The New York City Department of Education (DOE) recently released progress reports as an attempt to inform the public about the performance of New York City public schools. While I agree with DOE’s focus on academic excellence, I take issue with its methodology and its failure to explain fully the assessments to the public.
The grades, which were supposed to provide parents with valuable information, have mostly generated confusion, and the media has exacerbated the situation with fuzzy terminology: DOE’s Progress Reports have been regularly referred to as report cards, which is a misnomer. The grades are meant to show schools’ progress - which is not the same as school quality - and they do not achieve even that much. While I do not object to evaluating public schools, I believe that DOE’s recent attempt falls far short of its goals.
The first problem is that the category of “student progress” accounted for fifty-five percent of a school’s grade, and the DOE equated student progress with changes in test scores from one year to the next.
Therefore, a school in which the students scored the same for two years in a row is considered to have shown no progress, even if most students did well both years, while a school in which the students’ test scores increased, even if they remained low, get points for improvement. This method of grading unfairly penalizes high-performing schools such as those in Eastern Queens.
Even worse, DOE’s definition of academic progress is based on the idea that high-stakes standardized tests accurately assess how much students have learned, but there are several reasons to doubt that premise. As I have often stated, the extreme emphasis on test preparation has taken away from real learning in classrooms across the city.
Therefore, if the students in a school increased their test scores from one year to the next, their “improvement” is just as likely to be a result of excessive test preparation drills as a reflection of academic progress. Moreover, if higher test scores stem from more time spent on test preparation, they may in fact indicate that less learning has taken place.
On the other hand, a decrease in test scores could mean that a few students were not feeling well on the day of the test, or that they happened to choose the wrong answers on a couple of multiple choice questions. If students’ scores went down from third grade to fourth grade, maybe it is because the third graders take each State test for two days while the fourth graders spend three days per test. (New York’s bar exam is only two days.)
Test scores can decline for a number of reasons, but the change does not mean that students and teachers in a school are suddenly performing at a lower level than they did the previous year.
I also have serious reservations about the surveys of parents, students, and teachers that the DOE used to evaluate the portion of a school’s grade that reflects “school environment.” Every community has a few naysayers who are always full of criticism. Unfortunately, they are the most likely to submit surveys and to influence others to share in their negativism. Such individuals can have a disproportionate impact on the school’s grade.
The blatant inconsistencies in the grades reveal how ridiculous they really are. Some schools that did well on their Quality Reviews did poorly on the Progress Reports; some schools that were listed as among the most persistently dangerous in New York received A’s and B’s from DOE. What are parents to think when they receive such contradictory information?
I have no qualms about the concept of issuing progress reports for New York City schools. Any institution that uses taxpayer dollars must be accountable to the public. But a single letter grade cannot possibly represent everything the public needs to know about a school and its progress. Fair evaluations would take into account student safety, parent involvement, teacher qualifications, art and music offerings, and the school’s learning environment.
Feedback from parents and teachers should come from large groups of survey responders who filled out clear, intuitive questionnaires. Most of all, we should not rely on scores from high-stakes standardized tests. Changes in test results from one year to the next do not reveal what we really need to know about our schools - how hard teachers and principals have worked and how much students have learned. The Progress Reports are not report cards, and the DOE grades simply are not accurate assessments of our schools.
Assemblymember Mark S. Weprin, the parent of two public school students, represents the 24th Assembly District in Eastern Queens.
