Comments on: More schools met threshold for closure on new progress reports

By: Dberrios51

Dberrios51 — Wed, 17 Oct 2012 21:04:00 +0000

My school received three C’s. Which is a shame but I understand the reasons why. The admin isn’t doing all it can to support the teachers and instead they are trying to undermine the efforts of teacher by not giving them the proper resources or support. These poor teacher have to spend a great deal of their money just to get their classrooms in order. It’s a shame because the school has such great potential.

By: NYC Teacher

NYC Teacher — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 23:25:00 +0000

Not true SpecialEducator 2000. There are schools which showed almost 20% progress from the previous year, across all subgroups, yet still were given an F in student growth because the DOE changed the schools they were compared against. Well, we think that’s why but nobody can actually explain their convoluted formula which they use to arrive at these grades.

As far as you being a 9 year DOE teacher before choosing to leave before it tarnished your career. Let me guess, you went to a wonderful charter school where everything is great because you’re no longer restricted by that cumbersome teachers’ union. If so, I call BS again.

By: SpecialEducator2000

SpecialEducator2000 — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 20:12:00 +0000

It’s not really “BS”. Most of the weight of the school report card is heavily based on test performance and student progress. If a school can not perform or at the VERY least show student progress, they do not deserve to be open. end. of story. Regardless of your point of view on testing, if you can’t pass these very low bar exams, your school is in big trouble. These tests do not require higher order level critical thinking skills. Just so you know I was a DOE teacher for 9 years, and made the choice to leave a failing school that could not get itself together before it tarnished my career. These administrators need to get out of their offices and into the classrooms to see what is going on with teaching and learning!

By: district 13 mom

district 13 mom — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 13:30:00 +0000

And what are parents embarking on “school choice” supposed to make of these grades? In Brooklyn we have zoned C schools (with a history of Bs and Cs) that are “Well Developed,” impossible to get into, and made the state’s list of top schools. In Brooklyn we have a popular and well-loved charter school (Community Roots) that got Cs after an F two years ago, is “eligible” for closure but has just expanded to middle school? And we have A and B schools that are pointed to as evidence of “low performing” schools when charters come in to co-locate. It’s kind of ridiculous.

By: Guest

Guest — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 03:46:00 +0000

It seems likely that more schools will be closed this year. The office of New Schools is publicly saying that it plans to open 100 new schools next year. Fifty charter schools and Fifty district schools.

Isn’t the number of schools that receive each letter determined by an arbitrary line drawn by the DOE. It doesn’t mean that schools are performing worse. It means the DOE wants to close more schools and replace their teachers with non unionized employees.

By: Ellen

Ellen — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:54:00 +0000

But we have been the beneficiaries of 8, almost 9, years of Bloomberg’s PEP. We have empowered principals. We have 59 Children First Networks. We are free of the venality of local control. We can bask in the honesty of central control (except when they forget to watch the taxpayer dollar that is going to bidders who are friends with benefits)
Our students share buildings, despite space crunches. Our students don’t worry about lost art or music classes. They paint with food dyes and whistle through paper tubes. They have Shael to patiently explain that it’s all good, it’s all fine
Dr. Pangloss would be in heaven here on earth if only he lived in the NYC DOE.

By: NYC Teacher

NYC Teacher — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:42:00 +0000

These School Report Cards are such a load of BS! The DOE number crunchers use some ridiculous formulas to generate letter grades that just make NO SENSE! I wouldn’t be surprised if the letter grades are already pre-determined and then they crunch the numbers to back up the results they want. Top priority this year was probably to do whatever was needed to make the Charters come out on top.

By: Stefan Koster

Stefan Koster — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 00:25:00 +0000

Moving away from the big grade fluctuations … I’m looking
at elementary school PS 75 (Emily Dickinson) in D3. This school has received a
C in each of the last three years and is under the gun right now, as it could
find itself in the first phase of the closure process. In comparison with other
D3 elementary schools PS 75 is somewhere in the middle: not the highest and not
the lowest.

In the 2010 school year 45% of all students scored L3 or
higher in ELA and 53% in Math. In 2011 the numbers were 46% L3+ in ELA and 56%
L3+ in Math. In 2012 the numbers were 50% L3+ in ELA and 60% L3+ in Math. In
those years the Mean Scale Score Average in ELA went from 662 to 667 to 666 and
in Math from 678 to 684 to 686.

These numbers are not made up. They are documented NYSED numbers, based
on standardized test scores.

Does this school deserve the third C? I don’t think so. Clearly, in this case, the most important
indicators of a school’s success all point in the right direction. This school
is showing progress. If you want to reward principals and teachers with a bonus, the PS 75 principal and teaching staff should be on the receiving end. They are moving this school forward. Change
takes time. I don’t know where this school will be in 10 years, but I and
everybody else can see that change, good change, is happening here and it can be
accounted for. DOE should be proud of PS 75, it should help this school accelerate on the path of increased progress, but instead, the school receives its third C. Will those in power ever wake up and concede that change does not come
overnight – it is slow and incremental. It takes time. It took a
decade to build D2 into what it is now!

Looking at this and many more examples, I believe that DOE’s
letter grades are corrupted and useless. I don’t trust them at all. I think
they mislead parents, they unjustly and unnecessarily put some schools that are
progressing on notice, and by doing so they demoralize many principals and
teachers who are doing the right thing by the student body they try to educate.

The DOE would be well advised to look at the data they are collecting in a different light. If I can do it so can their army of consultants!

By: Mary Conway-Spiegel

Mary Conway-Spiegel — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 23:46:00 +0000

1. Mr. Bloomfield asks the ba-zillion dollar question. 2. The complete and utter insanity of evaluating the schools that were undergoing the Turnaround process while data was still being culled is ludicrous. 3. Many schools were one mili-point away from “B” 4. “C” does mean satisfactory in the real world.

EVALUATING the construction of a plane while it’s in the air…can you picture it? Close your eyes: 747 Airliner, cruising at thirty thousand feet above the earth, construction workers hammering and sawing, plane is full of passengers, flight attendants trying valiantly to serve food…there’s the evaluator out on the wing…

By: Drummandp

Drummandp — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 23:43:00 +0000

I worked at Global Academy in the Bronx. We were a C rated school and missed a B by a few points. Global is “closing” with a C grade when there are schools with 3 straight F’s that are not closing.
This is a true example of how inconsistant Shael Suransky’s team really is. They make up rules as they go and have no real system in place. It’s about giving jobs to principal’s who are “friends”. We know what happened and it will be in the Post soon, pal.

By: Marty

Marty — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 23:22:00 +0000

When did a “C” stop meaning “Satisfactory”?

By: Bronx Teacher

Bronx Teacher — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 23:20:00 +0000

My school PS 154x is part of the 15%. Thank you Marsha Elliott. F F F F F F F F F F F F F F F F F F F F F F I see being an ATR in my future

By: Michael M. (parent still)

Michael M. (parent still) — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 23:16:00 +0000

Nothing has changed since Fall 2008(?) when – as covered by WNYC’s Beth Fertig in “Why Cant U Teach Me 2 Read” published in 2009 – Jim Liebman filliblustered CECD2 (and yours truly) in defense of the “progress” metric and “peer grouping.”

Got Truthiness? Not even close.

By: Michael M. (parent still)

Michael M. (parent still) — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 22:57:00 +0000

I have joked for YEARS that the School Progress Reports are a “random letter generator.”

Not this year – DOE gets an F.

Manhattan’s PS 234 went from an “A” to the FOURTH percentile.

By: David C. Bloomfield

David C. Bloomfield — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 22:53:00 +0000

Any indication from Shael that Central takes ownership of this decline (resisting the pun) or the irony that he is “not really worried about” some schools which, by the DOE’s measures, are designed to cause to worry?
-David Bloomfield

By: leonie haimson

leonie haimson — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 22:46:00 +0000

See the analysis from InsideSchools, showing that “severe instability persists” in these grades, despite the DOE claims. Fully 24% of the schools that got failing grades this year earned A’s and B’s on their 2010-11 Progress
Reports. It is absurd to make any sort of decision based on grades so volatile and unreliable, that are determined primarily by one year’s worth of change in test scores, which in itself is 40-80% random.
http://insideschools.org/blog/item/1000471-quarter-of-failing-schools-were-on-top-last-year

By: BloombergMustGo

BloombergMustGo — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 22:35:00 +0000

I’ll bet Mayor Trollberg is sitting in his chair giggling and rubbing his dry little claws together excited that he can attack so many more schools this, his last year.
How can anyone take this garbage seriously??????