Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein released on Thursday, September 30 the fourth annual Progress Reports for 1,140 schools with students in grades K-8 including, for the first time, 27 early childhood schools and 28 District 75 schools for students with disabilities.
“Parents, principals, and teachers want to know more about how their schools are doing,” said Klein, “and we’ve answered their calls by making this year’s reports more accessible and easier to understand.”
Nearly 65 percent of schools saw their grades drop, but the changes reflect an adjustment to the city’s Progress Report methodology used to grade the schools rather than worsening performance, said Councilmember Daniel Dromm and other education advocates. Schools with consecutive years of Cs, Ds or Fs run the risk of being shut down.
“I just don’t trust the results,” said Dromm, who sits on the City Council’s Education Committee. “I just don’t trust how the information has been gathered.”
This year, the state set a new cutoff for passing its annual tests, resulting in lower passing rates in New York City and across the state. In anticipation of this change, this year’s Progress Reports applied a set distribution of grades so that only top scoring schools received As and Bs. As a result, 25 percent of schools received As, 35 percent Bs, 35 percent Cs, 4 percent Ds, and 1 percent Fs.
Progress Reports give each school an overall letter grade based on three categories: school environment (15 percent), student performance (25 percent), and student progress (60 percent).
Out of seven Queens districts representing 241 schools, District 26 (Bayside) was the highest performing district in the borough and the city, with schools there getting all As or Bs for the second year in a row.
“In District 26, we are happy about the results,” said Robert Caloras, president of Community Education Council 26, who has two children in public schools.
P.S. 46 Alley Pond School in District 26 was the best school in the district by an overall score, maintaining its previous A grade.
“It feels wonderful, but it is all due to the hard work from the entire school,” said Marsha Goldberg, principal of P.S. 46.
Not all schools were as lucky. P.S. 71 Forest School in District 24 (Corona) declined by two grades. It went from an A last year to a C this year. It got an F in environment grade, a D in performance grade and a B in progress grade.
“Wow that’s strange,” said Francisco Piña Jr., president of the Parent Association of P.S. 71, who first found out about the school’s progress report results from The Queens Courier. “I am actually stunned that it went down. The reason is that it is a very good school.”
P.S. 215 Lucretia Mott School in District 27 (Ozone Park) dropped a grade. It went from a C last year to a D this year.
For the schools that didn’t do well this year, Caloras said they should not be concerned.
“I hope they don’t get stressed out about it,” Caloras said.
James Vasquez, Queens UFT representative for high schools, also said the grading process is flawed.
“Test scores are not the only way to measure if a student is learning,” Vasquez said. “It can be valuable, but it is not the only way.”
Pamela Wheaton, project director of Insideschools.org, said some of the most popular schools with parents didn’t do well on the progress reports. She said if parents are concerned about their children’s school’s progress, they should speak to the principals to see how they plan to rectify the situation.
“We encourage parents to look past school grades and now the progress reports,” Wheaton said.
For all school scores, visit: schools.nyc.gov.
