Truman High Principal Sana Nasser told teachers to sway students’ city survey responses. (Daily News)
Bronx Academy of Promise Charter School students won a national app-creation contest. (Daily News)
As state budget talks near their end, the city’s funding situation is in flux but not ideal. (GothamSchools)
Prominent education leaders have donated to Bill Thompson’s mayoral campaign. (GothamSchools)
A new school bus driver and matron were arrested after they left a special needs student on a bus. (NY1)
Baruch College Campus High School had the most applicants again this year. (Insideschools, Post)
The City Council focused on PCBs and high schools during a budget hearing. (GothamSchools, NY1)
The first five of the city’s promised 20 in-school mental health clinics will open this fall. (Daily News)
After running a lockdown drill in class, a teacher says boredom should be a bigger threat. (USA Today)
Despite shifting demographics, 82 percent of education bachelor’s degree earners are white. (Times)
Education advocates think Philadelphia should adopt a citywide application. (Phila. Daily News)
Former Turnaround Teacher
While I personally feel that Truman has never deserved all of the praise they get, (You should compare the demographics of co-op city to the demographics of the school, and you will see that some students are definitely being shut out) we shouldn’t kid ourselves into thinking that Nasser is the only one doing this. When report card grades, which are tied to school closures, are influenced by student/parent/teacher surveys this practice is common. While I have never had an administrator tell me to influence student surveys, I did have a former administrator who constantly reminded us that if we kept giving her bad ratings on the teacher survey we would eventually close and all become ATRs.
nychistoryteacher
I agree the incentives are perverse. Two more example – When the DOE was giving school wide bonuses a few years ago, part of the $3,000 bonus was based on the results of the school wide survey. My answers certainly reflected my desire to have that bonus.
Today, the system has set up schools to be in competition with each other (see the inside school list) competing for the best students. If you want the best students, a good progress report helps.
Paul Rubin
I don’t see how telling kids how to answer a survey is any different than telling teachers how to answer a survey. Both situations are simply inappropriate. All we do is cajole everyone (students, parents and faculty) into completing the survey, period. The reasoning being that those most likely to take the time probably have something bad to say and then you get a false set of statistics. By increasing the sample size of the populations, you de-emphasize those statistical anomalies. Of course the whole concept of using these surveys to rate a school or even a school’s toilets, is just plain lunacy if the results of the survey are used as a blunt instrument later on against us.
I noticed that…
My students asked me about the survey when they were filling it out. I simply told them that I cannot tell them what they should bubble. However, I did tell them to look around their “learning environment”, and bubble the truth.
I noticed that…
BTW, if the Office of Conflict of Interest find Nasser guilty of her action, she’ll mostly be prompted to work in Tweed as an administrator in charge of Office of Accountability and Survey Data Collection.
Mike
My school started coaching the kids when we fell from a B to a C. Now, we’re back to a B. It’s best to lie on these surveys — your competitors are all doing it.
This could have been Klein’s best idea, but he ruined it by tying the survey results to the progress report grades. Now you’re basically answering one question — do you want your school closed or not?
Theorem_Ox
It’s yet another one of those cases in education where a potentially very valuable tool that could be used for reflection and improvement has been turned into a sadistic rigged game.
Kimmie Kim
Students are being shut out of Truman? How is that possible, when they always seem to participate in the Second Round? Families in Co-Op City are too blind to recognize the acres of diamonds in their own back yard, and therefore they are sending their children elsewhere.
Surveys aside, this principal has done a phenomenal job with this school. Who else is offering students a chance to graduate with an Associates Degree as well as a HS diploma at the same time?
Kimmie Kim
Students are being shut out of Truman? How is that possible, when this school always seems to participate in the Second Round? Families in Co-Op City are too blind to recognize the acres of diamonds in their own back yard, and therefore they are sending their children elsewhere.
Surveys aside, this principal has done a phenomenal job with this school. Who else is offering students a chance to graduate with an Associates Degree as well as a HS diploma at the same time?
I noticed that…
I must be careful not to comment when extremely exhausted. I just edited my prior comment. Now the comment makes more sense.
I noticed that…
We need to examine how everyone plays a part in gaming the system when filling out the Learning Environment Survey.
There are two options.
It’s gamed because of the staff’s genuine, collaborative effort of preserving the school’s existence where everyone there works together, believes in each other, support each other and the school leader believes wholeheartly in the staff.
Or, It’s gamed because administration’s effort will be used to cajole the students in believing that the school is great even though students are more astute and perceptive of their surroundings than administration gives them. And, administration will coerse the staff in a perverse manner where unwarranted informals or demands may be placed on them where administration can desperately hold on to their $alary and powerful $tatus.
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