(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
So this series has potential. With a little polishing up this combo of soul singer Joss Stone and the Stone Temple Pilots could work.
Let me help Kimmel and crew out here. Gretchen Wilson and Alice in Chains showed you how to do this back in 2007:
5 Comments | 
random pop culture | Tagged: Alice in Chains, Gretchen Wilson, Jimmy Kimmel, Joss Stone, Mashup Mondays, Stone Temple Pilots | 
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Posted by matthewladner
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
I’m going to use my Professor X powers to read your mind…you are thinking “Alright Ladner enough with the Arizona NAEP scores- won’t you give it a rest?”
No I will not. There’s a party going on right here-it’s a celeNAEPtion and it lasts throughout the year.
I’ve anticipated some of the possible objections to celebrating Arizona NAEP scores. Maybe those dastardly charter schools may have been circumventing their random assignment admission lottery legal requirements to load up on rich white kids! Maybe they don’t have many English Language Learners, special education students, Hispanic students, etc. District schools have to take everyone who can afford to buy a home in their attendance zone so comparisons aren’t fair…
Well some find this a very useful story, but we can actually examine it in the data. Let me note from the outset that variations in student demographics and special program status do exist between schools and school systems, achievement gaps between such student groups are a well-established phenomenon and that some accounting for such differences should be (carefully) made if our goal is to judge the effectiveness of a system. The best way to test this sort of thing is with a well done random-assignment study, but sadly we don’t have one.
I reported earlier that Arizona charter schools essentially tied Massachusetts (the highest scoring state) and the private school national average scores on the NAEP 8th grade reading test in 2015. What happens if we only look at the scores of general education students whose family income make them eligible for a free or reduced lunch? If those dastardly charter schools have been carefully avoiding special needs and ELL students it isn’t going to help them with this comparison.
Let’s just put it on the table that free and reduced lunch eligible is going to translate to a higher proportion of Hispanic students in Arizona charter schools, but that was not a problem hombre. Do you notice anything similar about all those states (slightly) ahead of Arizona charter schools? Let me give you a hint…
Oh and…
2 Comments | charter schools | Tagged: Arizona charter school NAEP scores | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
My #Shadowfaction partner in crime Lisa Graham Keegan and I hit the pages of the Arizona Republic to celeNAEP good times in Arizona. Teaser trailer:
NAEP has given 40 exams on mathematics and reading to representative samples of Arizona students in various years since the early 1990s. As a low-income state with more than its share of student challenges (high poverty and non-native English speaking rates), Arizona has never met or exceeded the national average score – until now.
Arizona’s eighth-graders edged out the national average in mathematics and only narrowly missed doing the same in reading. Therefore, Arizona’s Class of 2019 carries a special distinction in state history – one that future classes can both match and exceed. Achievement has improved substantially since the last pre-recession measures in 2007.
Of notable attention are Arizona’s charter-school students, who matched the scores for the highest-scoring states on the 2015 NAEP. On eighth grade mathematics, for instance, Arizona charter students scored in a statistical dead heat with Massachusetts, the highest scoring of the 50 states.
2 Comments | NAEP | Tagged: #shadowfaction, Arizona charter school NAEP scores, Arizona NAEP scores, Kool and the Gang, Lisa Graham Keegan | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
,,,they scored the same as the nationwide number for private school students on the NAEP 8th grade math test in 2013 and 2011 (no new private school number in 2015). I’m not sure what to say about this other than:
Leave a Comment » | charter schools, NAEP | Tagged: Arizona charter school NAEP scores | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
Where have you been all our lives Kung Fury? I mean I thought Iron Sky might hold the title for awesome/absurd low budget sci-fi romps with Nazi bad guys for a good long while. That is, until you judo-chopped every other movie ever into low-earth orbit with your totally 1985 video game awesomeness!
This Swedish kickstarter project is live streaming on Netflix. Go watch it. Like RIGHT NOW!!!!
5 Comments | Pass the Popcorn | Tagged: Kung Fury | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
Early applications for the Nevada ESA program show that a majority of applicants thus far come from well to do areas, and 21% of applicants thus far qualify for the higher amount for low-income families.
Maybe Howard Fuller was right? Nope- at least not yet. Let’s keep clear of the panic button.
The program does not commence until January, and so these applicants represent the earliest of early adopters. Efforts have commenced to raise awareness of the program in low-income areas, but such efforts take time. Nevada’s private school sector has a small footprint and it should not shock anyone that most private schools are located in relatively affluent areas- which will impact interest in the program.
It’s worth noting that many suburban Nevada schools have overcrowding issues, and spots opening in suburban districts create open-enrollment transfer opportunities for non-residents. Most important of all- NVESA is not a fire it and forget it program. We will need the efforts of both philanthropists and innovators in order to increase the supply of private school space in under-served areas. Sadly the two lawsuits attacking the program will likely slow this process to the detriment of low-income families. Moreover parents have the ability to pursue education outside of private schools under NVESA, but again, we should expect this to unfold incrementally over time.
NVESA is not a magic bullet, and it will not instantly transform education, dry every tear or solve every problem. This is a marathon, not a sprint.
4 Comments | Education Savings Accounts | Tagged: Howard Fuller, Nevada Education Savings Accounts | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
So nationally 8th grade math scores declined by three points. That’s not good but on a 500 scale point test it isn’t clear that it is anything to get too excited about, although it interrupted a long-term positive trend. Florida’s 8th grade math scores however declined by six points. That’s more worrisome.
So digging around in the data reveals that Florida charter schools were unaffected by the swoon- their 8th grade math scores were flat between 2013 and 2015- and delightfully high to boot (see chart).
The Trial Urban District Assessment has information for Miami-Dade and Hillsborough County (Tampa area). Here’s where the mystery deepens- Miami was also unaffected with flat scores between 2013 and 2015. Hillsborough however:
8 point drop in the Tampa area according to TUDA. If there is any rhyme or reason to this I can’t discern it. Some of the national meta-explanations I have seen bandied about don’t seem to work to explain trends in Florida. For instance some have pointed the finger at Obama’s state waivers. There may or may not be something to that nationally, but Florida schools all operated under the same waiver. Standards/testing transition issues likewise impacted all schools-is there some reason why Miami and charter schools should brush this off while the state as a whole did not? Something peculiar may have happened in Hillsborough but Tampa is not big enough to do a huge amount of damage to Florida’s statewide average.
I’m stumped, but always happy to employ the wisdom of the crowd. If you have bright ideas or wild speculation to offer, that’s what the Jayblog comment section was made for!
6 Comments | NAEP, NCLB | Tagged: 2015 NAEP | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
Well just to keep anyone from saying “oh yeah- but he didn’t show us 4th grade math!”
My reaction:
and
1 Comment | NAEP | Tagged: 2015 NAEP, Arizona charter schools, Arizona NAEP scores | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
So we may be able to rule out the weird sample theory since NAEP has different random student samples for each test. On 8th grade math AZ charter school students scored in a statistical dead heat with Massachusetts. While there certainly is a self-selection factor in terms of parents applying for charter schools, I can tell you that every way I found to break the above numbers down shows a charter school advantage- charters scored better among low-income kids, and among middle/high income kids. They scored higher among Anglo kids and among Hispanic kids. Because charter school students only make up 17% of the student body, the NAEP data can only go so far in slicing and dicing data.
The point isn’t that self-selection had nothing to do with these results-they obviously did although we have a growing mountain of random assignment data from around the country that shows admission lottery winners outperform lottery losers. The most important points- first tens of thousands of Arizona parents sit on the outside looking in at charter school spots. Second- both district and charter results have improved in Arizona through a very difficult period of funding cuts for both sectors.
Congratulations to all of Arizona’s long suffering educators and leaders. We’re not there yet, but we are on our way.
1 Comment | charter schools, NAEP | Tagged: 2015 NAEP, Arizona charter schools | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner
(Guest Post by Matthew Ladner)
Previously I had shown that if you compare general education low-income students, that Arizona charter schools made very large academic gains on the 2015 NAEP. This morning I woke up and thought: what if we compared Arizona charter school students to other statewide averages as a whole? Arizona has the highest percentage of students attending charter schools of any state. There are more students attending Arizona charter schools than Wyoming public schools after all, so why not?
I ran the numbers for 8th grade reading. Here are the results:
Well how about that? Now before you start babbling conspiracy theories about student demographics let me remind you of a few things. First of all, those states up at the top are all very pale complected, host Ivy League universities and have average family incomes in the six figures. Arizona meanwhile is a relatively poor state with a plurality of Hispanic students and a law which requires random assignment lotteries to charter schools. I don’t have statistics for the percentage of Hispanic students in Arizona charter schools but having visited many of them I can assure you that it will beat the living daylights out of the same figure for New Hampshire. In other words if you want to wildly speculate about student demographics you can lick the strings of Angus’ electric guitar while he has it plugged in to his portable nuclear generator necessary to burst your ear drums and make you love it.
Did I forget to mention that Massachusetts probably spends more than twice the amount per pupil when compared to Arizona charter schools? No? Ok well that too.
Well, maybe the 8th grade reading sample just happened to over-sample the highest performing charters in 2015. Could be-so let’s check the 4th grade reading numbers:
So it’s not much of a mystery to see why tens of thousands of Arizona parents sit unhappily on charter school waiting lists- the gap in scores between AZ charter schools and the AZ average is considerable. This is not to say that every Arizona charter school is fantastic (they aren’t) or that every AZ district school is low performing (this is not the case). Moreover Arizona district schools have been improving while dealing while a great deal of adversity since 2007 and in the end this is absolutely crucial. Key to that progress however is a growing little New England scoring school system out here in our delightful patch of cactus.
Arizona Governor Doug Ducey campaigned on funding the wait list- getting more resources out to district and charter schools with long wait lists to get more of them in the door and off the list. I hope the above charts indicate just what a profoundly wonderful idea that would be, so…
7 Comments | NAEP | Tagged: 2015 NAEP, AZ Charter Schools, Doug Ducey | Permalink
Posted by matthewladner
Jay P. Greene's Blog 