Oh, dear. Kevin, do we really need to say this again? Apparently so.

Aggregate test scores are a poor measure of school performance.

"It’s important to note that 76% of DPS students are either black or hispanic, and nearly two-thirds of DPS students are economically disadvantaged."

You put this in one sentence, three-quarters of the way down the article, in parentheses, when it really should occupy at least half the article.

Very poorly done. Do better next time.

Is there any historical trend that can be teased out? I know extensive grade level testing is a product of the 1990's and early 2000's, but is there any historical data on previous tests used? This idea of struggling to get ahead sounds plausible, but how long have we been struggling?

It looks like NC has had some form of standardized testing for high school completion since 1978; end of course tests for Algebra I and English I appear to have started around 1985. (page 26 of this document: http://www.dpi.state.nc.us/docs/acre/history/accountabilityfinalreport.pdf )

(maybe I'll get bored and look into it myself later)

Kevin,

Is there any insight to be gained by looking at the economically disadvantaged cohort as a group and then sifting through that segment by race, gender, ethnicity, or geographic location within the County? Likewise, how do these slices look among those who do not qualify for free or reduced lunch?

I hold out some hope that the true achievement gap by race, controlled for poverty, will not be nearly as wide.

@Justin-
This is an old report but it has some interesting figures. I'm assuming it passed review by the faculty adviser of the student.

https://econ.duke.edu/uploads/assets/dje/2008/Manderscheid.pdf

The Manderscheid paper is excellent and worth a read. I did my own analysis of it as part of the Two Durhams series here at BCR, nearly seven years ago. (For more info, see: http://www.bullcityrising.com/2008/03/two-durhams-sep.html)

And I still accept the underlying thesis of that article, namely that poverty is a major driver of school performance, cutting across state lines.

I've been intrigued by the lens of analysis that Alex Modestou has brought to the conversation, though, because it highlights a disparity that doesn't make sense to me across North Carolina districts.

The patterns of white advantages in resources and wealth are national, not local phenomena. I would not be surprised (disappointed, yes, but not surprised) to see white students at nominally higher passage rates on standardized tests than black or Hispanic students.

What's not explained purely by poverty to me, however, is what would lead DPS white student performance (GLP) to rank 6th/115, black student performance 60th/115, and Hispanic student performance 105th/115.

I'm skeptical that the _relative_ difference in performance, across districts, is explained entirely by poverty. I would have expected white, black and Hispanic students' relative performance at DPS versus other districts to have been more alike. If DPS ranked, say, 40th in white performance, 45th in black performance, and 39th in Hispanic performance, we'd still want to see improvements, but at least there wouldn't be questions of relative equity.

To me, this is where other questions become interesting. Do factors like discipline and in-school suspensions (which we'll just touch on, but which is and will continue to arise as a topic more broadly) in other districts explain some of the difference? Does DPS disproportionately fund programs that appeal to white parents and families while underfunding programs for Hispanic, LEP, and EC students?

The data we can access in this series don't lead to definitive conclusions on these kind of questions. They do suggest, in some cases, that we are spending significantly more in areas like programs for targeted populations than peer districts, yet see extremely low performance in those areas; and, that areas like regular classroom instruction or CTE see relatively the same or less funding as peer districts.

The bottom line, though, is in the need for more scrutiny as to why relative performance gaps are so stark, and whether DPS funding priorities can or should realign to (a) spend money more effectively and (b) narrow at least the relative performance gaps among districts.

Alex,
I am not sure if a 5-year comparison goes back far enough. This could reflect where counties are in their bond cycle of funding capital needs. Maybe Durham has been playing catch up on capital spending recently after years of neglect, or maybe this is another area where spending does not match the end results. I do think we would need to look at a 10 or 15 year cycle of capital spending to really tell the tale.

In any case, the idea that we are 2nd in the state for capital spending while having a dozen semi-permanent trailers at Riverside is curious.

I'm assuming perhaps inaccurately that the students are relatively mixed in terms of race in their classes. If so then the problem doesn't seem to be teachers but factors external to the classroom. No matter how much money you throw at the teachers it won't fix the problems outside the classroom: the need for more role models, structure, expectations, etc.

I agree with comments on accounting for FRPL. I made some graphs to illustrate.
https://durhamstats.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/school-performance-and-frpl-2/