Officials Apply a Firmer Hand in Grading Schools for Progress Reports
Officials Apply a Firmer Hand in Grading Schools for Progress Reports
Michael Kirby Smith for The New York Times
P.S. 60 in Woodhaven, Queens. A's were given to 298 schools; 411 got B's; 354 scored C's; 79 received D's; and 32 schools got F's.
By FERNANDA SANTOS and ANNA M. PHILLIPS
Published: September 23, 2011
New York City decided to give twice as many elementary and middle schools D’s and F’s on their annual progress reports this year as last year, officials announced on Friday, stepping up efforts to isolate struggling schools and select them for closing or other types of intervention.
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By expanding the number of schools receiving the lowest grades, and by removing a safety net that kept schools from dropping more than two letter grades in a year, Shael Polakow-Suransky, the city’s chief academic officer, said the city was offering “a more precise and accurate representation of how the schools are actually performing.”
For the first time this year, the city gave extra points to schools that showed significant gains among black and Latino boys, who have lagged academically. It is part of a wider push by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to improve the lives of black and Latino men citywide and tackles one of the most stubborn problems many urban schools have.
Broadly speaking, Mr. Polakow-Suransky said the fourth round of progress reports, which have generated much controversy since their introduction in 2007, conveyed stability. Of the 1,174 schools covering prekindergarten through eighth grade whose reports were released on Friday, 468 (40 percent) received the same letter grade as last year, while 242 schools (21 percent) improved by one grade, and 279 (24 percent) dropped by one grade.
There were 14 schools that experienced big swings: three of them — Public School 195 in Rosedale, Queens; Brooklyn Charter School in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn; and the South Bronx Classical Charter School — climbed from a D to an A, while 11 dropped three grades.
One of those is Icahn Charter School 3 in the South Bronx, which fell to a D from an A, and was the only one of the four Icahn schools measured this year not to get the top grade. (A fifth Icahn school is too new to be graded.) Jeffrey Litt, the network’s superintendent, said the school was being penalized for having admitted more special education students in 2010-11, which led to a drop in its test scores.
“I personally don’t believe they illustrate what they need to illustrate,” Mr. Litt said of the progress reports. “I don’t think they tell the whole story, and parents are drawing conclusions from them.”
In all, 298 schools got A’s; 411 schools got B’s; 354 scored C’s; 79 received D’s; and 32 schools got F’s. (Forty-five schools received progress reports with no letter grades because they were too new, too small or being phased out.)
The 81 charter schools measured this year received a higher percentage of A’s than the 1,093 traditional public schools that received progress reports.
Among those schools receiving F’s, 41 percent of their students are Hispanic and 54 percent are black, according to an analysis by The New York Times. Citywide, Hispanics make up 40 percent of school enrollment, while blacks are 29 percent.
Aaron Pallas, a professor of sociology and education at Columbia University’s Teachers College who examined the numbers, said 8 percent of the schools where more than half of the students were black or Hispanic had D’s in their progress reports this year and 4 percent F’s. Meanwhile, three D’s were given to schools where less than half the students were black or Latino, all of them in Staten Island; no such schools received F’s. The disproportionate number of black students attending low-graded schools has been a constant since the reports began. By highlighting schools that have had success with this subset of students, Mr. Polakow-Suransky said, the city hoped to replicate their practices elsewhere.
Identifying successful practices was one of the original goals of the progress reports, but the exchange of information never quite materialized.
“It’s like you’ve got 20 doctors standing around in a circle, they’re all telling you what’s wrong, but nobody lifts a finger to help you,” Michael Mulgrew, the president of the teachers’ union, said on Friday.
The progress reports’ letter grades reflect comparisons among schools with similar populations, in terms of demographics and the test scores of their incoming students.
They are based on three measures: how much individual students improved in the state’s English and math exams from one year to the next; how well the students did in the most recent exams; and the schools’ environment, gauged by attendance records and surveys of parents, teachers and students.
This year, the city set, for the first time, specific instructional goals, pushing schools to get students to read more, write better and “use their minds more than just to answer multiple-choice questions,” Mr. Polakow-Suransky said. It is a reflection of the changes the state tests have undergone.
The latest reports also show the percentage of middle school students who earned passing grades in English, math, science and social studies courses, as well as the percentage of eighth-grade students who earned high-school credits in accelerated courses. These factors were not counted toward the schools’ grades this year, though they will count next year.
A rule was put in place last year that no school could drop more than two letter grades, to offset the big drop in scores experienced across the city as the state recalibrated its test. But this year, when the tests underwent more modest alterations, that cushion was removed.
The city predetermined the distribution of grades, giving the schools that scored in the top 25 percent on its algorithm A’s, the next 35 percent B’s and the next 30 percent C’s. Seven percent of schools got D’s and three percent F’s, according to the formula. Last year’s breakdown was also set in advance, but C’s, D’s and F’s were reserved for 35 percent, 4 percent and 1 percent of the schools, respectively.
Though the grades are often used by parents as they shop for schools, they are difficult to understand. Among middle schools, an overall numeric grade of 58.2 was enough to earn an A this year. The scores effectively put 109 schools on notice; having earned a D or F this year or a C or less for a third consecutive year, their performance will be closely scrutinized. There were 53 schools in the same category last year.
“This is really about trying to tell, ‘Are schools making progress or not?’ ” Mr. Polakow-Suransky said, “and if not, why not and what do we need to do to push them.”
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