Lost in the political war, modest but real grad rate concerns

reading between the snipes

July 21, 2009

Lost in the political war, modest but real grad rate concerns

by Elizabeth Green, at 8:09 pm

The accelerating 2009 mayoral campaign is distracting from real information inside an audit of city graduation rates released by the city comptroller’s office today. In fact, the audit is neither as damning as Bill Thompson Jr., the comptroller and mayoral hopeful, is claiming — nor as unequivocally rosy as the Bloomberg administration says.

Thompson said the audit suggests that principals and teachers responded to pressure to raise graduation rates by falsifying student records. “The New York City Department of Education has become the Enron of American education, showing the gains and hiding the losses,” he said at a press conference today.

But the audit found no evidence of tampering. Thompson’s declaration about fudging numbers came in remarks to reporters, not the official audit. “Is it just about sloppy bookkeeping or sloppy record-keeping? I don’t think so,” he said. He added, “This is a case where you can read between the lines.”

The audit also concludes that only 2 out of 206 randomly selected graduates, or 1%, did not deserve their diplomas. That’s quite different than the 10% figure being widely reported. Auditors initially challenged 19 graduates, or 10%, but threw out the concerns about 17 of them after school officials provided documents showing they earned their diplomas. And 11 of the 19 had overall grade averages of 80% or better, according to the audit.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg’s re-election campaign sniped at the report even before Thompson formally released it, issuing a statement from Howard Wolfson, Bloomberg’s spokesman, calling the report “phony” and a politicization of the comptroller’s office. School officials joined in the attack, saying in interviews that the audit actually validates their reported graduation rate, despite Thompson’s political remarks.

In fact, the audit does raise questions about the way schools decide who to graduate and, especially, the records they keep to document the process.

The audit sheds light on a process called “annualization,” which allows schools to override one failed course grade with a pass grade achieved in a second semester. The process varies from school to school, according to the audit. The audit reports that one Bronx high school requires students to score 75% or higher in the second semester in order to override the first semester failing grade, while another requires just a 65% grade.

Many schools also keep weak records of changes to students’ grades, which the audit found are common. Four of 10 schools that the comptroller’s office visited could not produce the official reports tracking grade-changes, telling auditors that they threw the forms out. And of 274 students whose transcripts the comptroller sampled, 90, or 33%, had had at least one change made. “The changes generally reflected improvements in students’ grades; some of them resulted in students passing classes that they were previously recorded as having failed,” the audit said.

The comptroller’s office also found questionable changes made to transcripts. One graduate, for instance, had seven grade changes made to his transcript on two days during the month he graduated, June 2007. The audit says:

“Five of the changes involved adding five grades of ‘CR’ for Spanish 1 through 5, all supposedly earned during the spring 2007 term. Another sampled student’s transcript was updated in June 2007, shortly before graduation, to change two failing grades of 55 to 65, one for a class taken in the fall of 2006 term and one for a class taken in the spring 2007 term.”

Another accusation Thompson made tonight on NY1 bears clarification. He accused schools of giving students multiple credits for passing just a single course. A student might pass English 101, for instance, and then get three credits for that course — as if they had also passed English 102 and English 103. But their transcript would also report that the student failed English 102.

The accusation is muted by documents provided by the Department of Education, which show that schools included in the audit mostly gave multiple credits for gym, band, and advisory courses. When an English course was coded twice, the course was “non-sequential,” and one course occurred during summer school. Calling the courses 101, 102, and 103 as if they follow a sequence seems unfair.

Read the full audit here.

CORRECTION: The original version of this post incorrectly summarized the kinds of courses for which the audit found students received multiple credits. I’ve uploaded a full spreadsheet detailing all 39 cases identified by the audit here. The Department of Education provided the spreadsheet.

http://edintheapple peter

Unfortunately the Report does not address credit recovery … a serious failing, and, makes no mention of granting credit for remedial classes, a common practice NOT sanctioned by SED regs … in many cases new and inexperienced counselors (many new counselors were never teachers) have no backup, no one to ask … and are not aware of all the rules and regs … sloppy recordkeeping and the absence of external supervision …
http://www.classsizematters.org leonie haimson

90 of the 274 transcripts examined had had at least one change made. “The changes generally reflected improvements in students’ grades; some of them resulted in students passing classes that they were previously recorded as having failed,” the audit said.”

Why would such changes be made so often –if not to skew the results? Why are such “improvements” in grades make after a student already has failed the course?

In its own defense, DOE claims in the audit that in most cases of changes in grades or credits, students performed “make up work” or “independent study” as solely verified by the principal’s statement. When a principal’s bonus or continued employment depends upon rising graduation rates, this should not be considered sufficient. In fact, this audit reveals that the practice of credit recovery is far more widespread than originally suspected.

More than 20% of the sample had changes made in the transcript within a month of graduation — some for courses taken in previous years. Some of these changes were made after graduation.

Another 20% of students did not have the required attendance rate of 90% that Chancellor’s regs require for graduation; which DOE does not dispute, but instead says that they are considering changing the reg?!

Also, Elizabeth, are you saying that DOE disproved the following statement in the audit– and proved to your satisfaction that schools only gave credit for multiple passing of the same course in gym and the like, and not academic subjects — and “never for English”?

” For example, one sampled student failed English 3 but passed English 4 twice and received credit for each English 4. Another student received two credits for passing Global History 1 twice but did not take Global History 4 at all. By simply passing the same course twice, instead of all the courses in the sequence, the student is not achieving minimal competence in each major subject area of the curriculum. Additionally, this practice allows schools to improperly pass students who otherwise might have failed.”

In the DOE’s formal response to the audit, they did not make this claim that you repeat above. Instead, they say that in the “majority” of cases, the courses were phsy ed, or band, or advisory.

The Comptroller’s office responds that the DOE is incorrect and “These students took the same major subject classes two or more times.The instances we identified do not include non-major subject classes, such as physical education,band, yearbook, or advisory.”
http://jd2718.wordpress.com Jonathan

Leonie, the DoE response on the E4s is reasonable. (Addendum, page 21 of 38). English is not sequential, and summer schools usually offer a generic lower grade English, and a generic higher grade (post-Regents) English, and sometimes a Regents prep. These would likely be coded #E2 or #E4, #E8, and perhaps #E6

Students needing E1, E2, E3, or E4 might typically all be in #E4…
Jo

Can we perhaps take a step back to look at our students? Teachers struggle deeply with this issue every year and I think make a genuine effort at evaluating students’ readiness for graduation. From my experience as a teacher, advisor, and counselor, many changes are made in consultation with teachers, parents, students themselves, and administrators. And the conversation around their transcripts is always about what is best for the student, what he or she is struggling with academically (and usually, socially and emotionally). Students whose transcripts are amended are almost always ones who need the most support and those are always the most challenging students to support on the teachers’ end.

While I wish that there were a better system and I, too, have felt that some practices are tricky, I would like readers to remember that these are students who struggle often with chaotic home lives and difficult personal situations that have resulted in the need for some alternate way of crediting. How would you, for example, deal with a student who dropped the ball on her classes during the last semester of her senior year because her mother just died? I’m not being dramatic because that is what happened to one of our students for whom we had to figure out ways for credit recovery. This is the reality of the lived experience our students go through. It’s not just a numbers issue and it certainly is not always an issue of doctoring statistics. We do a grave injustice to our hard working educators by distrusting their professional judgment, so that is why I am speaking up.
Elizabeth Green

Jo, Thanks for the comment. It’s good to remember that these numbers refer to real people.

Leonie, I was wrong to say only gym and band. The DOE is right to say “mainly.” Regret the error and I’ll correct it in the post.

I’ve uploaded the spreadsheet that the DOE sent me here explaining all 39 cases of duplicate course codings: http://www.scribd.com/share/upload/13758869/1m8xzvqw9q949zbuidkd.
inexile

Yes, there are students who have chaotic lives and for whom life at a young age has already been filled with many challenges. My worry, however, is we are allowing students to believe that they can do the barest minimum and still graduate and be successful. They go on to college where no one is taking into account the myriad problems of their lives. How many teachers out there have students who show up to HIGH SCHOOL every day without a pen or pencil to write with and often without paper? How can a student who doesn’t come prepared to do even the most minimal work be considered ready to graduate? I, and everyone I work with, wonder what will become of these students once they are out in a world where people are not going to give them every consideration.
http://www.classsizematters.org leonie haimson

The point is that we need a school system in which more kids can graduate with a meaningful HS education. Of course, there are individual tragedies, as Jo describes, in which there should be some flexibility; but these individual cases could not possibly account for the widespread phenomena of data manipulation that the audit reveals.

The way our current schools are set up they create the conditions in which most kids are failing. If our graduation rates are still only about 50% (counting all the illegitimate discharges) and of that 50%, about one third of students are graduating without actually passing their courses, this reveals that there are systemic flaws in our school system that need to be addressed — and that are being obdurately ignored by an administration that uses manipulated data to claim that their policies are successful.

NYC middle and high schools are full of high-needs kids who are stuffed into classes of 30 or more, w/ each teacher having four or five classes. Most high schools are severely overcrowded as well.

It is no wonder that kids don’t show up to their classes and/or aren’t passing their courses. They feel that the system doesn’t care about them, and it doesn’t. To get around their consequent failure by scrubbing their records and giving them credit in all sorts of ways after the fact allows those in charge to deny the moral imperative to improve the systemic conditions under which these tragic failures will continue, unchanged.
Dissenter

Leonie I fail to see the link between graduation requirements and class sizes, except as occurs in your very tiny universe.
http://www.classsizematters.org Leonie haimson

Dissenter: Class size reduction remains the top priority of the more than 1 million NYC parents, even in the DOE’s own surveys.
86% of NYC principals say they are unable to provide a quality education because of excessive class sizes. In national surveys, more than 90% of teachers consistently respond that the best way to improve our public schools would be to reduce class size.
Hardly a tiny universe — though clearly Bloomberg and Klein would like to make it so.
Albert

How is this report a politicization of the comptrollers office? This audit was performed long before Thomson declared his candidacy. This is really an example of Bloomberg trying to shift the focus away from his man Klein’s failures as an administrator of an educational system–something he has no experience in. He has run our city’s public schools like a corporation and he is only concerned with the numbers he produces. Is does not help a student at all to pass a class when he or she doesn’t know the material. We need a school system where the people on top are more concerned with the students than with their own record.
Dissenter

Albert for almost 40 years we were supposed to have a system of schools under decentralization where local communities were concerned about the children rather than the “Central Board.” My guess is I don’t have to tell you what all of that “concern” for the children has produced starting in 1969.
Michael M.

There’s a difference between centralized and totalitarian.
curious

Well, I have often wondered about how some of my students wind up graduating after failing my required class usually due to simple attendance issues and failure to make up missed work. I have also reversed student grades for a simple reason. Unlike most suburban schools, the NYC DOE required grades to be submitted BEFORE the Regents exams are administered. This is also before the end of the calendar school year. In my high school, finals were often 2 wks before Regents wk, a lot of time! If a student passed the Regents exam with above 65, I would reverse a 55 to 65 for one semester only. This follows state policies that sanction counting the Regents exam as up to 80% of the final grade awarded for a year-long class with a terminal Regents examination. In fact, I have seen transcripts from transfer students from LI and their entire year long grade was their Regents exam grade! In elective courses, I have accepted work during this period, make up final exams or projects, that students needed to complete or improve in order to achieve a passing grade if there were other issues (chronic health problems, child care issues that prevent students from staying after school with their young child in the building even in one with a LYFE daycare center).

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reading between the snipes

July 21, 2009

Lost in the political war, modest but real grad rate concerns

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