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New York City Education Department Proposes Changes in School Grades

February 29, 2008

The New York City school system has released a list of proposed changes to its system of grading schools, intended to soften some of the sting of the blunt A through F grades, as well as to measure school quality more accurately.

In a memo to principals dated Wednesday, the city listed a number of changes that were described as “under consideration,” including measures that would benefit schools with the highest-performing students, as well as those with large numbers of special-education students.

The report cards, issued for the first time last fall, are significant because schools that earn a D or F could be closed and their principals removed. The grades are based on a complex calculation that assigns the most weight to how individual students improve in a year on state standardized tests, and they also compare schools with similar populations so as not to penalize schools whose students arrive at a disadvantage.

But the formula drew an outcry because of some counterintuitive results that showed highly regarded schools with poor grades. It also branded as failures schools like Automotive High School in Brooklyn, which has been widely praised for doing remarkable work with struggling students, many of whom have learning disabilities.

While Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein seems poised to keep the basic premise of the report cards, the awarding of a single overall letter grade to each school, the city said it was considering adding separate grades for subsections of the report card.

That would mean additional grades for school environment, student performance and student progress.

“I think it’s extremely unlikely that the overall grade would be eliminated,” said Andrew Jacob, an Education Department spokesman. “What we’ve heard from schools is that there would be a benefit to focusing attention on more specifically what schools are doing well and on the specific areas that schools need to improve.”

Mr. Jacob said the city would weigh principals’ response before making the changes final.

Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, one of the loudest critics of the grading system, said: “Assigning grades in multiple areas instead of just one and giving more weight to a school’s environment are steps in the right direction, but much more must be done.”

The proposed changes pertain only to elementary and middle schools; proposals to change the high school report cards will be released next month.

One of the key changes would be to award schools credit, or a “progress adjustment,” for special education students who take standardized tests in English and math two years in a row, regardless of their scores, in an effort to “reflect the additional challenge schools undertake when serving special education students,” according to the memo.

Another change would no longer penalize schools when their highest-performing students’ scores on standardized tests go down from one year to the next as long as the students’ scores still fall within the highest of four possible categories.

Other proposals would not count prekindergarten students when judging school attendance and would make more schools eligible for ways of earning extra credit.

Source: NY Times

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Written by NY Politics · Filed Under Education, News 

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