PARENTS deserve fair, clear and accurate assessments of our public schools and their children’s progress so that they can make appropriate educational choices. The city Department of Education has taken a step in that direction – but only a step.
There is something wrong with the design of an accountability system that stigmatizes with low grades schools that have solid, established track records.
With so much at stake, it is imperative that the reports be clear and fair, consistent with the state and federal accountability systems – and, above all, accurate.
But parents and teachers are asking how exceptionally successful schools – such as PS 321 in Park Slope, PS 6 on the Upper East Side and PS 234 in TriBeCa – got Bs.
Even more problematic: PS 35 in Staten Island – a school nationally recognized for its high performance – received an F. More than half its students are eligible for free lunches, but PS 35’s reading scores have come in about 20 percentage points above the district average since 2002. It received the highest grade on its school-quality review and has made yearly progress in all areas under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. It is beloved and sought after by parents and educators alike. So how did it “earn” an F?
The problem, apparently, was a drop in its reading scores: 84 percent of its students met state standards on reading test scores last year, down from 95 percent the year before. Yes, the scores dropped – but this is still a high-performing school, and it clearly doesn’t deserve an F. The Progress Reports can indeed provide useful data, but they are sort of like a car’s global positioning system: It can tell you where you are, based on official maps, but it doesn’t know all the conditions on the ground that might affect how best to proceed.
The DOE says the reports are meant to be accountability tools that help expose poorly performing schools. That might be true in some cases, but they also raise two big questions that have yet to be answered: What can (or should) be done to help those schools improve? And how do we ensure that schools that work are nurtured, not hurt, in the process?
In Florida, where the grading system was invented, Miami groups its weakest schools into a School Improvement Zone and directs huge amounts of resources and expertise toward them. Unfortunately, New York City abolished its similar program years ago.
In addition to not offering targeted help to struggling schools, the progress reports put far too much reliance on students’ standardized test scores. But experience shows that such scores can fluctuate from year-to-year for reasons that have nothing to do with the school – which is why no reliable grading system looks at only two years of scores.
And while it’s good that the reports look at each school’s year-to-year progress (a growth model) rather than simply the current year’s “absolute” scores, the DOE’s model doesn’t take into account a basic statistical norm – students who score highly on tests have less room to improve than students who don’t. This means a school where 95 percent of the kids meet state standards faces a near-impossible task scoring better next year.
Furthermore, the focus on standardized test scores pushes schools to devote even more time to test preparation, to the exclusion of important enrichment activities such as class trips, school plays and foreign-language instruction. What other message can a school that got a B or C or D take from this, even when most – if not all – of its students are meeting state standards?
We hope the DOE’s effort is the first and not the last word on how to measure achievement and academic progress. Moving forward, it should give greater weight to the Learning Environment Survey – the largest, citywide survey of parents, students and educators ever conducted by the DOE – and other conditions that affect a student’s experience in school, such as class size and safety.
Progress reports should also take into account such learning opportunities as access to college-level courses and the availability of music, art and physical education. After all, parents look for these things when considering where to send their child.
Parents deserve to know how their school is performing. But the “grades” must be accurate, fair and useful. Just as important – the data must be used to inform instruction, rather than to brand schools with a scarlet letter.
If we truly want to help all kids succeed, shutting down a school that wouldn’t be closed under state or federal law – or stigmatizing it without getting a complete picture of what’s really happening – is not the way to go. So, our grade for the progress reports: “Effort Recognized, but Needs Improvement.”
Randi Weingarten is the president of the United Federation of Teachers.