Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Another open thread

Replacing the hijacked converted open thread with a new one. Discuss whatever you like!

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

What hijacking? I wasn't on last night -- were there comments made and deleted that I didn't see?

Greg Linden said...

Sorry, that was my idea of a joke, which may have fell flat. All I meant was that the last open thread got converted from an open thread to a discussion about APP advocacy and how some might perceive it.

ArchStanton said...
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ArchStanton said...
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Robert said...

Thanks Greg for getting this blog going again!

ArchStanton said...

In looking at options, we wondered about Bellevue Public School's PRISM program. http://www.bsd405.org/Default.aspx?tabid=1521

Does anyone have any knowledge or experience with it? Or ruomors and hearsay, for that matter?

Anonymous said...

Has anyone requested MAP scores for their middle school students? I am told that at Hamilton they won't be given out until after teachers have some kind of training in how to present the results. I did hear that the reading scores for 6th-grade APP students were reasonable (lowest score was 8th grade level, most were in the high school range somewhere), and the math scores tended to be higher. Is Washington having the parent conferences as usual? Hamilton, it turns out, has conferences only for students who are struggling in a particular class -- those teachers who don't have any students with poor grades don't even come to conference night.

CCM said...

I haven't heard anything about MAP scores at WMS - just that the kids took the tests. We are having conferences "as usual" - which from what I understand is a cattle call that you get 2-3 minutes with each teacher? Its our first year - we'll see how it goes. We definitely will ask about the MAP scores when we talk to the block and/or reading teacher and the math teacher.

Maureen said...

Can any of you tell me if Lowell and or TM having been using community stops for busing this year? If so, how is it working? (I have a kid at an alt school and we are looking into community stops as a cost effective way of transporting our kids.) Thank you!

ArchStanton said...

Our child's route had community stops for the second half of last year. I thought it worked pretty well, but our stop was relatively close to home. I was hoping they would continue the community stops this year, but they did not. Since our child's commute has been tolerable and we have other fish to fry, I haven't pushed the issue.

The upside of the community stop was that more direct routes and fewer stops made for a shorter ride. Having multiple families gather at one stop meant that one parent could look after a group of kids if other parents couldn't wait for a late bus in the morning - likewise if a parent was late in the afternoon, you could be sure that another parent would keep an eye on their kid. It also gave the kids a chance to socialize a little before the bus arrived and since our stop was near a playground, they would often play together for a while after being dropped off.

hschinske said...

Ditto ArchStanton's experience, but I did hear of some people whose stops were quite inconvenient to get to or otherwise didn't work well for them. I think if generally better planned out they'd be a good idea.

Helen Schinske

lendlees said...

We thought that all of the APP kids were going to have community stops, but we didn't have one last year, nor do we have one this year. Instead the bus winds through the neighborhood.

We would love a community stop for the reasons that Arch has stated. We're lucky enough to live near our neighborhood school (so are many of the kids who are, instead, picked up nearer to their homes) and would welcome the opportunity to socialize with more folks who live nearby.

I asked Harium MM on his blog early in the year why there weren't community stops and he still hadn't replied. So, I don't hold out hope.

Maureen said...

A TOPS parent met with Tom Bishop (SPS transportation head) and Bishop implied that most of Lowell buses have community stops this year. I'm getting the impression that that is not the case? Thanks for your input!

ArchStanton said...

That's interesting. Based on my non-representative sample, I would have guessed there were no community stops.

The few other parents that I have talked to about buses have indicated that they don't have community stops this year either and one parent said they were told by Bob Vaughan that community stops were discontinued because too may parents disliked them. I don't know if that was in reference to one route in particular or many.

Robert said...

Greg, any chance you can start a thread on elementary conference surprises/map results?

Greg Linden said...

Hey, Robert. Could you elaborate a bit on that? You want two threads, one on MAP results and another on any surprises people got in their teacher conferences this week? Anything more specific on the MAP results that we should talk about?

ArchStanton said...

I vote for separate threads. The MAP could generate enough discussion to warrant its own thread and it might be helpful to hear what impressions folks got from their conferences independent of the MAP.

At any rate, I want to share this for people who have not found any helpful MAP info: http://www.nwea.org/support/category/reports

There's some somewhat informative PDFs there if you dig around.

ArchStanton said...

Also, this Illinois school links to some PDFs (on the right) that give some examples of what sort of work kids are doing for a given score in various categories: http://www.phpta.org/MAP.htm

I can't speak to their accuracy/validity, but haven't found anything like it elsewhere.

ArchStanton said...

Aw heck, Here's reading lists that correspond to your child's Lexile score. Ostensibly for finding reading material for your child, but also useful for evaluating whether the score corresponds to what your child is reading: http://www.nwea.org/sites/www.nwea.org/files/resources/Reading%20Pathfinders.pdf

/Seems to be fairly accurate for us

ArchStanton said...

Here's 2008 Normative Data: http://www.nwea.org/sites/www.nwea.org/files/support_articles/Normative%20Data%20Sheet_v2.pdf

Gives a sense of what grade level your child's score fall into.

Why this info couldn't be made more easily available is beyond me. I don't think the teachers know it's here.

My initial take is that the MAP might be a pretty good assessment tool, but I am dubious that it will be put to good use by SPS or APP.

/Greg, feel free to compile these and other links into a comprehensive MAP post when you get around to it.