Slivers of Hope & Buckets of Despair: Richmond City Schools 2018 v. 2019

By John R. Butcher 

August 14, 2019 by cranky

Statewide, economically disadvantaged (“ED”) students underperform their more affluent peers (“Not ED”) by passing the SOL tests at about a 20% lower rate. Thus, the average SOL is an unfair measure that punishes the divisions with large ED populations (e.g., Richmond, which is about 2/3 ED). So we’ve been looking at the 2019 SOL data separately for the ED and Not ED populations, not for the misleading average.

In that vein, here are the 2019 Reading pass rates for the Not ED students in Richmond’s elementary schools (the blue bars). The yellow bars show the changes from 2018.

The change at Barack Obama is calculated from the 2018 datum at JEB Stuart.

The “0.0” entries at Fairfield Court and Miles Jones indicate cases where the Not ED population was so small (<10 a="" href="http://www.doe.virginia.gov/info_management/data_collection/student_record_collection/bat-suppression-rules.docx" nbsp="" style="border: 0px; color: #7100e2; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none; transition: color 0.1s ease-in-out, background-color 0.1s ease-in-out;" that="" vdoe="">suppressed the data. One particularly happy note is the 20.6 point gain at my neighborhood school, Westover Hills.   

The RT-D reports that Carver, after the cheating scandal, plummeted to second-worst in Richmond this year. The database, however, reports as  to Carver, “There is [sic] no data for this report.” 

(I’m glad my old Latin teacher did not live to see that assault on the language from the Department of “Education.”)

Turning to the pass rates of the ED students, we see (still without a Carver entry):

The Good News there is Swansboro and, again, Westover Hills. 

The Bad News starts with Southampton, on of our better elementary schools, and Munford, our very best as measured by the SOL average. The very small ED population at Munford leaves the school with bragging rights on average but with some explaining to do regarding its plunging ED performance, especially v. Cary.

Turning to our awful middle schools, again on the reading tests for Not ED students, we see a twinkle of sunshine at Elkhardt Thompson but compounded disasters at Henderson, MLK, and Boushall.

As to the ED students, Elkhardt Thompson again shows a small gain while all the others slip further into the mire of failure.

I’ve included Franklin in the high school data although it serves both middle and high school grades. Franklin joins all the comprehensive high schools in losing ground on the reading tests as to its Not ED students.

As to the ED students, Franklin reversed course while Huguenot and TJ showed large drops.

Turning to the math data, and recalling that the new tests and scoring boosted the Not ED pass rate average by 3.4% and the ED by 6.6%, here are the Richmond elementary schools.

Notice the expanded axis to accommodate the large gains at Ginter Park, Overby-Sheppard, and Westover Hills (with some lesser, but still very nice gains elsewhere). We’ll fervently hope these gains are genuine. Please notice that the scale applies ONLY to the blue bars.

A number of our elementary schools beat the +6.6% average gain for ED students; a number did not. (Go, Westover Hills!)

The middle school data offer slivers of hope and buckets of despair.

For the high schools, the axis again expands to accommodate large gains (Franklin and Community); again, the numbers on that axis apply only to the blue bars.

Stay tuned for a look at the best and worst schools in the state.