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Report: Empowerment helped; grading system “deeply flawed”

Chancellor Joel Klein’s strategy of empowering principals while holding them more accountable for results helped struggling schools get better. But his A to F grading system is “deeply flawed” and needs improvement.

That’s the message of a new, incredibly detailed report from the New School’s Center for New York City Affairs.

The report is the result of a study of hundreds of schools, including in-depth interviews with principals and school visits. The authors focused especially on the Bronx’s District 7.

The report is being released this morning at a panel discussion featuring Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch; the Department of Education’s accountability chief Shael Polakow-Suransky; John Garvey, until recently the City University of New York’s liaison to the public schools; and MS 223 principal Ramon Gonzalez.

We’ll have more details after the panel. For now, here’s the report:

  • Pingback: Tony Hsieh (Zappos), School Management and Collaboration: Does Participation Reduce Resistance and Produce Effective, Data-Driven Schools and Union Contracts? « Ed In The Apple

  • Smith

    Why is it that no one (including some researchers who have posted on Gotham Schools in the past) will take my suggestion that it’s necessary to look at 8th grade attendance rates when making comparisons between high-school populations? Does anyone honestly think that screening schools don’t do this? The authors of this report actually want the progress reports to penalize high schools even more when students are absent, yet they seem OK with the idea that students can be compared based on test scores alone[p.35].
    And why is “progress” more important than performance? This is a completely arbitrary calculation. I don’t care if ninth-grade progress “predicts” graduation or not. If a kid graduates, why should it matter if she had to repeat Algebra? Similarly, if a kid drops out, should we care that he passed Global 1?

    And finally, why is the problem of students’ receiving easy credits presented as a theoretical possibility. Can’t they talk to teachers?

  • Smith

    I’ll add one more comment, even though no one seems to be reading, or commenting at least. In order to compare school populations, there ought to be some way to count the number of children with serious discipline problems. Such children not only have low chances of success, but they hinder the performance of those around them.

  • Bronx teacher-lady

    Wow…this report was extremely informative and eye-opening. I implore everyone who regularly checks into/comments on this site to read it thoroughly and comment.

    While I couldn’t possibly get into the details of the many things I found completely outrageous…from the total acknowledgement of the lack of oversight of principals to the DOE leaderships’ own admittance of the serious flaws in almost everything they are trying to implement, especially regarding accountability…this report may be long, but it ia a MUST READ.

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