LOL re your last point about Uber Chancellor Klein and how he led the rise of the Big 4. That accounts for it all so parsimoniously.

And your random plus 1 kicker was a gem. You definitely have demonstrated partial mastery of the learning standards. Nothing can hold you back.

The only possible explanation is… Klein was secretly the Chancellor of Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse during that period.

Can we hire THEIR gurus?

What? You say they do NOT have Mayoral Control?

(The above is my own random-plus-one shot at scoring a Level 2.)

Perhaps the (DOE?) authors of the report should have made one table for ELA scores and one for Math scores.

And then…. a table of average ordinal rankings.

It would be interesting to see if the resulting table were any different than the current one.

Better still, a graphical plot. It would also be interesting to see a spread based on the scores (individual ingredient, or stew), not simply a list in the order-of-finish. i.e. how far behind 61st place IS last place?

If you’re the tallest kid in your class, and the heaviest… odds are you’ll be at the top of a combined list as well.

This also begs the question of which metric gets (pardon the pun) “weighted” more. Tall is good. Heavy? Not so much.

Hey DOE, got peer review?

P.S. Note there was a recent study tying test scores to… student weight.

uhGAIN, I did not suggest correlation = causation. YOU did. And attributed same to moi. Please don’t bother. I see no need to defend your army of straw men.

Let me know when you’ve looked up the prior article.

Or email me at witzerooATyahooDOTcom so that I don’t run into the GS “moderation” freezer when posting the link.

I made no attempt to link test scores to graduation rates. (But come to mention it, as both are inflated, there may be correlation, if not the causality you erroneously suggest was my hypothesis.)

I take it you didn’t bother to look up the prior GS story and string re NYC grads and CUNY remedial classes. Correct?

Healine could have been: CUNY Cleans Klein Quackery.

I just sat down with the mom of a kid in one of the “wonderful” new, new small high schools. She was told by college admissions staff at schools to which her son had applied that many non-NYS colleges and universities will not accept NYC kids based solely on course grades and Regents exam scores. They insist on SAT or ACT scores … because kids’ NYCDOE diplomas, grades and Regents exam scores are wildly inflated and cannot be used to determine whether kids have really mastered any acceptable level of high school curriculum or not.

The business community may wish to make a good show of sucking in the Bloomberg/Klein manipulated numbers as part of the Bloomberg p.r. campaign, but when the rock hits the hard place, if you talk to them off the record, they’ll tell you - as they’ve told me - that NYCDOE graduates can’t read, write or do math well enough for entry level clerical-type jobs these days.

If you are suggesting that the city’s MATH score improvement over time is doubly laudable given the number ELL kids in the city, on that, I’m not so sure I share your premonition, but again, I’d love to see it analyzed.

As to poverty… using D2 figures only, “Title 1″ / “free lunch” were NOT predictors of ELA and Math performance. (Ethnicity, ELL, and IEP WERE.) But again, I’d love to see it analyzed.

In the meantime, following your hunches through analysis doesn’t undercut the points I made, though if borne out by analysis, your theories might help explain why an apples to manzanas comparison ain’t so easy.

P.S. Are you suggesting that — looked at over time — the Math test is getting easier for kids who are NOT acing the ELA test? If so, NYC schools are weaker than appear even moreso; some of the improvement is due to the language hurdle being reduced.

My general point is we should be looking at performance, not just trajectory.

So how does Klein *celebrate* anything LESS than 25% of our kids in the top 25%? In short, how dare — after eight years at the helm — he NOT hold himself to at least a state-wide average?

More importantly , let’s look at the BOTTOM quartile. Just squinting at the histogram above, it appears that 31% of our kids are in the bottom quartile statewide. And given NYC kids comprise roughly 1/3 of that quartile, which would therefore be HIGHER without city kids, the reality is worse still; Non-NYC kids comprise roughly 22% of the lowest quartile.

In short, after eight years, Klein’s kids are 1.5x as likely to be in the lowest quartile as NYS kids from outside the city.

In my view, that’s a fire-worthy offense.