Here are the CMS schools that grew the most

It's been kind of hard to tear attention away from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools Superintendent Heath Morrison's sudden departure this week (Here's the latest, in case you're not up to speed).

But students are still in classrooms and issues that faced the district in September and October are still relevant now. One of those is school overcrowding and enrollment growth. You'll recall that this issue reared its head just a few weeks ago when CMS put out its early projections for the 20th day of school. The district said it had thousands more students than it expected to have. The district as a whole grew by about 2,500.

I was able to dig up school-by-school data to find out where the growth in CMS occurred. I compared the official 20th day numbers the district posted recently with the first principal's monthly report from the last school year.

Here are the five schools that had the largest increase in students by percentage, and the five schools that lost the most. I chose percentage because the schools that had the largest increases in number of students all tended to be high schools (since they have more students in general).

Largest increases:

1) Garinger High, up 365 students, or 26%
2) Allenbrook Elementary, up 77 students, or 16%
3) Dilworth Elementary, up 89 students, or 15%
4) Sterling Elementary, up 78 students, or 13%
5) Sedgefield Middle, up 84 students, or 13%

Garinger grew significantly after the board voted in February to send most traditional high school students at the Cochrane Collegiate Academy to Garinger to create the iMeck magnet program. Allenbrook Elementary is in west Charlotte, and Sterling Elementary is at the intersection of South Boulevard and I-485.

Largest decreases:

1) Winget Park Elementary, down 535 students, or 54 percent.
2) Cochrane Collegiate Academy, down 275 students, or 28 percent.
3) Hawthorne High, down 43 students, or 24 percent.
4) Cato Middle College High, down 40 students, or 20 percent.
5) Berewick Elementary, down 102 students, or 15 percent

Palisades Park Elementary opened this fall in the Steele Creek area to relieve the overcrowded Winget Park. For the explanation on Cochrane, see above. Hawthorne High transitioned from being an alternative high school to a medical career magnet.

Here's the full spreadsheet.

Overall, 90 schools grew, and four were new. You'll notice that Olympic High's schools are a little funky because they changed up some classifications.

CMS wants ability to start school three weeks earlier

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has outlined a draft of its legislative priorities for next year, and topping the list: The ability to start schools three weeks earlier.

That would allow schools to get their first semester final exams done before winter break, CMS associate general counsel Jonathan Sink explained to the school board Tuesday. The board is scheduled to vote on the agenda Nov. 19.

The district has nine priorities for state government, and three for local government. Here's a full list, with some explanations offered by Sink.

State priorities

1) Calendar flexibility. At a minimum, the ability to open three weeks earlier than currently allowed.

2) Raise teacher pay to national average.

3) Get the authority to have complete control over local funds.

4) Restore state-funded growth formula. This is a response to a controversial measure passed this summer.

5) Restore state funding for driver's education programs. Otherwise, allow the district to charge students the full cost of the program, or end the mandate that schools provide it.

6) Get charter-like flexibilities. CMS would also like the ability to start its own charter schools. We are asking GA to serve as chartering authority. Further, CMS wants a mandate that parents choose where they will enroll their students (in public schools or charters) by April 1. This would help eliminate discrepancies in enrollment expectations.

7) Oppose mandated inter-county and intra-county student transfer legislation.

8) Fully fund pre-K programs. CMS says it currently gets money for 20,000 students, but says another 40,000 could potentially be eligible.

9) Change the grading formula for the upcoming A-F school performance grades. Right now, the formula is weighted 80 percent toward proficiency and 20 percent toward growth. CMS wants an even split.

Local priorities

1) Restore city of Charlotte funding for school resource officers in CMS.

2) Establish a collaborative inter-governmental committee to identify, prioritize, plan and fund operating and capital budgets.

3) Establish a collaborative inter-governmental committee of planning experts to analyze the impacts of development on CMS.

Grading N.C. schools: House wants to change curve

North Carolina's public schools are poised to get letter grades based on this year's results on state exams.  But it's not yet clear how those grades will be assigned.

The bill passed last summer called for 80 percent of a school's score to be based on student proficiency and 20 percent on growth.  The House budget plan introduced Tuesday would flip that.

Proficiency is easy to understand:  It's the percent of students who scored at or above grade level on state exams.  Critics say that doesn't reflect the quality of a school as much as the readiness and motivation of the students who attend.

Growth is a more complicated calculation designed to measure whether students did better or worse than expected based on past performance.  It can recognize a school that's making strides with the most challenged students,  or highlight a school that's not doing enough to stimulate students who are already doing well.  You can look up last year's growth scores here,  and here's an article I wrote about last year's results.

Ranson Middle scored high on growth, low on proficiency

Somehow the combination of those measures will be turned into a score from 0-100.  The original bill sets a 10-point scale:  90 and up is an A,  80 and up a B,  etc.,  with anything below 60 an F.  However,  it sets a 15-point scale for the first year,  with As going as low as 85 and Fs falling below 40.  The House proposal would keep that lower scale moving forward.

The House plan also includes a couple items that will likely be celebrated in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.  Like the governor's budget,  but unlike the Senate's,  it includes almost $1.9 million for six early and middle college high schools,  three of which are in CMS.  They're set to open in August,  and CMS is counting on the money.

It also eliminates the "25 percent plan"  that CMS and many other districts have been fighting.

House Speaker Thom Tillis,  a Mecklenburg Republican who was once an active CMS parent,  said the push to approve a budget before the end of June will help districts plan for the coming year,  something local officials often wish for.  But what will emerge from the speeded-up work to mesh the House and Senate plans remains to be seen.

CMS high school teachers hosed on ratings?

The irony was obvious last spring:  Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools didn't trust the state's new final exams enough to count them toward high school students' grades.  But those tests were created to rate teachers,  so teachers not only had to give the exams but spend hours grading new open-ended questions.

Now the results of the teacher effectiveness ratings are in,  and they indicate something went awry in rating CMS high school teachers.

Across the state and in CMS,  more than three-quarters of all teachers met or exceeded the goal for student gains.  But when I broke that out by grade level,  more than 80 percent of teachers in CMS elementary,  middle and K-8 schools met or exceeded the goal,  compared with just over 60 percent of CMS high school teachers.

Erlene Lyde at West Charlotte

I also ran the numbers for more than 12,700 non-CMS high school teachers around the state,  and 78 percent of them met or exceeded the target.

It's possible that these numbers reveal a real shortcoming unique to CMS high school teachers.  But a handful of  teachers and principals I spoke with questioned the results on two grounds:  The validity of the tests and the fact that CMS teens knew they had no stake in scoring high.  Erlene Lyde, a West Charlotte High teacher and vice president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Association of Educators,  put it most bluntly:  "Flawed data generated from flawed tests administered in flawed conditions and graded using a flawed scoring mechanism."

Thus, the perpetual challenge:  I think it's important to analyze and report on education data.  But at the same time,  you have to question what the numbers really mean.

I'm still not sure how well the EVAAS formulas from SAS Institute turn student test scores into meaningful measures of school growth and teacher value. But the EVAAS site for looking up school growth ratings is one of the best public data presentations I've seen.  It's a simple matter to look up schools and make comparisons in a number of different ways  (fellow geeks, check out the scatterplot option under comparison reports).

School growth and teacher effectiveness are both based on students'  year-to-year progress on state exams.  As you'd expect,  schools that score well on one measure are likely to look good on the other.  But they're not identical for a number of reasons.  One of them is that school growth is based only on End-of-Grade and End-of-Course exams,  while the teacher ratings include more tests.

Some of you asked excellent detail questions when those ratings first came out. I asked Jennifer Preston of the N.C. Department of Public Instruction to clarify the tests used and the way student results were assigned to teachers.  Here's her report,  for those who are interested in diving deep:

• The Department of Public Instruction and the SAS Institute were able to provide teacher-level value-added data for a pretty expansive list of grades/subjects and courses.  They are: Reading/ELA in Grades 4 – 8, Mathematics in Grades 4 – 8, Science in Grades 5 – 8, Social Studies in Grades 5 – 8, Biology, Earth/Environmental Science, Chemistry, Physics, English I, English II, English III, Algebra I/Math I, Geometry, Algebra II/Integrated Math III, World History, Civics and Economics, United States History, American History I, and American History II.  These estimates are all based on the administration of End-of-Grade assessments, End-of-Course assessments, and NC Final Exams.  North Carolina has also had a well-established Career and Technical Education assessment program for many years; teachers of more than twenty-five Career and Technical Education courses received individual value-added scores.  
• In order to ensure that all value-added estimates are fair and valid, we do have some safeguards in place around minimum student counts.  For End-of-Grade Assessments in Science, End-of-Course Assessments. NC Final Exams, and the CTE State Assessments, teacher must be connected at least ten students and the equivalent of six "full students," defined as students with 100% instructional responsibility claimed by one teacher.  This point is most easily explained with examples.  Let's say that an Exceptional Children's teacher has claimed 20 students at 10% instructional responsibility for each one.  While the teacher is connected to ten students, he is only connected to the equivalent of two "full students" (20 students X 10% each = 2 full students). The teacher will not have a value-added score because he is connected to fewer than six "full students."  A different Exceptional Children's teacher has claimed 20 students at 50% instructional responsibility for each one.  This teacher is connected to at least ten students, and is connected to the equivalent of 10 "full students."  He will have a value-added score.  Each of the students must have at least three prior test scores (in any grade/subject or course) in order to be used in the analysis.  For End-of-Grade Assessments in English Language Arts and Mathematics (Grades 4 – 8), a teacher must be connected to six "full students," using the same terminology as described above.  These business rules are to ensure the quality of the value-added data – if a value-added estimate is calculated using a very small number of students, it's simply not valid.  While a bit complicated, these rules simply reflect the reality of teaching today – there are lots of cases in which teachers share instructional responsibility for students and work as a team to provide them with the services they need.