 Hello, this is Professor Vanille Urandel with Racial Justice Now, and we want to provide you a summary of the date in public school progress monitoring data report for winter 2014-15. The actual report is a one-pager 8.5 by 17 inches that is full of numbers and data, and we thought that it might be more helpful to you to have a summary. If you want the actual data which lists all the information for individual schools which we won't be going over, you need to contact date in public school and do a public information request. We will tell you how to do that at the end of this video. Okay, so this report was presented at a board retreat in January. It was presented by the administrators, and we, again, I want to say we summarized it. This is not the way they presented. This is the way we summarized it in order to make the data understandable for ourselves and for everyone else. Okay, so the report sheet starts off with student indicators, and they list two of their goals. Goal number one is all students will grow at least one academic year during the school year. So, this data is to help understand how they are progressing to meeting that goal. So, we'll start with elementary students. The data sheet is divided up into the percent of students on track student growth percentile and average reading lexile. We really didn't summarize the student growth percentile because we really need to understand that better in terms of what it means. So, we'll have to come back to that at a later date after we've had more conversations with date in public schools about how they presented the data so that we can summarize it. So, what we did is to do percent of students on track and average reading lexile, and we'll explain each of those as we go through it. So, our understanding is that at the beginning of the school year, during the month period, there was a candidate card and readiness assessment done. We don't actually know what they tested in that assessment. That question was asked by a board member, but it wasn't really answered. So, whatever is tested in terms of whether or not our students are ready for kindergarten when they get to kindergarten, only 33% of the students were ready for kindergarten based on this test. That means that Dayton starts off behind with 67% of the students not ready for kindergarten. They tested a total of number of schools. We arbitrarily picked the number of saying that we would like to see as a goal that is racial justice now that 70% of the students would be ready for kindergarten when they get there. And we looked at the data to see how many schools had 70% of their students ready when they entered and none of Dayton schools had that. The school with the highest percentage ready was shared the early, which had 58%, so they had slightly more than half of their students are ready. And the school with the lowest percentage was E.J. Brown, which only had 9% ready. So, obviously, this is something for a significant conversation. Not only about how do we help parents get their students ready, but if the school, if the, if the school starts off with a large majority of their students not ready for kindergarten. A question I have is do they need to rethink how they do kindergarten then and how they structure the whole process for those students coming in. So, early literacy, which is about first grade reading, one of the things to note is that this is not whether or not to students read because they're read too. It's more about in my understanding whether or not they have comprehension and understanding, which is, which is a very good point because there's a difference between understanding your environment and being able to read. And in this category, when when first graders were read to for this assessment, 75% of them was on track for understanding their environment. And I think that's a really good, a good strength of our students that they 75% understand. So the total number of schools were 19. The number of schools with greater than 70% was 12. So this was spread out over the entire district schools with the highest percentage was charity early, which had 91% of their first graders on track. And school with the lowest percentage was Westwood would only have 61% with their first graders on track, but still over 50%. So this is the strength that we have to play on and it also goes into maybe our students are more oral learners and that we have to take that into consideration as we begin to teach them things and work with them in terms of helping date and public school advance. Third grade fall OAA is, you know, we have a third grade reading guarantee and the students have twice that they can take the test in the fall and in the spring. And so this measures the percent of students on track for passing the third grade reading test. District average was 32%. That means 68% or not on track. No school got greater than 70%. The school with the highest percentage of third grade on track was charity early with 54%. And the school with the lowest percentage was Fairview with 7%. Racial justice now really believes that all of this number of the kindergarten assessment, the early literacy and the third grade reading men strength to the idea why we should not be suspending our pre K through third grade is that it's important to keep students who are behind in school and to deal with the discipline problems within the school. So the other thing that they presented was that we're going to talk about they actually as I said they presented the student growth percent out but we're not going to talk about that because we don't really understand their presentation. They presented average reading lexile. So this is a test that that there's that is geared towards judging whether a student is on track to be college and career ready by the end of the 12th grade. So at each grade level students are tested to determine whether they're whether they're meeting their grade level whether they're on track. Now it's an average. And so that means that this doesn't go for every student it's in some in some of the students are going to have high numbers and some of the students are going to have very low numbers taken together we get an average. And what what the data showed that for Dayton is that there was no school whose average reading lexile met the expected grade level. That is not one of the schools had an average at the grade level that you would expect it not second grade not third grade not fourth grade not fifth grade not sixth grade. So this problem of reading is being passed on in my estimation from grade to grade and I'm real cognizant of this because I had a child with a reading difficulty and they wanted to pass him on and I just refused. I said it had the reading had to be taken care of before we can pass him on to the next grade level. Okay so I think that that's something this is a major issue for our students because I think as you'll see that it shows up in high school this problem of not meeting the grade level where they're at and then being passed on to the next grade level. So with high school students they have high school students have tests that they have to pass to be proficient at. And so the school looks at the percent of students who are at or above proficiency for at least one test. We again we didn't do the student growth percentile but we did do the average reading lexile. So reading Ohio graduation tests in the fat fall the percent at or above proficiency only 27% that's 73% of the students was did not was not at or above proficiency. Total number of schools with six number of schools with greater than 70% was zero schools with the highest percent at proficiency was divers with 47% and schools with the lowest percentage was metaldale with 16%. So the the the reading problem is just being passed right on into high school. Math the same same kind of structure the Ohio graduation test the percent of students at or above proficiency only 27% 73% was not at or above proficiency proficiency. No school got over 70% the school with the highest proficiency highest percentage excuse me the school with the highest percentage was divers with 36% of their students at or above proficiency. And the school with the lowest percentage was long fellow with 17% at or below proficiency excuse me at or above proficiency. So average readings lexile is excuse me I have on this chart elementary students so the average reading lexile for high school students again that's the test. That's based on text that represents what a student should be able to read at the specific grade level grade level. The number of schools whose average reading a lexile met the expected reading less at seventh grade it was Stivers at eighth grade it was Stivers 10th grade they didn't present the information it wasn't presented at all. I don't know whether that means they don't have the information or they just didn't present the information 11th grader the information wasn't presented and 12th grade it wasn't presented. This is very important information because it's not enough to graduate students we have to graduate students who are reading at grade level. And the community needs to know at what grade level is the average 12th grade student and 11th grade student and 10th grade student in Dayton. At what grade level are they functioning now Stivers is met the grade level at seventh eighth and ninth grade and I have a question because I'd like to know about. I wonder if Stivers function sort of like a public charter school because Stivers is takes in all new students in the seventh grade and many of their students come here for the arts. I wonder if Stivers has a process of admission that may cause them to have that the students who are they admit have a higher reading level than the other schools so that it may not be that Stivers are doing something so much wonderful and better. It may be that Stivers is just cherry picking among all of the schools that go to Dayton public schools in the seventh grade and they're getting the stronger students and consequently that strength holds up through the process. I'd like that's one of the questions I think racial justice now can ask is what is the admission what does the admission process for Stivers and what does their students look like compared to other schools. If in fact Stivers met a representative sample of all the students in Dayton and that their students have admission abilities similar to other high schools then we should be looking at Stivers to see what they're doing. But my my intuition says that this is an admission issue not necessarily a a practice issue in terms of Stivers doing something better. But none of the six schools we only have one that's functioning at grade level. And that is Stivers this is when they the when the data report gives a number of and we went and looked and said what is the equivalent grade level for the number that they get. So the ninth grade leading Lexal averages they give a number. So for Bellmont for instance they the number is 625 and that is equivalent to a third grade reading level. Now that doesn't mean all the students are reading at a third grade level. That means the average reading level for the students in Bellmont is a third grade level. That means they have a lot of students who are reading below that level and and students who are reading above that level and it averages out to that level. And so this is this is a major concern if a large number of our students are reading on average in high school at the third grade level are below. David points was sixth grade Dunbar was third grade. Longfellow was not applicable. They didn't present that information. Middledale was third grade. Again Stivers was the only one that had a ninth grade reading level and third or March third good was second grade. I want to make it clear. This is not saying that the students reading as far as I understand this is saying when they took this test. Which was designed to determine whether they were at where they should be at in order to read to be ready for college and career by the end of the 12th grade. The reading level was equivalent for these schools. All the school with Stivers was not at the ninth grade reading level. So that means all of the schools but Stivers the students are not on track to be college and career ready at the end of the 12th grade and that the number they assigned would place them at an equivalent grade level. And I think that is helpful to understanding how far behind our city our Dayton schools are. So that's so I I think the goal too was to improve the district's learning environment. And under that they've presented out of school suspensions information and we are really thankful that they are presenting this suspension information. And this is suspension information is as of December the 18th 2014. And so for elementary the rate per hundred that's 6.2 suspensions for every hundred students. Okay. Let me say that again. 6.2 suspensions for every hundred students. That's not a percent of students that get suspended. That's the number of suspensions per hundred students. Five schools had over 10 suspension per hundred students. School with the highest rate was world of wonder with 19.2 suspensions per hundred students and school with the lowest average. Excuse me rate schools with the lowest rate school with the lowest rate was Cleveland with 0.4 suspensions per hundred students. There was no information to just available on racial disparity and no information on disability disparity. So we are unable to judge the progress on eliminating racial disparity and eliminating disability disparity for high schools. Again, this is the numbers were presented as of December the 18th 2014. In high schools the rate per hundred is 14.6 suspensions per hundred students with four students the four schools having over 10 suspensions per hundred students. The school with the highest rate was third good with 24.6 per students 24.6 suspensions per hundred students and the school with the lowest rate was Cleveland with 2.2 suspensions per hundred students. Again, no information was provided on racial disparity or disability disparity. So there's no way to make a judgment on how the school is progressing on that. We think that in general the school has Dayton Public School has been working on a suspension. It has a restorative justice program and it's really been working on reducing the suspensions and we applaud them for that. One of our concerns is we have heard rumors that some of the schools are reducing the suspension by sending kids home without calling it a suspension and we would be concerned if that is true. So we're going to follow up on that. Now if you would like the report itself so that you can see it for yourself. The document this summary is based on is the district transformation leadership team winner 2014-15 progress monitoring data Dayton Public School. The request can be you can submit a public records request online and you just have to go to Dayton Public Schools and you know use this link copy this link and use this link and you can submit the request online. I don't know whether some institutions charges for public request. I don't know whether Dayton does or doesn't doesn't does or does not. I would hope that Dayton would start putting all of this information up on the Internet so that it's available that the same information they give the board they give to the community. Finally, we want to end this with a call for help. We learned belatedly that most of the business of the Dayton Public School is not conducted at the business meeting. It's conducted at Dayton Retreat Strategic Planning meetings and committee meetings. Dayton Public School has over 40 scheduled meetings where they're going to conduct board business. We believe that we elect the board and so that's who we have to hold accountable. The superintendent is accountable to the board. The board is accountable to the community. But in order to hold the board accountable, we have to know what is going on and to know what's going on. We have to attend every single meeting, get the information, formulate questions and take them back to the board. So we need people to help join us on a Dayton Public School watch team. Since most of these meetings you will not be able to talk, you'll need to be able to sit for two, two and a half, three, four hours with doing nothing but listening and taking notes and formulating potential questions that you think we should ask the board. If you can attend two or three meetings during the year, please contact us. There are email info at racialjusticenow.org. Thank you very much. And if you have any questions about our summary or questions you'd like us to put to the board. Actually, if you have questions that you would like to put to the board, we strongly encourage you to go to the board and put your questions to the board. Their business meeting is on the, I believe it's the third Tuesday of every month where you can speak the actual meeting where the public can speak. And please go to that and ask your questions. Thank you and we look forward to working with you on this.