Back in September, I promised to create a comparison of Tucson Unified scores on the 2017 state AzMERIT test with similar schools in other districts, because I was unhappy with comparisons between Tucson’s district and neighboring districts with wildly different demographics. I spelled out how I planned to approach the comparison before I looked at any of the data, and I’ve stayed true to my basic design.
I compared elementary schools with similar racial and economic characteristics in Tucson, Sunnyside, Flowing Wells, Douglas, Nogales and Yuma. Since very few of the other districts had schools with fewer than 60 percent of their students on free or reduced lunch, I only compared schools with F/R lunch percentages of 60 percent or higher. All the districts other than Flowing Wells have a high percentage of Hispanic students.
I compared the districts’ passing percentages with one another using all the schools I looked at. I also divided the schools into four groups based on the number of low income students, using the percent of students on free or reduced lunch as the measure—60-69 percent, 70-79 percent, 80-89 percent and 90-99 percent—and compared the districts’ passing percentages within each of the four groups.
Here are the overall findings:
• When looking at the passing percentages of all the schools, Tucson, Douglas and Sunnyside have identical passing percentages in Language Arts. Douglas and Sunnyside have slightly higher passing percentages than Tucson in Math — by 3 and 5 percentage points. Yuma, Nogales and Flowing Wells have significantly higher passing percentages than the other three: 8-14 percent higher in Language Arts, about 10 percent higher in math.
• When looking at the schools in the four categories based on income levels, Tucson’s passing percentage is significantly lower than the others in the 60-69 percent F/R lunch category. The gap between Tucson and the other districts decreases as the number of low income students increases. In the 90-99 percent category, Tucson’s passing percentage is about average.
• Tucson schools have significantly more variation in their passing percentages than other districts, with schools among the lowest and highest in all four categories.
I also looked at the passing percentages for Hispanic students in the schools. The comparisons were close enough to what I found when I looked all the students that a separate analysis of Hispanic passing percentages doesn’t yield significantly different results.
For me, the most surprising finding is the wide variation in passing percentages of Tucson schools with similar student populations—or I should say with populations that look similar based on income levels and percent of Hispanic students, since those are the only criteria I used.
In the 60-69 percent F/R lunch category, for example, Tucson schools’ passing percentages in Language Arts ranged from 27 percent to 56 percent. In the 90-99 percent F/R lunch category, they ranged from 14 percent to 45 percent.
Tucson schools with the highest passing percentages compared well with top schools in other districts. Tucson had 2 schools among the top 5 passing percentages in the 70-79 percent category, and 3 schools in the top 5 in the 90-99 percent category, including the highest passing rate of any district in that category.
That’s the basic summary of the results I pulled from the data. For whatever reason, Tucson Unified doesn’t score well in the overall comparison of students passing the 2017 AzMERIT test, though it has some schools in each of the four income levels with high passing percentages, and its overall percentages get closer to the other districts as the number of low income students increases.
Does this mean Tucson schools are doing a poorer job educating their students than schools in other districts with similar demographics? Using this comparison, that’s a reasonable conclusion, but high stakes test scores are a crude indicator of student achievement, so I can’t say if that’s the case with any degree of confidence. The tests only assess a narrow band of student achievement, and there are many ways to increase students scores without increasing educational quality, some legitimate, others less legitimate. And, for all the fact that the schools look similar in their broad characteristics, they may not be as similar as they appear when the specific student bodies are looked at more closely.
A No-Score-Shaming, No-Score-Faming Note: I purposely did not name any specific schools in this analysis. I don’t find it valuable to use high stakes test scores to shame or praise a school. As I said above, a test score is a crude indicator of the strengths and weaknesses of a school for a number of reasons, so I won’t hang a test score label on individual schools.
This article appears in Jan 18-24, 2018.
“…..Does this mean Tucson schools are doing a poorer job educating their students than schools in other districts with similar demographics? …” Answer…YES!!!
The only Objective and Reliable method to assess Student Achievement at each Grade Level, i.e., that Students are Taught and Learning the body of information/skills that they need to achieve their Career Goals, are Standardized Assessment Examinations like AzMerit/Common Core!! If they are not, as is TUSD, remedial Action is Required/Necessary.
David Safier, thank you for a truly fascinating experience today. When this piece first went up this morning, I read it and was writing perhaps the most positive comment on it I have ever written on one of your blogs. Then the blog was taken down. I said, “Ha, figures.” Later, the blog went back up again. Because I still had the original blog up, I could compare the difference between the original blog and the revision. In the third paragraph, where the original blog had “I also divided the schools into four groups based on the poverty levels,” the revised blog had “I also divided the schools into four groups based on the number of low income students.” The fifth and eleventh paragraphs also changed “poverty levels” to “number of low income students.” The twelfth paragraph changed “without increasing the quality of their educations” to “without increasing educational quality.”
In other words, no substantive changes were made. Good job, David.
Now, has anyone correlated the percent of classrooms filled with under-qualified subs outsourced to for-profit companies with academic performance as measured by (albeit imperfect) standardized tests? Whether or not the tests are good measures of learning, they are probably fairly predictive of students’ ability to do well on the standardized tests that, towards the end of high school, have real economic consequences for students in college admissions and aid. Another interesting datum would be how much TUSD saves per annum by continuing to fill classrooms with subs under contract to ESI.
Wouldn’t it be great to see the community (including, significantly, prominent members of the “Democratic” party) putting pressure on TUSD to change its operations in ways that could have positive economic consequences for its students rather than for whomever receives benefit from deals like the one cut with ESI?
I too wonder what is the comparative data on length of teaching experience and advanced degrees held between the schools. I do not definitively know the differences between districts, but I do know in TUSD especially during the previous administration, a great many experienced teachers left, and in many cases left early. I do know we have an unreasonably high proportion of classes taught by subs and under qualified and less experienced teachers than used to be the standard in our district. There is more study to be done on this subject. Perhaps, David, you can find some grad students who would be interested.
“Well done, David Safier,” you are one careful reader. The reason I pulled the post temporarily is that with something like this, I want every word to be accurate. “Poverty” wasn’t the correct word, I realized, because Reduced Lunch assistance includes families above the poverty line. To take care of that, I put in “low income” instead. It’s not a change so much as a clarification. I seem to remember I messed with a few stylistic things near the end, but I didn’t change the substance.
@ David Safier
Thanks for filling me in on why the blog went down and then back up again. I thought perhaps your attempt to communicate information that was well researched and of public interest but not congruent with what TUSD apologists like to proffer suffered one of the “blocks” such information sometimes encounter. In four years of district and media watching, I’ve seen plenty of that (but not from GCB1, who I note in passing moderated hands-down the best and most honest TUSD Board Candidate forum of the 2016 election cycle).
Good to hear an attempted “BLOCK” didn’t happen to you, David, at least not with this piece of TUSD analysis. Best wishes for future reporting…
Since I have been writing for The Range, I have never had anyone question, or direct, what I write. On a few occasions I’ve asked for Jim Nintzel’s advice when I was writing on an issue I thought might be sensitive to make sure I was covering it accurately and reasonably, and he always gave me the go-ahead. In one case when I asked for his advice, he said, “Maybe this is important enough, it belongs in the print edition.” And on the rare occasion I’ve temporarily pulled a post, it’s always been because I felt I needed to take it back into the shop for repairs, as I did in this case.
The BLOCKS Ive noted dont come from editors of newspapers, David. They come from people representing or affiliated with the district. Overall, the districts political affiliates and apologists have given the impression on many occasions that they will walk a long mile to keep information that does not promote a positive image of the district out of the media and out of public forums, especially when it is true. Or they will flat-out lie. Reps in the media or local figures with some political pull sometimes receive e-mails or phone calls that try to influence their actions or opinions. Or the district publishes a full page ad in the Star to try to deny what Steller has written about the use of 301 funds. Youve been around while all this has been going on and in direct communication with many of the players. Im not sure why youre trying to give the impression here that you research and write in an influence-free zone, because the zone in which things are written and published about education accountability and education policy in Arizona is distinctly NOT neutral, non-partisan, or free of influential players who pull strings behind the scenes to try to manage coverage of data like what is published here, that TUSDs scores with the 60-69% F/R lunch cohort do not compare well with other districts scores with the same cohort. Im also not sure why, after defending so many of the districts representatives and actions for so many years, youre choosing to highlight this information here and now, but whatever the motive, more power to you. TUSD has often seemed like a lost cause to me, but attempts to crack the veneer of assertions like Their test scores are no worse than other districts scores when you look at the same economic cohorts! are still commendable. If the district CAN be salvaged, it will be through telling the truth about it. Not through lies, excuses, and propaganda.
We are grandparents now, but our kids went through TUSD –Wrightstown (now razed and surrounded by Charters), Magee, Sahuaro, Sabino, and are grateful for every day they spent
in TUSD. I read your education column avidly, David Safier, and keep it up. Someone has to
objectively compare and contrast, and tell us about it honestly. You do a great job. Thanks!
As GCB1 highlighted, TUSD has changed and what it used to be says nothing about what it is now. When teachers graduated from certification programs in the early 90s, all teaching positions in TUSD were filled with fully qualified teachers before the school year began. Now, halfway through the school year, scores of positions are being filled with long term subs because the district cant or wont fill them with qualified teachers. Yes, there is a teacher shortage in AZ, but why does it affect TUSD more than other districts serving similar populations? Has there been coverage of this substitute teacher issue or the districts contract with the for-profit manager of outsourced labor ESI in Safiers blog? We should certainly give David his due with a worthwhile blog like this one, but readers who think he always covers ALL relevant information on TUSD evenhandedly and impartially here should think again. It is necessary to read multiple sources, attend Board meetings, and talk to people with kids currently enrolled in the schools to understand what TUSD is.
My husband graduated from Sahuaro in the mid-80s, and received a good education there. I have a friend with a student enrolled there now. What she describes of current conditions are unrecognizable to my husband. Sentiment and nostalgia or partial coverage of only facts that SUPPORT PUBLIC SCHOOLS! or TRASH CHARTERS! is not helpful to the cause of improving the district, an important cause given the number of students it still enrolls.
Francis. What ?? You’re not blaming Trump?