RECENT COMMENTS
Armstrong lags behind in 4-year graduation rate
According to the VDOE Report Card for the school (PDF), only 50% of Armstrong HS students graduate after 4 years. Franklin Military graduates 94% after 4 years (PDF). These numbers compare to 59% for all of RPS (PDF) and 86% statewide.
Of those that do graduate, over the past 3 years 9-15% at Armstrong have received an Advanced Diploma. Last year 37% at Franklin earned an Advanced Diploma. Statewide 55% of the diplomas earned by 2011 graduates were Advanced Studies Diplomas
Look up other schools here: Report Card Selection
A press release went out from VDOE today touting the rise in statewide graduation rates:
Virginia’s on-time high school graduation rate rose one point this year to 86.6 percent, and the statewide dropout rate fell one point to 7.2 percent, according to data reported today by the Virginia Department of Education (VDOE). Fifty-five percent of the diplomas earned by 2011 graduates were Advanced Studies Diplomas.
The 2011 on-time graduation rate expresses the percentage of students who were first-time ninth graders during the 2007-2008 school year and earned a Board of Education-approved diploma within four years. On-time graduation has increased by 4.5 points since 2008, the first year VDOE reported graduation rates for the state, school divisions and high schools based on student-level data that fully account for student mobility, promotion and retention.
“A one-point increase in the graduation rate means that nearly 1,000 more young Virginians are beginning their adult lives with the diploma they need to pursue further education and training or an entry-level job,” Superintendent of Public Instruction Patricia I. Wright said. “The progress our schools have made in raising graduation rates is due the efforts of hundreds of teachers, counselors, principals and other educators across the commonwealth who refused to give up on even the most challenging students.”
Yet,somehow they are accredited. There’s something not right about how they won fully accredited status.
They are not fully accredited. They are accredited with warning.
https://p1pe.doe.virginia.gov/reportcard/
Just accredited enough so we can’t use No Child Left Behind to get our kids into another school.
Actually, accreditation rating has nothing to do with No Child Left Behind. The accreditation rating is a state mandated standard for schools.
The Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) rating is a federal mandate from NCLB.
A parent is given the option, at the start of the year, to enroll their child in a different school if the zone school has not made AYP two years in a row in one subject. In other words, if Armstrong has not met AYP in Math for two years, at the onset of the school year, parents will be sent a letter allowing them to opt for another school (in district, determined by the district). There is a deadline for those applications.
You can read more about those distinctions here:
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/statistics_reports/school_report_card/accountability_guide.shtml
So if I understand this right, out of every 100 students that start Armstrong, only 4.5-7.5% leave with a diploma that would make them eligible for most colleges? This is so sad. A tremendous waste of resources and human potential both. Seriously, seriously off track here.
I’ve recently also heard that only 30% of RPS students take the SATs and the ones that do score on average of 1050.
I’m not sure the validity of these numbers, but it is a very startling statistic if true. At the middle school level, so many programs are being implemented to turn these numbers around. There are several achievement initiatives being put into place to address these issues. But honestly, when a child is coming to school without basic needs being met, it is hard to help them overcome the environmental factors in their lives to help them understand the importance education plays in getting out.
Alex…where do you get those numbers? Armstrong is between 9 – 15% if I am reading John’s post right, which would mean out of a 100, 9 -15 kids graduate with an Advanced degree, which would be your 23 credit degree (if this is who they still do it) Haven’t been in HS in a long time.
So, it looks like it is a 26 credit degree now. So that percent applies only to these diplomas.
http://www.doe.virginia.gov/instruction/graduation/advanced_studies.shtml
Standard diploma is 22. I don’t’ see where he says what percent graduate with this degree. I think it is still possible to get into a college with a Standard degree.
Been a while since I was in HS too so I could be wrong but I think most colleges (at least the 4 year ones) wanted only the Advanced one. Community colleges might take less.
It’s 50% graduating but only 9-15% of those got an Advanced degree. So .5 times .09 = .045. Compare that to statewide rate of 47.3% of kids starting HS finish with an Advanced degree (based on the two stats above). The 47.3% rate sounds pretty close to the rate that go on to college so it makes me think the advanced degree is probably the bar.
Are you saying that the 1050 is surprisingly good or bad? Is this for all three portions or just the traditional two?
By the way, I hope you aren’t teaching HS math if I had to explain that word problem to you…
😉 (I couldn’t resist the chance to bust your chops)
Found this right after my earlier post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-fairfax-should-ax-the-substandard-standard-diploma/2011/05/26/AGlyJyCH_story.html
It seems to pretty much confirm that Standard diploma is not college ready.
Also after re-reading your earlier post… “But honestly, when a child is coming to school without basic needs being met, it is hard to help them overcome the environmental factors in their lives to help them understand the importance education plays in getting out.” begs the question “then might the money we throw at education be better spent on some of these underlying causes?” I don’t know the answer but that seems like the obvious follow-up question.
Another one might be “are we wasting everyone involved’s time by making these kids attend school and might there be more constructive ways to help them?”
Thanks for the follow up. Certainly not math. History and Language Arts. 🙂
As for the degree difference, I feel like for a lot of kids, community college isn’t a bad choice. After I posted I asked my husband, also a teacher and he agreed with you that most colleges won’t accept a Standard Degree. Interesting that if it is the “Standard” that it isn’t worth much in terms of furthering education. Wonder if that was always the case.
As for educating the youth…certainly, I believe that money needs to be “thrown” at alleviating these underlying causes of failure in the classroom…but then, wouldn’t that be socialism? 😉
Community college is certainly not a bad choice, and that is not what Alex was implying by posting the link to that article.
I think we need to emphasize that community college should be a CHOICE, not a DEFAULT. If kids choose community college because they want to save money on tuition, live at home, take some more time to decide what career to pursue, etc, then community college serves them well and I am happy they have that choice.
On the other hand, if they choose community college because public high school does not prepare them for 4-year colleges, and they do not have the CHOICE of going straight to a 4-year program because their sub-par high school diploma isn’t worth much, then this is a problem.
Spending their first year of college taking remedial community college courses that do not count toward a degree is an unneeded hurdle that makes it even tougher for these kids to graduate college, get a good job, and break the cycle. High school needs to be of a quality that gives them real, attractive choices upon graduation, whether that by immediate employment (in a job that pays a living wage), community college, or 4-year college.
Just,
We’re throwing lots of money at alleviating the underlying causes already (food stamps, housing, etc.). Are you suggesting these are not helping since they still aren’t getting children ready to learn? Should we be giving a serious look at whether these programs are actually money well spent?
I agree with you that kids aren’t prepared for school. This would suggest that investing money to train them when the raw ingredients aren’t ready yet is a waste of money that could better be spent teaching more appropriate content. Realistically we probably aren’t going to get most kids from poverty to upper level colleges in one generation. Yet we continue to try to push a curriculum on all kids that is geared towards preparing for a 4 year college.
I think where I disagree with you is that the answer is not to throw more government money at the problem, at least not yet. It’s to spend the money we are already spending more efficiently. We need to insist that our funds are better used and if we don’t see tangible results, then cut bait and try something new. When we are at a place where we can show some progress, a lot more folks will support additional investment. One of the biggest concerns many have with “socialism” is its correlation with wasted money on inefficient programs (often funneled into the pockets of those who administer the programs).
RPS sure sounds like this type of system. How many administrators does RPS have earning six figure salaries while they continue to churn out sub-par results like these. All the while, they are crying that the answer is just to give more momey for them to handle.
My question wasn’t so much should we spend more on underlying causes, it was which of these is a better use of funds – additional investment trying to get kids without the fundamental background needed to learn (i.e. more of the same) or spending the same money to address those issues (i.e. admit this isn’t working and try something radical and different). In other words if you had to choose, which would produce better returns?
Of course doing everything would always give better results from a purely outcome based perspective. In a perfect world, everyone would live in a big house with all the food they needed and adults around 24/7 to help them learn. However, there are a limited amount of funds to work with. How can one honestly expect folks paying the highest property tax rates in the area to fork over more when the folks running the system have been producing miserable results like this.
This brings me to a point about “socialism.” I don’t think most folks are opposed to helping others. The knock on socialism for a lot of us is that it tends to be synonymous with lack of accountability, mismanagement of funds and cronyism. It’s not that we want to screw the less fortunate (at least all but the biggest assholes out there). If programs can show results and are making progress towards ending the cycle, they’ll pass with a vast majority. If you want to sell social programs to a majority, the best way to do so is to show that they are effective and will create a better world in the future rather than creating permanent dependencies with no real progress.
I hear the emotional case and it breaks my heart to suggest anything that might be construed as quitting. My mom taught in the poorest county in Virginia for a lot of years. I know the pain a teacher feels when you see kids with potential and heart but know you won’t be able to do much as long as they go home to hell every night. But let’s be honest, we need to ask hard questions and maybe more funds isn’t the answer until we find a better way to use them.
I suspect that the number of six-figure-bureaucrats RPS has employed may explain some of the low efficiency. I also worry that any new funds will go towards more bureaucrats to lobby for more funds before they make it to the classrooms.
As for the SAT scores. The 1050 is horrible. For all three sections, from what I understand. No idea if these statistics are true. This was hearsay from someone else.
Found this:
http://newweb.richmond.k12.va.us/about-rps/statistics/sats2009-2010.aspx
No idea about percent of kids who take it.
Wow. I need to read.
The number of kids per school who take it is listed. Some of the schools are VERY low.
Damn, I have been out of school a long time. Back in my day (old person voice), 1600 was the max SAT score. 1050 would have been a pretty average score in my school district.
Sorry about the double post. Basically the same thing said twice because the first time I typed it, it didn’t show up as pending approval. Ignore the first post.
#16 – wow, that is bad. Thanks for tracking this down. It’s especially bad because the kids who are taking the SAT should be positively selecting (i.e. the kids who are most likely to attend college would be the ones who would take the test).
Also, I seem to remember hearing when I took the test that random guessing would get you somewhere around 300-350. Not sure if that’s true or perhaps even higher today because of the re-centering they did a few years ago. If it is, it means that even the top students from Armstrong and a few other area schools still haven’t learned much more than randomly guessing.
Why are more heads not rolling at RPS? I don’t think we pin this on the teachers so much as the administrators but there’s got to be some accountability. If we can’t solve this, let these kids start learning a trade at an earlier age so they have some marketable skills.