Schools Wait, Teeth Gritted: Their Grades Are Coming

This is a powerful and important accountability step that will no doubt be roundly (and wrongly) criticized.  Here's how it will happen: in the first year, there will no doubt be a few hiccups in which a handful of schools are wrongly given bad grades -- inevitable when 1,400+ schools are being graded.  Those who oppose school ratings will then go nuts about these few isolated incidents, screaming and crying about how awful, unfair and unreliable the entire evaluation system is, all of which will be covered extensively by the gullible media.  Sigh...  Every public school in America should be be graded like this!

Judith Menken, the outspoken principal of the small Muscota  New School in Inwood, Manhattan, is bracing for  the moment when she will receive a stark appraisal of her school’s  performance, a letter grade of A through F. She is still debating whether or not she will read the report.

“I guess I’ll probably look at it,” said Ms. Menken. She expects a B, at best, she added. “I’m sure I’ll feel bad. People are going to  be very hurt and demoralized. It’s like a public embarrassment.”

Making good on a promise to hold educators more accountable for student performance, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will oversee the  distribution of report cards for each of the city’s schools next month. Each  school (and by extension its principal) will receive a letter grade in the  mail, and the grade and the data that led to it will be posted on the Web,  where parents can see and possibly stew over them.  

But this principal is wrong -- Bloomberg and Klein will not back down:

Back at the Muscota school, Ms. Menken, who has seen countless changes and reorganizations over the years, is holding  out hope that Mr. Klein will eventually abandon the grading system. “It’ll be  like everything else,” said Ms. Menken, who has worked in the New York City public schools for 36 years. “It won’t work, and they’ll chuck it.”  

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September 1, 2007
Schools Wait, Teeth Gritted: Their Grades Are Coming
By JULIE BOSMAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/01/nyregion/01grades.html

Judith Menken, the outspoken principal of the small Muscota New School in Inwood, Manhattan, is bracing for the moment when she will receive a stark appraisal of her school’s performance, a letter grade of A through F. She is still debating whether or not she will read the report.