Lynette Martyn, beginning
at 34:30
“I’ve noticed that no school
committee candidates have been specifically addressing
the state’s data on the extreme disparity gaps
for our high needs students, including 15% of our kids
on IEPs, the 30% of our kids that identify as students
of color, our economically disadvantaged students, and
our English language learners. This amounts to thousands
of children with disparities in MCAS scores,
graduation rates. These students deserve better from our
school system and I’d like to understand why no one is
talking about the data specifically.”
Lynette Martyn, beginning
at 40:20
“Our students of color make up
30 percent of the student population but 50 to 60
percent of our suspensions. Our Asian kids might be
doing better on our MCAS scores but they are being
disciplined at five times the rate of our white kids.”
“Arlington prides itself on a
96 percent graduation rate but they are significantly
lower and as low as 79 percent for our economically
disadvantaged kids. We don’t know how to talk about
these uncomfortable truths. If we aren’t willing to lean
into these difficult conversations, then we’re not going
to be able to tackle the systemic issues…”
Lynette Martyn, beginning
at 44:24
“If you’re a white kid who
comes from an economically stable family, and is a
native English speaker, and learns the same way as
everyone else, Arlington Public Schools is great. We’re
meeting the needs there, and we’re on a (inaudible at
45:22) kids that are being underserved are overlooked
and we really need to focus on them. And these
statistics are, the statistics come from the state. They
are the state keeping us accountable, and so I think
they are important data to look at. I think we should be
more transparent about it with the community.”
Paul Schlichtman, beginning
at 35:00
It’s a complicated picture and
we cannot pigeon-hole it as certain kids are doing well
and certain kids aren’t in terms of looking at big
groups. To make things work, we need to do really great
teaching one-on-one, classroom level, understanding the
unique needs of each and every kid. Looking for things
that are systemic, but also going down to the classroom
level, building the relationship with each and every
child to make sure we are meeting individual needs,
through a tiered approach that will demonstrate that
good teaching matters; and that’s what we’re looking to
do.
A lesson in significance:
Amy Gallo quotes author Tom
Redman in her article, “A
Refresher on Statistical Significance,” in
the Harvard Business Review (February 16, 2016):
“Statistical
significance helps quantify whether a result is likely
due to chance or to some factor of interest,” says
Redman. When a finding is significant, it simply means
you can feel confident that’s it real, not that you just
got lucky (or unlucky) in choosing the sample.
https://hbr.org/2016/02/a-refresher-on-statistical-significance
I note that, for the purpose of testing the null
hypothesis that there is no difference between groups
in the population, the test is to determine the
probability of that group (sample) being significantly
different than the population as a whole.
Making sense of coin
flips
We have data from a series
of coin flips using two different coins, a quarter and a
dollar coin. The quarter comes up heads 52% of the time,
the dollar coin comes up heads 60% of the time.
Which of the following
conclusions can be derived from the data?
- The dollar coin is more likely to
come up heads because it is more valuable.
- The dollar coin is more likely to
come up heads because the image is of a woman
- The dollar coin is more likely to
come up heads because the image faces to the right,
where the image on the quarter faces left.
- The dollar coin is more likely to
come up heads because of the dollar coin’s golden
color
