Okay, I'm still thinking about testing.
I've been crunching numbers lately. My focus group was three elementary schools in my local district. The statistics come from my school district's website and are available for everyone to see.
One interesting stat is parent level of education. Using stats developed by the California Department of Education, I pulled up information on these three schools that happen to be within about a 3 mile radius of each other. One of those is my school, the school where I teach. Here are the stats:
Parent Education Levels
Source: California Dept of Education -- Assessment, Accountability and Awards Division
2009 Academic Performance Index (API) Report
My School percent
Not a high school graduate 31
High school graduate 41
Some college 16
College graduate 7
Graduate school 4
My School's 2009 API: 754
My School is located in an immigrant and working class neighborhood with a gang population of >3,000.
My School is located in an immigrant and working class neighborhood with a gang population of >3,000.
Nearby School #1 percent
Not a high school graduate 9
High school graduate 19
Some college 30
College graduate 27
Graduate school 16
Nearby School #1's 2009 API: 845
Nearby School #1 is gifted magnet school located within 2 miles of My School.
Nearby School #1 is gifted magnet school located within 2 miles of My School.
Nearby School #2 percent
Not a high school graduate 3
High school graduate 7
Some college 27
College graduate 35
Graduate School 28
Nearby School #2's 2009 API: 898
Nearby School #2 is a School for Accelerated Studies (attracts gifted students) and is located in a secluded neighborhood within 2 miles of My School.
Nearby School #2 is a School for Accelerated Studies (attracts gifted students) and is located in a secluded neighborhood within 2 miles of My School.
The "API" of a school is a numeric valuation based on the performance of students on a standards-based test given once a year. The goal is for all schools to have an API of 800 or greater. My school--in a working class and immigrant neighborhood--has been inching up toward 800 slowly but surely. "Nearby School #1" is a magnet school for gifted kids. "Nearby School #2" happens to be my son's old elementary school. If you add up the percentages of each school, they come to over 100%, but I assume this is because of how they rounded the decimals. So, my numbers below may be off by a percentage or two, but you'll get the idea.
Just to take a quick look at the stats, note that 72% of parents in the survey at My School never went to college. Compare this with 28% at Nearby School #1 and only 10% at Nearby School #2 who had no college experience.
Do you see that--as parent education level goes up, the API goes up?
Oh--and look at Nearby School #2 with the meteoric API of 898--90% have been to college, 63% are college grads, and a whopping 28% of the parents went to grad school. Amazing.
I really don't want to club you over the head with a baseball bat on this one, so I'll leave you to your own designs. Look at the numbers, check other schools, and see if you can find a similar correlation. Bon apetit!
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