Making the grades

It is no surprise that the educational establishment is going berzerk over a plan to grade schools -- nothing could be more threatening to the comfortable old system that works so well for adults -- and screws so many kids.

At least one community meeting ended last spring with an angry crowd of parents shouting at James Liebman, the former Columbia Law School professor who is leading the so-called "accountability" effort for the Education Department.

 

Teachers and principals have publicly worried that the department will oversimplify their efforts, dismissing the many subtleties of creating a safe and successful school.

No doubt there are plenty of subtleties in evaluating a school, but if 90% of the children aren't reading at grade level and this number has been constant for years, it requires no subtlety to conclude that this school should get a well-deserved F (and, if things aren't improved in short order, to fire the principal, remove the large number of ineffective teachers, etc.).

 

This guy makes one wrong point and, without intending to, a great one:

"At the bottom, you can finally quantify what people already knew: that some schools are failing badly," said Tim Johnson, who heads a citywide parent organization. "But what does that say to parents? That the neighborhood school your kid goes to [stinks]? What have you got to offer those people?"

He's absolutely wrong that "people" already know which schools are failing.  The sad fact is that parents often DON'T KNOW!  (And if they don't know, for sure local politicians and others who could make a difference and put pressure on a school don't either.)  Thus, a D or F grade will serve as a HUGE wake-up call to everyone!

 

His second point is spot on: once we let parents know the dirty secret that their child attends a school that "stinks", a bunch of them will indeed start asking the obvious question: "What do you have to offer me?!"  That's a major reason to adopt the grading system!

 

Finally, I can't let this utter rubbish pass by uncommented upon:

"It's so superficial," said Jane Hirschmann, leader of Time Out from Testing. "All it tells you is how well a school can raise a test score, not how well it can educate a child."

I am SO TIRED of hearing about the mythical millions of children who are being so well educated, yet somehow, mysteriously, can't add 2+2 or read "see Spot run".  The problem isn't the test -- it's that a horrifying large number of our children, thanks largely to the dreadful schools they attend, are ILLITERATE!  (58% of black 4th graders nationwide, 54% of Latinos, 27% of Asians and 24% of whites, nationwide, are scoring Below Basic on the NAEP reading test, which means they can't read a simple children's story.) 

 

While I'm sure there's room to improve certain tests, I wish schools would do MORE teaching to the tests -- seriously!  A high percentage of the best schools I've seen (all of which serve low-income, minority students) do a ton of internal testing, in addition to the required annual tests.  This lets teachers know how the entire class and individual students are doing, which skills they've learned and which they haven't, so that the teachers can focus their lessons on the latter. 

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Making the grades

 

City's schools get set for ABC's - & D's & F's

 

BY ERIN EINHORN

DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER

http://www.nydailynews.com/10-09-2006/news/story/459861p-386910c.html

 

The idea seemed very simple: Assign all 1,450 city schools an easy-to-understand letter grade - A, B, C, D or F - so parents could make better choices for their kids.

 

But city educrats preparing to roll out a prototype in more than 300 schools this fall before launching it in all schools next summer are navigating controversial territory.

 

At least one community meeting ended last spring with an angry crowd of parents shouting at James Liebman, the former Columbia Law School professor who is leading the so-called "accountability" effort for the Education Department.

 

Teachers and principals have publicly worried that the department will oversimplify their efforts, dismissing the many subtleties of creating a safe and successful school.