District survey figures would have looked better with urban comparison not allowed by software
Jennifer Amigone of Cambridge Public Schools at a Monday town hall held at the high school. (Photo: Julia Levine)
School officials promised context for bad survey results at a town hall on Monday, and delivered for those who listened closely: It all depends whether you compare the Cambridge Public Schools district with all others in a dataset, or only the subset identified as “urban.”
The urban-districts comparison is “more apples-to-apples,” said Jennifer Amigone, director of research, assessment and evaluation for the district. “We got a lot of questions about this.”
The comparison with urban districts will only became available to the public Friday at the earliest, school officials said.
Until then, in results among 16 benchmarks across five groups in a 2023-2024 District/School Climate Survey open from Nov. 27 to Dec. 15, the district doesn’t hit the highest quintile in a single one as compared with 2,000 districts nationwide. And in only a single benchmark – the sense of belonging of students in grades 3-5 – does the district land in the second-highest. (For students in grades 6-12, the sense of school belonging plunges to the lowest quintile.)
Responses from district educators, administrators and staff expressed the most misery. They were stuck in the lowest quintile, or compared with others nationally from zero to the 19th percentile – unless somehow they rise when corrected to compared CPS with only fellow urban districts.
The degree to which the “urban” setting made a difference was hard to discern in the two-hour session at the high school’s Media Cafe.
It was only after the town hall, when attendees were packing up, that superintendent Victoria Greer made the importance clear, and that was in a one-on-one conversation: “If we set it to urban, the percentiles are much higher [across the benchmarks]. When we set it on urban, actually, we’re in the top percentiles.”
Slow start
The value of the urban comparison was neither described on the district’s “Assessment & Accountability” webpage or in the reports linked to from the page, and on Monday there was no clear announcement.
It was mentioned a few times during the town hall. After being described as starting at 6 p.m., though, attendees in person and online weren’t called to attention until 6:15 p.m., and it was only at 6:30 p.m. that Greer led the town hall through a tone-setting “welcome ritual.” The three groups of material for staff, families and student were each supposed to get “private time” to consider results and quiet discussion among the cafe’s round tables, and the first did. So by the end of the first group, at around 7:20 p.m., Amigone announced that “We’re realizing we’re really running behind time.”
There were questions about the urban comparisons, including from some of the four School Committee members present – Elizabeth Hudson, Caroline Hunter, José Luis Rojas Villarreal and David Weinstein – and former city councillor and mayor Anthony Galluccio. But many questions were met with responses that the information wasn’t immediately available, including one about which Massachusetts or national districts made for the most direct comparisons. “This isn’t research with a capital R, this is kind of getting a pulse for what’s happening across our district,” Amigone said to some of the more specific questions heard by officials. Several questions were answered with remarks that they would be addressed with materials in the near future, including the ability to see responses broken down by school and by the elementary, upper and high school grade tiers.
“Deeply concerned”
Some of the biggest disparities between positive and negative responses – what the district described as “glow” and “grow” – were with students getting Individualized Education Program services, such as those with learning disabilities. That too would be explored further, the district said.
Galluccio, who continues to interact with high schoolers as a sports coach, said he found the feedback “glaring“ and came out of the town hall “deeply concerned.”
“If a staff member doesn’t feel connected to their community or other adults, or doesn’t feel coached, we’re going to lose teachers. They’re going to burn out or feel more exhausted,” Galluccio said.
Greece replied that the district had taken steps to work with the various groups, including the unhappiest educators, administrators and staff. “We have lots of ideas as district administration, but it’s really through our partnerships” that we can address concerns raised by the survey, she said.
Software doesn’t allow comparison
The comparison to other urban districts wasn’t prioritized in part because of the software used for the survey, which is run by a company called Panorama, Amigone said. The release of a report that compares CPS with all 2,000 other districts was because “Panorama can’t generate a report that holds just that urban percentile.”
“I’ve asked them to set it, and they can’t,” Amigone said, “and so it just defaults to everyone.”
A director at Panorama, Stephanie Reynolds, confirmed the problem in a Tuesday email, agreeing that although results can be filtered online, a “default PDF report benchmarking comparison cannot be customized for individual districts.” That means a document sent out by the district could have shown grimmer results than necessary, and without notice or explanation.
No principals attended the town hall, which drew perhaps a couple of dozen attendees in addition to many district staffers.
Seriously?
“It all depends whether you compare the Cambridge Public Schools district with all others in a dataset, or only the subset identified as “urban.” ”
So it all depends if you look at the data as a whole or cherry pick the data that suits you?
I wonder what our resident data nerd, Itamar, has to say about that.
Comparisons with “urban” may be informative from a demographic perspective, but how is that relevant to parents making real decisions about where to send their children to school?
The choice is not “I will send my kid to Cambridge, Boston, Detroit, Cleveland, or Pittsburgh”.
The decision point: Are Cambridge schools doing enough to foster an environment of success or do I have to move to the suburbs to make sure my kids can get a quality education?
But sure, make yourself feel better. Benchmark yourself against lower achieving schools and claim success.
Yes let’s (the home of Harvard and MIT) use Baltimore not Arlington or Lexington or Brookline.
Hey look how good we are doing! Only 50% of 5th graders can’t read or write proficiently and as a bonus we’ve removed Algebra from all of the middle schools!
😔
Who can afford to move to the suburbs? That’s why the urban comparison IS relevant.
@shaw…..have you compared home prices? It is MUCH more afford affordable to live in the suburbs than it is in urban centers. We couldn’t even afford a tiny condo in Cambridge, never mind an actual house. That’s why most people leave. And of course the better schools, the reduction in rat populations, the lack of noise past 11 pm, the reduced crime rates, the increase in open spaces….the list goes on.
“If you compare to every sschool in the country we’re among the worst, but if you compare us to the worst, we’re not that bad. But also we won’t show you the numbers on how we compare to the worst”
-Victoria “make it great” Greer
It is really a shame that “relative to” or “compared to”, has become the standard that too many in Cambridge believe is a valid way to measure whether students in the Cambridge Public Schools are learning as they should be.
If half the students in a particular grade cannot read at grade level, it simply doesn’t matter what levels of reading any other urban or suburban districts have. The fact will remian that half the students cannot read at grade level.
As I’ve said in another post, the CPS have to get back to basics. Students have to attend classes, behave themselves, and learn. If we allow deviations from these basic norms, we are only fooling ourselves, and we’ll have still another generation of students who couldn’t get a decent. education.
Most students want to learn. They realize that not only is it expected of them, but also that to get ahead in society they must learn.
If we keep coddling them and keep thinking of their education in relative terms (relative to other school systems), we’re setting them up for disappointment.
I’m surprised to find myself agreeing with concerned here, but I am.
And yes cambridge is 865$ average per square foot real estate, while Newton is 600$. The city is far more expensive than the toniest suburbs!
@Sam Noubert “It is MUCH more afford affordable to live in the suburbs than it is in urban centers”
No it isn’t. Besides the fact that home prices are often even higher in the suburbs home prices alone do not tell you the full story. Living in the suburbs comes with additional costs that urban life does not. If you live in the suburbs you will need a car to have any semblance of mobility that an added expense (plus gas and maintenance) and is multiplied by however many driving aged people in the household. In urban environments you can walk, bike, and take transit to accomplish daily needs. This saves a ton of money. Additionally powering, watering, heating, and cooling suburban homes is more expensive.
On top of that cities have concentrations of public housing, privately owned affordable housing, and apartments. While suburban areas are dominated by single family homes with little opportunity to rent. Even if single family homes are cheaper in the suburbs, many people cannot afford single family homes at all.
Suburbs exchange private open spaces for public ones. I prefer city parks to a bunch of back yards only one household has access too. The schools being better is a reflection of the fact that suburbs are wealthier, in complete contradiction to your argument, and reflects wealth hoarding, which again only some people benefit from. Rats aren’t just a problem in the city despite what you think and a lot of suburbs have huge problems with them because suburbs aren’t often great at dealing with waste. I like to live in places that have life after dark, your preference isn’t universal. Cambridge is extremely safe by any standard and people underestimate crime rates in suburbs significantly. On top of that suburbs expose you to far greater risk of vehicular violence (that more than negates any benefit from being exposed to less crime in terms of personal safety): https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-04-15-mn-58713-story.html
Finally, If you don’t live in Cambridge why are you in this comment section?
A little hypocrisy Slaw?
You don’t live in Israel. Why do you comment on it?
My tax dollars go to killing Palestinian children. His tax dollars aren’t paying for Cambridge public schools.
Slaw,
Remember October 7th. Killing Israeli children.
Hamas started this war, knowing exactly what would happen i.e Israel would respond and innocent children would be killed. Hams wanted this because it would turn most of the world against Israel; exactly what happened. Hamas is gloating that this is happening. The PR couldn’t be better for Hamas.
Gaza got so much aid during the last 19 years. It could have been used to build a great area. Where did it go? All those tunnels. And the three top guys sitting in luxury in Qatar. And the everyday Gazans essentially having nothing to show for all that money.
Hamas is a terrorist organization that cares nothing for the people under their control.
They use civilians as human shields. They hide in hospitals.
I hope the Israelis are able to wipe Hamas out!
The US doesn’t fund Hamas. It has funded Israel killing Palestinian children for decades. You are a vile apologist for genocide.
This has nothing to do with the subject of this post.
You’re on the wrong side of history. The only genocide is what Hamas has said in its 1988 Covenant. It says that the Jews should be eliminated, simply because they are Jewish.
It’s not going to happen.
What will happen is that eventually Hamas will be wiped out.
You have one line and you repeat it ad naseum. THE ICJ found the allegations of ggenocide against Israel credible ordered Israel to cease committing it, and punish the politicians responsible. Israel’s response has been literally “The Hague cannot stop us” and they have only expanded their genocidal actions in Gaza.
You are truly disgusting and have no right to claim to be on the right side of history. The present already shows you to be on the wrong side, the future will detest you and your vile genocide apologia.