Yet another nit-picking article in the NY Times about the school grading system.  The grades are based on a blend of school environment, student performance and student progress, so of course -- across 1,400 schools! -- there will be some schools that score high on student performance (because the students entered the school at a high level), but poorly on progress (because they school failed to add much if any value) and therefore get a poor grade -- and vice-versa.  I think this is great.  If one looks past the nit-picking, one will see that this grading system is INCREDIBLY powerful, both in giving parents a wealth of valuable information as well as creating accountability and reform among principals and teachers.

James S. Liebman, the Education Department’s chief accountability officer and the architect of the progress reports, says the problem is that the public rarely looks beyond the letter grade even though the reports contain a variety of other guideposts. It is possible, for instance, to see what percentage of the weakest students improved by at least one grade level, and what percentage of higher-performing students improved on state tests from one year to the next.

“What the parents want to look for in schools is to see how well they do with ‘a kid like mine,’ ” Mr. Liebman said. “All of that is in the progress report. There is a lot of information in there that is directly useful for parents if they take a look at it.”

A closer look, though, can often be confusing to the layman. At 14 of the high schools that received A’s last week, for example, fewer than two-thirds of the students graduated in four years. Students at the 113 A-rated high schools had median SAT scores of 1209 out of a possible 2400, a score that ranked in the 17th percentile nationally...

...This year, officials broke the overall grade into three parts, assigning letter grades to school environment, student performance and student progress. And underneath the big A or F is a wealth of information, detailed in color.

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Letter Grades Look Simple, but Realities Are Complex

By JENNIFER MEDINA

Published: November 15, 2008

www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/education/16cards.html

The A-through-F grading system for New York City schools is billed as a public information tool, helping people sort out which schools are teaching children and which schools are just moving them along. Instead of inscrutable education jargon and endless score charts, the letter grades act like billboards broadcasting achievements and failures.