Testimony of Aminda Gentile before the NYC Council Education Committee Robert Jackson on the DOE School Progress Reports: December 10, 2007

Dec 10, 2007 3:35 PM

Thank you, Chairman Jackson.

            The Progress Reports are a good first step in making schools accountable. But using their results to close schools and punish others after only one year of data calls into question the whole process. Parents, teachers, students, administrators and the public in general are confused, angered and fearful about these reports and lack clear information about how the DOE designed them and is using them. That is not what's meant by accountability.

           Everyone wants accountability in the schools, but the measures must be fair, accurate, transparent and understandable. A failing grade should be a signal for extra help to a school — not a death sentence. Mayor Bloomberg called the low grades "a wake up call for the people who work there," and grounds for closing them.  I call it a car alarm needlessly going off in the middle of the night. Before you shut down a school, you have to make sure you’ve done everything in your power to make it work, because parents and communities don’t want their schools shutting down unless they can’t be fixed.

            In Miami, where a similar grading system has long been in use, the school district groups its weakest schools into a School Improvement Zone and directs huge amounts of resources and expertise toward them. That’s the same system—called the Chancellor’s District—that New York City instituted under then-Chancellor Rudy Crew. Unfortunately, New York City abolished it in 2002.

            Some of the school grades were questionable at best, with many high-performing schools getting mediocre or failing marks on the city progress report — a result that researchers attributed to the narrowing margin for improvement at the top. Staten Island’s PS 35, for example, got an F from the city even though 98 percent of its students met standards on the state math test.  The problem was a drop in its reading scores. While 87 percent of its students met state standards (as measured on standardized reading test scores) last year, this number was down from 93 percent the year before. Yes, the scores dropped, but this is still a high-performing school and it clearly doesn’t deserve an F.

            Similarly, the renowned Center School on the Upper West Side that had a 91 percent passing rate on 8th-grade math tests received a D. And the Salk School of Science, a much-sought-after Manhattan middle school, scored a C.

Other schools that have recently made great strides also got poor grades. For instance, PS 33 in the Bronx that doubled the number of students reading at grade level in 2005 received a D. Even MS 45 in Manhattan, a SURR school that everyone acknowledges is on the upswing — received an F.

            There is something wrong with the design of an accountability system when schools that have an established track record of solid performance are stigmatized by a flawed failing grade.

            The other end of the spectrum is puzzling, too. Several schools deemed to be failing under the state and federal accountability systems, including schools on the state’s SURR list and its list of most violent schools  such as JHS 22 and   MS 296 in the Bronx,  got As or Bs from the city.        

            So here we have an alleged DOE accountability system that says one thing, while state and national accountability measures—including the highly regarded National Assessment of Educational Progress—say something else. If parents and educators and the public don’t have confidence in this measure—and how can they?—it’s not going to be an effective accountability tool or an effective tool to improve student achievement.

            Just as troubling are the potential consequences to those schools that did not fixate on teaching to the test. For grades K-8, many schools have done well over a period of years by focusing on English and math, but not to the exclusion of spending time on art, music and other subjects. Because 55 percent of the grade is based on “progress,” those quality schools received grades of B or C instead of an A.

            Bard College President Leon Botstein described another problem with simply grading schools A to F. The college partners with Bard High School Early College. Graduates of this high-performing school earn not only a high school diploma but also two years worth of college credits. The school, one of the most successful and innovative in the system, received a C because the progress reports don’t give credit for college level courses. Botstein’s complaint, echoed by many of our high school colleagues, is that one grade can’t really measure the diversity and rigor of high school education offerings or the actual progress students achieve.

            Here are some suggestions that we feel will give the public a better view of how our schools and our school system are doing:

• Use multiple measures to evaluate schools. Basing 85 % of the progress report on test scores—using a test that was not designed to measure school or student progress—greatly overemphasizes the test's importance and misuses the measuring tool.

•  The teaching and learning conditions in schools should be a major indicator of progress. Such conditions as class size, school overcrowding and school safety directly affect learning and must be a part of a school's progress report.

•  Teacher retention and student turnover data provide important information about how schools are perceived by those who work there and how they are responding to those who attend.

•  School evaluations must factor in the availability of educational opportunities, such as access to college-level and advanced placement courses, music, art, physical education, community involvement opportunities, work readiness and apprenticeship and intern programs, as well as current technology.

• One year of progress is not a valid and reliable measure. Before the department makes high-stakes decisions, especially those involving school closure, there must be longitudinal data.

•  The department must give the school surveys more weight. They are one of the few tools the department itself has made available by which parents and teachers can express their opinions.  Because of this they are the best indicator of whether a school is a place that is collegial, welcoming and professional, the kind of environment in which students, parents and teachers thrive, or whether a school is an educationally toxic environment that fails these very same people.  Schools where the community works together, such as MS 45 that I mentioned earlier and PS 721 in Staten Island, are better places for teaching and learning than schools with adversarial relationships such as we currently have in Bayard Rustin High School for the  Humanities and the Acorn High School for Social Justice

 Let me conclude with this. Any school system’s mission is two-fold. It needs to nurture the schools that work and focus like a laser beam on those that don’t. The school progress reports fall short on both counts.