2008 School progress reports
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Well, Eduwonkette called it last Monday (and even had fun with a stats results pool): The DOE has delivered 2008 School Progress Reports cards to the city’s schools, far earlier in the academic year than the November 2007 release. (Nomenclature alert: Progress reports are DOE measures; school report cards are products of the NY State Dept. of Education.)
Elissa Gootman’s Times story leads with a failing grade for PS 8 – the same school that Bloomberg praised when the DOE committed to building a new, multimillion-dollar annex to accomodate all the students flocking to the now-thriving school. The school’s current F (after last year’s C) highlights what critics call the Progress Reports’ greatest flaw: More-than-majority weight on student academic progress — measured by standardized test scores — means that schools that start with more kids on or above grade level can show less ‘progress’ than more challenged schools. The reports weigh other factors, including parent and teacher satisfaction, but a 60% weight on progress could clobber other, quality-of-school-life measures.
The apparent contradiction — major capital investment in an F school (which, if rules are followed, could risk eventual closure) — forces the question: Don’t the various departments of the DOE talk to each other? Parents have to wonder how a school can be rewarded and punished by the same hand. Parents who want to see scores for their child’s school have to wait — the 2007-08 scores are not yet posted on the DOE website.
Update: DOE sources say that someone in the school “apparently leaked” the score information. The 2007-08 Progress Reports will be released sometime next week. Stay tuned…
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I have seen so much indignant criticism of the school report cards. My own anecdotal experience is to the contrary. As a 7th grade parent last year, I was so thankful for the D my kid’s school got! My child came into a highly-reputed and popular district 2 middle school (our 1st choice), only to find terrible quality of instruction, disorganized (and unfriendly) administration, and basically no communication between parents and school. Since most parents seemed satisfied with the school, I was alone in a horror show where my kid was frustrated and confused at school, my child’s standardized test scores (always just under 4s) plummeted to barely squeeking into the 3s in 6th grade, and that was just my problem - until the school earned its well-deserved D on the school report card. What a wakeup call for an arrogant and incompetent school that had gotten by just on talking the talk. Thank you, DOE!!!
Comment by Mel — September 12, 2008 @ 4:11 pm
It’s not too late to put in an entry in the eduwonkette pool predicting the stability of the grades from last year to this year — see http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/eduwonkette/2008/09/predicting_the_near_future_1.html
Comment by skoolboy — September 12, 2008 @ 8:40 pm
PS 8 is not a good example of the Report Cards’ deficiencies (see, e.g., my article “Report Cards Flunk the Clarity Test” on gothamgazette.com, Nov. 26, 2007). I’m afraid that the school and parents will use the F to attack the Report Cards rather than the instructional issues that the data (forget the Report Cards) and the Times revealed.
PS 8 is actually a complicated matter. It was clear that the gains were because of changes in student demography, not leadership or some heretofore unknown miracle teaching practice. When it was a District 13 school, the superintendent, Lester Young (now a Regent), insisted on busing low income kids from Fort Green and Prospect Heights. When Klein eliminated the districts, he rezoned PS 8 as a “neighborhood” school. Hard to believe, without effective instruction, kids from Brooklyn Heights do better in school than less well off kids. So, decry as I do the Report Cards, the data reveal that progress is lacking — low income kids don’t progress because instruction is deficient (to the degree those kids are still in attendance) and the new, overwhelmingly upper middle class population doesn’t progress because they come in doing well.
Comment by David C. Bloomfield — September 13, 2008 @ 11:28 am
The Brooklyn Eagle has published the best analysis of PS 8’s situation that I’ve seen so far, suggesting that the problem with this extremely misleading grade is that the comparative schools may be more in line with the new demographic (upscale, mostly white Brooklyn Heights and DUMBO residents) than the population of 4th and 5th graders who took the test last year, a majority of whom are from less advantaged backgrounds.
The article is here: http://brooklyneagle.com/categories/category.php?category_id=27&id=23150
Incidentally, PS 8 is still a District 13 school. And a first-rate one. ELA scores have doubled and math scores have tripled in the last five years. That’s not just changing demographics. The quality of instruction is much, much higher than it was in the past, and it’s getting better as the mostly young teaching staff becomes more seasoned.
–PS 8 parent
Comment by anon — September 13, 2008 @ 10:12 pm
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Comment by business web site hosting — September 14, 2008 @ 6:34 pm
Glad this conversation has begun, and sure it will continue through and beyond this week, when citywide Progress Reports are scheduled to be released. But the question posed Friday on the blog — how can the DOE reward an ostensibly successful school by funding its expansion and then grade the same school with a failing grade? — still holds, and still makes skeptical parents wonder about communication within the Department. Questions have gone to DOE and answers should be forthcoming later today.
Comment by Helen — September 15, 2008 @ 8:36 am
Progress Reports posted on DOE web site. Look up school and choose statistics.
Comment by Anonymous — September 16, 2008 @ 3:19 pm