expectations (scoring 4 or 5) in both ELA and Math exceeded the Districtwide average. Would those representatives please stand now?
Much of the detailed results are in your packets, and more is on our website. But I did want to highlight some key results.
This slide shows that in English Language Arts 25% of students met or exceeded expectations, while 52% approached, met or exceeded expectations. The comparable district-wide numbers, in red are 25% and 48%.
In Math, 26% of students met or exceeded expectations, while 54% approached, met or exceeded expectations. The comparable districtwide numbers, in red are 24% and 50%.
These results are even more impressive in light of the recent comprehensive School Equity Report which shows that public charter schools are serving students from all socio-economic and demographic groups. In fact, public charter schools serve more African American and economically-disadvantaged students than the District average. Moreover our students come from every ward in the city.
The next two slides look at results by subgroup. The African American student numbers are the results for DC public charter schools; the red numbers are the average for all DC public students, including public charters and DCPS.
This first subgroup looks by race. For African Americans we see that 21% met or exceeded expectations in ELA and 22% in Math, versus 17% for the district as a whole.
For Hispanic students, the numbers are similar, 22% for ELA and 21% for Math, and are basically the same as the district.
Finally for White students, which represent just 5% of students at public charter schools, 80% met or exceeded expectations in ELA and 71% in Math, which is just slightly higher than the district average.
We now look at results for other categories of students. For economically disadvantaged students, 18% met or exceeded expectations in ELA and 20% in Math. That is 4 to 5 points higher than the district as a whole.
We did not perform as well with English language learners.11% met or exceeded expectations in ELA and 13% in Math, and that is lower than the district average. This is clearly an area of needed focus for us.
In special education the figures really point to how far we still have to go. Just 5% of students met or exceeded expectations in ELA and 6% in Math – a number that is far, far too low.
The final numbers are for at-risk students – a new designation for those students on welfare, food stamps, or who are homeless or foster children. At-risk students represent about half of the students in public charter schools and in DCPS. We both serve the same percentages. We see that 15% to 17% of at-risk students met or exceeded expectations in English and Math, but that 41% to 44% are approaching expectations – figures that are significantly higher than for the district as a whole.
Finally, I want to briefly show all of the public charter schools whose results exceeded the state average.
In conclusion, I have one ask: come visit the schools. Come meet the students, teachers and school leaders. Come see about the varied learning that is taking place throughout the District.
Thank you.