50 New York Schools Fail Under New Rating System

The letter grades for NYC schools came out yesterday and the enormous firestorm of criticism I expected hasn't materialized -- yet.
 
Here are some excerpts from the NYT article:

A “not insignificant number” of those F schools, and even some of the 99  schools that received D’s, could be closed or have their principals removed as soon as this school year, Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference announcing the grades. He added: “Is this a wake-up call for the people who work there?  You betcha.”

And:

Mr. Bloomberg said that the reports were  devised to give parents crucial insight into their schools, and that if the  grades upended longstanding school reputations, well, that was precisely the point. “We should be asking ourselves why some of the schools we thought were doing well aren’t serving students as effectively as other similar schools,”  he said.

A remarkably balanced NYT article, which of course includes this mandatory quote:

Still, some parents lashed out at the enterprise, saying it overemphasized standardized  tests.
 
“The way you treat our educators is part and parcel of the way you treat our students — constantly barraging them with narrow, deadening tests and demoralizing them with meaningless scores,” Jan Carr, whose son attends the Salk School of Science, a coveted Manhattan middle school that  received a C, wrote in a letter to the chancellor.

-----------------------

50 New York Schools Fail Under Rating System
By ELISSA GOOTMAN  and JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: November 6, 2007

<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/education/06reportcards.html>

Under a blunt new A through F rating system that judges schools not just on performance but also on progress, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg designated 50 New York City public schools as failures yesterday, saying they were so dismal that their 29,000 students would be allowed to transfer elsewhere.