Jun 13 2013

Home Field Advantage


At my school we would take all the tests and split up the task among the math teachers, being careful that no teacher grades his or her own class.  The scoring rubric is often very vague and we would have a lot of heated arguments about how many points of partial credit to give for this or that, as we tried to fairly interpret the guidelines.

This year we learned that instead of grading the students in our school, the math teachers would all go to another site where the Regents for many schools would be sent and we would work together with teachers from other schools to grade the Regents centrally.

One reason for this new policy is explained by a recent New York Post article entitled “High schools that didn’t grade their own Regents exams last year fared worse than those that did.”  According to the article, as the title suggests, students somehow got a “Home Field Advantage” when teachers from their own school graded them.  I’m not surprised by this.  It isn’t that I think that many teachers were trying to cheat to make them or their students look better — though that is certainly something that must happen.  It is actually possible that the grades, even though they are higher, are more accurate when they are graded by the teachers at the school.

Within the school teachers may have taught a topic in a particular way which is a bit unfamiliar to teachers in another school which might cause those other teachers to grade the test lower.  Either way, if the grades are more accurate or less accurate, it is a fact that when tests are graded by teachers from a different school, they are lower.

At the end of the article we are assured, “This is the first year all high schools are barred from scoring their own Regents.”  And this is something that I welcome.  As long as all schools are doing it, it would eliminate that home field advantage, particularly for charter schools who have the most incentive to inflate their grades, consciously or subconsciously.

So I was quite surprised when I got a tip from a teacher at a school that is co-located with a charter high school that the charter school was grading their own Regents.  I checked around and got confirmation from another charter school that they, too, were grading their own Regents.  For charter schools, it seems, the centralized grading is merely optional.  So much for accountability.

Over the summer when we hear about how charter schools outperformed the nearby ‘failing’ school on the Regents, I hope they will put an asterisk by the statement.

6 Responses

  1. Leigh Campbell-Hale

    I share your frustration.
    In Colorado, an online education news source reported that charter schools do a better job of retaining their students but then disclosed that they are also more likely to retain their students, leading to more five-year high school programs. Here’s the link:
    I don’t think retaining students is necessarily a bad idea, but it’s a different standard than non-charters are held to. In regular publics, if students don’t graduate in four years they’re counted as drop-outs.
    Also, under the terms of SB-191 drafted by your favorite and mine, Colorado Sen. Michael Johnston, charters apparently get more leeway to devise their own teacher evaluations that don’t have to align with the state standards. That makes it easier for charters to rate their teachers in the highest category, which will make it appear in public records that they have better teachers.
    I’m just not seeing a lot of apples-to-apples comparisons between regular publics and charters that are consistent.

  2. Steve M

    I was reading your post towards the end, thinking to myself: “…yeah, but I bet the NY-affiliated charter schools can exempt their selves from the new policy.”

    Then, when you actually confirmed that was the case, I nearly threw my laptop across the room.

    Now, THIS does sound like the new status quo-a perpetuation of irrational decision making.

  3. Not irrational at all when intended with a goal of undermining public schools and promoting privately managed charters as their replacement. Given that the very people running NYC public schools are behind that movement makes the entire process insidious. They should be charged under RICO laws.

  4. Just incredible that the DOE imposes a rule and exempts charter schools.

    How come the news media hasn’t picked up on this double standard?

    • Steve M

      I’m sure the NY DoE is not exempting charter schools. Like other states, charters are probably treated as independent school districts…and it is the school district that determines the manner in which their Regents Exams are graded.

      Still, completely ridiculous.

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By a somewhat frustrated 1991 alum

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