By VIVIAN YEE
New York City’s Education Department may step up its efforts to close schools after more than 150 of them posted a third straight year of mediocre results on their annual progress reports.
The reports, released Monday for elementary and middle schools, showed that about a quarter of schools received A’s and 9 percent received the lowest grades available, D’s or F’s. Education Department officials said that in addition to D and F schools, they will also scrutinize “triple-C” schools, or schools that received a C this year and a C or worse the previous two years. The number of such schools has swelled from 5 last year to 114 this year.
Over all, 304 schools received A’s, 421 received B’s, 365 received C’s, 80 received D’s and 23 received F’s, a distribution roughly equivalent to last year’s.
The formula that determines a school’s grade changes slightly each year, but the core elements remain the same: the score is largely based on improvement in students’ scores on state standardized tests and also considers factors like attendance and parent feedback.
Critics of the grading system have long complained that the scores place too much emphasis on the tests, which are given to all third through eighth graders in math and English. This year, officials added two new factors: passing rates for science, math, English and social-studies classes and eighth graders’ high school readiness, as measured by the number of high-school-level classes and Regents tests they pass in middle school. Beginning next year, middle schools’ grades will also take into account how well their graduates perform in their first year of high school.
The chief academic officer for the Education Department, Shael Polakow-Suransky, said the new methodology offered a more rigorous, balanced and “richer” assessment of schools’ performance.
Mr. Polakow-Suransky said officials would finalize by next week a list of schools marked for “early engagement,” meaning that the city might explore closing the school, bringing in a new principal or taking other serious measures. Including high schools, 40 schools were on that list last year.
But he cautioned that none of the schools receiving a D, an F or a third C would automatically face an intervention. Some, for instance, received low progress grades but strong quality review marks, which take into account parent interviews and classroom observations. “There are triple-C’s in this group that I’m not really worried about,” Mr. Polakow-Suransky said. “This is an art, not a science.”
One reason for the large jump in “triple-C” schools this year dates to 2009, when 84 percent of schools received an A, inviting widespread ridicule of the grading system. The next year, the state made its tests harder to pass, causing aplummet in progress report grades in 2010.
While the inclusion of class passing rates injects some subjectivity into the grading methodology, the department said it had taken steps to guard against manipulation. Each school was required to develop a uniform grading policy, and schools can only pass students based on their mastery of state standards in each subject. Although they may count attendance, participation, effort and other factors in the grade, they cannot pass or fail students according to a quota, said Adina Lopatin, the deputy chief academic officer.
At the well-regarded P.S. 3 in Greenwich Village, which has received two C’s in a row after a B three years ago, several parents criticized the grading system for ignoring the school’s emphasis on creative and critical thinking.
“They are educating critical thinking and creative minds and that is not at all reflected on these tests,” said Nick Gottlieb, co-president of the school’s PTA and a father of two students. Lisa Siegman, P.S. 3’s principal for the past 12 years, said the progress report favored schools that improved their test scores over those that maintained high scores.
“It’s such a complicated statistic that you can have families feel that their kids are doing really well and still get a C,” Ms. Siegman said.
The Education Department says it expects even more schools to drop into what is currently C, D and F territory next year, as state standardized tests are slated to become more difficult. The new tests will add algebra concepts to some third-grade math problems and raise the reading level of passages in the English exams, among other changes.
“Any way you put it,” Mr. Polakow-Suransky said, “the tests are much, much, much more difficult. I think it’s going to be a significant shift.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: October 1, 2012
An earlier version of this article misstated the number of city schools that received a “triple-C” designation the last two years. The number of such schools increased from 5 last year to 114 this year, not from 9 last year to 166 this year.
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