The Conley Report, Part VII: The Prototypical School
Next in a series looking at the Conley Report, the Washington adequacy study funded by the WEA. Bet you though I’d forgotten about it, huh?
Here comes the meat!
In order to identify how much money you would need to bring the average school up to snuff, first you have to identify the average school. In order to do this they looked at schools that were improving and tried to identify those key factors that helped those schools get better, and after that process was over this is what they came up with for the average, prototypical school:
The prototypical elementary school serves grades K through 5 and has 475 students. 61 of those kids are special ed, 194 need remedial help through the LAP program, and 37 are ELL students.
The prototypical middle school serves grades 6 through 8 and has 681 students. 88 are special education, 255 are in LAP, and 54 get ELL support.
The prototypical high school has 1,323 students (!) in grades 9 through 12. 170 are special ed, 381 are LAP, and 104 are English language learners.
Why is this important? In the following sections where the make their recommendations they’re using these numbers to make those recommendations. For example, when they talk about adding 1.64 counselors to an elementary school, they’re doing that based off of the 250 to 1 ratio and adding to the prototypical school what would be needed to meet that ratio.
As adequacy studies go, this is where you can see the big difference this report and the Picus and Odden report from Washington Learns. Picus and Odden focused more on the state as a whole and used that to make their staffing allowances (e.g., “We have 40,000 kids, so we need 800 counselors”), while Conley’s school prototype model means more math (e.g., “We have 40,000 kids in an average of 84.2 schools, and we should add 1.34 counselors to each school to meet adequacy.”).
Next time: On to the recommendations.
Here comes the meat!
In order to identify how much money you would need to bring the average school up to snuff, first you have to identify the average school. In order to do this they looked at schools that were improving and tried to identify those key factors that helped those schools get better, and after that process was over this is what they came up with for the average, prototypical school:
The prototypical elementary school serves grades K through 5 and has 475 students. 61 of those kids are special ed, 194 need remedial help through the LAP program, and 37 are ELL students.
The prototypical middle school serves grades 6 through 8 and has 681 students. 88 are special education, 255 are in LAP, and 54 get ELL support.
The prototypical high school has 1,323 students (!) in grades 9 through 12. 170 are special ed, 381 are LAP, and 104 are English language learners.
Why is this important? In the following sections where the make their recommendations they’re using these numbers to make those recommendations. For example, when they talk about adding 1.64 counselors to an elementary school, they’re doing that based off of the 250 to 1 ratio and adding to the prototypical school what would be needed to meet that ratio.
As adequacy studies go, this is where you can see the big difference this report and the Picus and Odden report from Washington Learns. Picus and Odden focused more on the state as a whole and used that to make their staffing allowances (e.g., “We have 40,000 kids, so we need 800 counselors”), while Conley’s school prototype model means more math (e.g., “We have 40,000 kids in an average of 84.2 schools, and we should add 1.34 counselors to each school to meet adequacy.”).
Next time: On to the recommendations.
posted by Ryan at 8:02 PM
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