DOE releases high school “grades;” 75% score A or B
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Nearly half — 45% — of all New York City public high schools are “A” schools, according to their grades on progress reports released today by the Department of Education. An additional 30% of the more than 300 high schools graded received a “B.” The high school grades lag behind those of the elementary and middle schools released in September.
High elementary and middle school grades reflected, in large part, the improvement of students’ scores on state standardized exams; high school grades are based on the school’s graduation rates and Regents scores, which did not improve as much.
The high number of elementary and middle schools receiving top grades — 84% received A’s — led some to question the validity of the grading system, while state officials vowed to toughen up its procedures.
Today’s press release, reports that 87% of the schools that received an A last year earned an A again this year; 67% of the schools that earned D’s and F’s last year earned C’s this year.
Only one school, Peace and Diversity Academy in the Bronx, received an F.
See GothamSchools for a detailed summary of results. See the DOE’s website for a complete listing of scores.
The high school application process begins in a few weeks. Chancellor Klein considers these progress reports to be “useful tool” for parents deciding where to apply to high school.
What do you think? Is the high school “grade” going to influence your family’s decision?
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Any family that has done its homework regarding high schools knows not to go on the grades given by the DOE… it would be at least as foolish as going by the write ups the schools themselves provide to the annual HS Directory. As it happens, most of the “top” HS’s seem to have gotten A’s or B’s this year, but so did many schools that have less successful track records. Finding the right HS for one’s child is about fit: the right size, the right challenge, a location you’re comfortable with, a social scene that your child is comfortable with. A mere letter grade tells you none of that.
Comment by fascinated — November 16, 2009 @ 9:14 pm
When choosing a high school for your child, it is important to visit the school with your child to ensure that he/she will be happy there. Visit on more than one occasion of possible and always keep your child a part of the process. This will help to make the transition from middle to high school more successful.
Comment by Georgia Gregoire — November 18, 2009 @ 12:49 pm
Within the past few years, Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein have introduced yearly Progress Reports as a way of measuring the performance of New York City public schools. Part of a school’s Progress Report includes conducting a quality review and learning environment survey. The initial purpose of Progress Reports was to analyze school performance aside from just students’ scores on standardized tests. It is a positive thing that the Bloomberg/Klein administration wants to increase the quality of schools and their students. This message has been trumpeted in all facets of media, specifically television and newspapers. What is disturbing, however, are the increasing cases involving administrators and teachers changing grades in order to avoid closure of their schools.
When Progress Reports became available for the public to view on the NYC Department of Education’s website in 2007, Mayor Bloomberg stated, “with these Progress Reports,…our educators now have a new tool to help them see exactly where their school needs improvement and find similar schools that could help them do it.” However, comparing a small school of 300 students to a large school’s population of over 4,000 students is not fair at all. Schools are all starting at different levels, so it is unreasonable to compare a school to forty of its “peer schools” when they do not all have the same resources and funds. In addition, it is unrealistic to expect drastic improvements from one year to the next when the standards for the Progress Reports have changed every single year since the policy has been implemented. Schools need to be given a sufficient amount of time to display any real increase in academic achievement and student progress. In an essay written in NYC Schools under Bloomberg and Klein: What Parents, Teachers, and Policymakers Need to Know, the authors, Aaron M. Pallas and Jennifer L. Jennings, note, “of the 35 elementary and middle schools receiving an F in 2007, not one received an F in 2008, and only one received a D….It is just not credible that all 35 failing elementary and middle schools turned themselves around in the space of one year.” Therefore, in order for the Progress Report data to be reliable, the changes need to be measured over a several-year period, not just a year-to-year basis.
Another issue that distorts the validity of Progress Reports is the measure of student progress, which counts for fifty-five percent of the overall score. Especially at the high school level, there is a vulnerability to manipulate student credit accumulation to avoid the possibility of leadership change or even school closure. In order to keep their jobs, principals and teachers have developed ways for the students to recover the credits of a course they have failed. For instance, students are given a chance for CR simply by completing a project. Schools have adopted non-traditional ways for students to recover credits and graduate, because graduation rates are tied to school closures. Several schools throughout the city have been caught changing student grades. In recent news, the principal, Janet Saraceno, of Herbert Lehman High School in the Bronx has been under investigation for allegedly changing grades on students’ transcripts in order to raise the school’s graduation rate. Current and former teachers claim that a number of students have been given credit for classes that they either failed or never took. It is not only at the high school level that principals and teachers have been caught cheating. Earlier this school year, a middle school in Queens got caught changing the math grades of seventh graders so that they could be promoted to the eighth grade. Allowing students to move ahead when they have not learned the necessary material in a class will in the long run shortchange them. These students will fail to be prepared for college and/or the workforce. Although the Progress Report is supposed to develop a higher quality education, in the end, we must ask if this is being achieved when added pressure takes away from the focus on education. Are educators now going to feel more compelled to just hand out passing grades so that they can save their jobs?
Comment by S.K. — December 3, 2009 @ 8:33 am