What DC Schools Won’t Report: Many NAEP Subgroup Gains Slowed under Rhee/Henderson

On December 05, 2016, retired DC teacher Erich Martel sent an investigation request to DC’s Attorney General Karl Racine. In short, Martel is asking Racine to investigate two issues: 1) the failure of DC Mayor Muriel Bowser to follow procedure in nominating Antwan Wilson as the next chancellor of schools (Kaya Henderson left effective October 01, 2016), and 2) inconsistencies in reporting DC’s NAEP improvement from 2007 to 2015 and the failure to report a more thorough picture of DC’s NAEP story by excluding info from 1998 to 2007.

Martel has painstakingly compiled his evidence and explanations in his December 05, 2016, letter to Racine, which can be accessed here: dc-ag-investigation-request-dc-chancellor-search-16-1205

(Martel also includes the following supplemental documents: dcps-naep-tuda-2007-to-2015-11-district-comp, dcps-weberp-discov-email-1352-54, and naep_2015_sped_ell_exclusion_district-1.)

In this post, I focus on issues related to DC’s NAEP results and the shaping and selectively reporting (and outright misrepresenting) of said results in order for former DC Chancellor Kaya Henderson to be credited with making DC “the fastest improving urban school district in the country.”

NAEP is primarily a state-level assessment; however, in 2002, NAEP began administering a “Trial Urban District Assessment” (TUDA). NAEP TUDA was administered to six districts in 2002 in reading and writing and has grown to include 21 districts in math and reading by 2015. DC has participated in NAEP TUDA since 2002. However, DC is both a “district” and a “state” as far as NAEP is concerned; therefore, DC has scores for reading that go back to 1992 (grade 4) and 1998 (grade 8) and scores for math that begin in 1992 (grade 4) and 1990 (grade 8). (Those scores can be accessed using this NAEP search engine.)

One major issue with the sale of DC as “the fastest improving school district in the country” is that the 2015 NAEP results reported on DC Public Schools (DCPS) website have been misreported in a manner that makes two of the four 2007 scores appear lower than they actually were. Thus, the 2015 scores falsely show “improvements” that are not real. The genius in this inaccurate reporting is that it alters the older, 2007 scores, which readers are less likely to take the effort to verify. Instead, most reader attention is on the recently-released, 2015 scores. Martel also adds that upon initial release, DCPS made it more difficult for readers to access the 2007 scores via its website.

From Martel’s letter:

Three of the four 2007 aggregate averages are fabricated: they differ from NAEP reports;

Ex-Chancellor Henderson posted three altered 2007 NAEP-TUDA aggregate scale score averages on the DCPS website as “proof” that DCPS is the “fastest improving urban school district.” The TUDA website (select DCPS) shows the correct aggregate averages for the four 2007 and 2015 tests.

Table 1 shows the three altered and five accurate scale score averages, the resulting changes or “gains” by test, then as a total of the four tests (Altered shown in red Italics)

Year	Reading, Gr4	Reading, Gr8	Math, Gr4	Math, Gr8	Totals
2007	198	237	214	244
2015	214	245	232	258
07 > 15 Gains	+16	+8	+18	+14	+ 56

 

Table 2 shows the three correct and five accurate scale score averages, the resulting changes or “gains” by test, then as a total of the four tests (Correct shown in blue) 

Year	Reading, Gr4	Reading, Gr8	Math, Gr4	Math, Gr8	Totals
2007	197	241	214	248
2015	214	245	232	258
07 > 15 Gains	+17	+4	+18	+10	Correct: +49

 

Martel further shows that when DC’s scores are compared to the 10 other districts participating in NAEP TUDA, that “fastest improving urban school district” story shows its limitations as more of a grade 4 story than a grade 8.

DC’s overall NAEP reading and math for grade 4 ranked 1st for most improved from 2007 to 2015.  However, grade 8 scores for math have DC tied for 2nd place overall– but the grade 8 math black student subgroup ranked 6th, and the grade 8 free/reduced lunch subgroup ranked 8th.

The above subgroup story is not stellar, but it is easy to hide these lagging subgroups by simply reporting an overall ranking.

Note that students who were not eligible for free/reduced lunch ranked 1st.

For grade 8 reading, even the overall ranking cannot conceal the “fastest improving” myth:

As for DC’s grade 8 reading score improvements from 2007 to 2015: DC ranked 6th overall– with the black and Hispanic student subgroups ranking 9th, and free/reduced lunch subgroups tying for 9th. What apparently “raised” DC’s grade 8 reading improvement to 6th overall were the students who were not eligible for free/reduced lunch; they ranked 1st.

When it comes to DC’s grade 8 math score improvement, the subgroup that ranked 1st was the one for the students who were not eligible for free/reduced lunch. The same was true for grade 8 reading.

From 2007 to 2015, the gap between NAEP scores for all students and black students is profound, but the DC public does not get to see the subgroup breakdown of scores in order to see this growing rift, as Martel notes:

The general public knows that urban school districts have high percentages of minority and/or economically disadvantaged students, many of whom have low test scores. Most will, therefore, assume that “fastest improving urban school district” was referring to them. Not only are they are the focus of TUDA, they were the rationale for mayoral control and the greater authority delegated to the chancellors. Not so. The 2007 to 2015 gains she posted, i.e. when  using correct averages (17+4+18+10 = 49), are aggregate gains.

…The gaps between All students and Black students more than doubled in grade 4 and tripled in grade 8 between 2007… and 2015….

Martel outlays the above in several detailed tables, which are available as part of his investigation request linked above.

One final point from Martel’s work, and it’s a big one:

DCPS’s reporting DC’s NAEP “improvement” only as far back as 2007 conceals the fact that DC was making greater gains on NAEP prior to Henderson’s chancellorship as well as that of her predecessor, the notorious and polarizing Michelle Rhee. As Martel reports:

Under Rhee and Henderson student improvement slowed dramatically.  Rhee and Henderson suppressed data showing that Black and Disadvantaged students’ averages rose twice as fast from 1998 to 2007 as from 2007 to 2015; White & Hispanic averages rose four times faster.

Table A:

NAEP-TUDA Scale Score Avgs & Comparative Gains: Grade 4 Reading: 1998-2007 vs 2007-2015

Year	All	Black	Hisp	White	FRL-Elig	Not Elig
1998	179	174	173	247	172	215
2007	197	192	206	258	188	216
2015	214	202	206	262	192	256
Gains 1998-2007	+18	+18	+33	+11	+16	+1
Gains 2007-2015	+17	+10	0	+ 4	+10	+40

Table B:

NAEP-TUDA Scale Score Avgs & Comparative Gains: Grade 8 Reading: 1998 -2007 vs 2007 -2015

Year	All	Black	Hisp	White	FRL-Elig	Not Elig
1998	236	233	246	280	229	253
2007	241	238	249	301*	234	253
2015	245	236	244	299	233	281
Gains 1998-2007	+ 5	+ 5	+ 3	+21	+ 5	0
Gains 2007-2015	+ 4	–  2	–  5	–  2	–  1	+28

(*No average for White students was reported for 2007; 301 is the average from 2005)

Table C:

NAEP-TUDA Scale Score Avgs & Comparative Gains: Grade 4 Math: 2000-2007 vs  2007-2015

Year	All	Black	Hisp	White	FRL-Elig	Not Elig
2000	192	188	190	254	186	219
2007	214	209	220	262	207	228
2015	232	220	233	275	219	266
Gains 2000-07	+22	+21	+30	+ 8	+21	+ 9
Gains 2007-15	+18	+11	+13	+13	+12	+38

Table D:

NAEP-TUDA Scale Score Avgs & Comparative Gains: Grade 8 Math: 2000-2007 vs  2007-2015

Year	All	Black	Hisp	White	FRL-Elig	Not Elig
2000	235	231	236	300	226	258
2007	248	245	251	317*	243	259
2015	258	248	263	314	247	300
Gains 2000-07	+13	+14	+15	+17	+17	+ 1
Gains 2007-15	+10	+ 3	+12	– 3	+ 4	+41

(*No White average reported for 2007; 317 is the average from 2005)

As Tables A – D (renamed by me) show, under Rhee and Henderson, the subgroup that has made the greatest NAEP gains for DC is the group of students who are not eligible for free/reduced lunch.

Martel offers this summary:

Black, Hispanic and Disadvantaged students’ improvement rates were two to three times faster in the nine years that ended in 2007 than in the eight years from 2007 to 2015.

Rhee took the DCPS helm in June 2007; when she left in 2010, her deputy, Kaya Henderson, took over.

According to NAEP, they both failed. So has the mayoral control of schools responsible for both Rhee and Henderson. And what is particularly striking is that these “reformers” would rather lie to the public about their success by concealing information than confront their failure and change their corporate-reform-fed course.

I challenge DC Mayor Muriel Bowser to offer a public response to Martel’s NAEP story as publicized in this post, and I challenge DCPS to post the full spectrum of DC’s NAEP results, beginning with the 1998/2000 results; to make such posting easily accessible on the DCPS website, and to use accurate numbers.

  Time to scrape that mayoral control off of your shoe, DC.

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Released July 2016– Book Three:

School Choice: The End of Public Education? 

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Schneider is a southern Louisiana native, career teacher, trained researcher, and author of both A Chronicle of Echoes: Who’s Who In the Implosion of American Public Education and Common Core Dilemma: Who Owns Our Schools?.

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