Thread by @TracyNovick

Something I’ve been thinking about this week that I think has broader application...
I’m a Commissioner on @MayorPetty’s Commission for Latino Advancement and Education, which is having some hard and important conversations about Worcester.

I shared this graph earlier this week on why this matters, not only for @worcesterpublic, but for the city at large. The city population doesn’t exactly reflect this, even in projections, but it is heading more this way.

(And h/t @MayorPetty for getting this, BTW; it isn’t always visibile in the way it should be.)

We talk a lot about schools, of course, and a lot about data. We also have the luck in Worcester to have higher ed resources (in this case like @Quinsig and @WorcesterState) to crunch numbers.

One of the reports we got this week from Alex Briesacher, Tom Conroy, and Kirby Wycoff (h/t’s all and not enough on twitter) I’m posting here:
dropbox.com/s/o8snxh6btwwq…

It’s all data submitted to DESE, of course, and I’ll say again as I have before that all of that being available to all of us online is one of the great underappreciated advantages of #MAEdu and @MASchoolsK12.

But: it’s in charts and graphs!

There’s plenty to talk about there, and I know we will, but one thing that caught my eye of perhaps larger interest was the early charts.

Not a week goes by that I don’t see some headline about a district “focus” or “combat” or “drill down on” or some such on chronic absenteeism.
Why is that?
Well, it’s in the state’s (new) accountabilty system.

(Yes, yes, it’s important and they should be and...it is also in the accountability system.)

I’m not here going to go into the everything disparities on Latinx students in Worcester from higher ed to graduation rates to MCAS; suffice for now to say it’s bad.

Thus, school attendance and access is crucial.
Another disparity, though, is student discipline (which will also not surprise you if you pay attention to such things).

I haven’t seen those two run against each other. Positive correlation (the dots are schools):

And

And

And

The tricky thing? It isn’t just correlation; it’s a reciprocal relationship.

(Which puts me at just about the edge of what I can do in stats, just to be up front about that)

It means, from an operational perspective, though, that we need to think about what discipline is *doing* to kids’ relationships with school.

We know that suspensions in effect often break kids’ relationship with school, and that has long term impacts on graduation and dropout rates and, well, everything.

I am wondering, though, to step beyond my own city here, if we are going to be bold enough to tackle that, even if it takes an accountability measure to make us do it.

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