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[QUOTE author=nytimes.com]City Schools May Get Fewer A’s
By JENNIFER MEDINA
Months after handing out A’s and B’s to 97 percent of New York City elementary schools, education officials plan to change their methods for grading the city’s public schools, making it harder to receive high marks.
A’s or B’s Given to Most City Schools (September 3, 2009)
Under the proposed changes, schools would be measured against one another, with those where students show the most significant improvements getting the top grades. There would be set grade-distribution guidelines, with 25 percent of schools receiving A’s, 30 percent B’s, 30 percent C’s, 10 percent D’s, and the bottom 5 percent of schools getting F’s.
Currently, the progress reports measure improvements, but an unlimited number of schools can receive high grades.
The Department of Education plans to hold several sessions with principals on the proposed changes to get their views. In a memo to principals, Shael Polakow-Suransky, the chief accountability officer, acknowledged Friday that the department’s “accountability tools aren’t perfect,” and said that it would continue to do more to improve them.
“We want to be able to really show how much value a school is actually adding,” he said in an interview.
While the department is responding to criticism that the report cards rely too heavily on year-to-year changes on state tests, the new process could be more confusing to parents. Rather than simply measuring how many students improved on state exams, the new system would use what researchers call a “growth percentile model.”
Students would be compared with others who scored at the same level on the previous year’s test, and improvement would be measured on a percentile basis. So a student who scored a 3 on the test in the third grade and 3.7 in the fourth grade could be in the 95th percentile, while a student who did not improve might be in the 35th percentile.
Mr. Polakow-Suransky said the department expected to have several meetings with parents to explain the changes and would revise the progress reports given to parents to make them easier to understand.
Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, criticized the decision to reduce the number of schools that receive top grades.
“I guess after last year’s debacle the only thing they could figure out was to fix the scores beforehand,” he said. “But as a teacher, if I went in determined to fail 5 percent of my students, I would not be doing my job.”
In the same memo to principals, the Education Department announced that it would begin randomly auditing the grading of Regents exams at 10 percent of high schools this spring. The department also announced that it would begin tracking the number of students who graduate with help from a practice known as credit recovery, which allows students to earn credit for courses by doing work online and outside of traditional classrooms. [/QUOTE]
_http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/education/30grades.html?ref=nyregion
By JENNIFER MEDINA
Months after handing out A’s and B’s to 97 percent of New York City elementary schools, education officials plan to change their methods for grading the city’s public schools, making it harder to receive high marks.
A’s or B’s Given to Most City Schools (September 3, 2009)
Under the proposed changes, schools would be measured against one another, with those where students show the most significant improvements getting the top grades. There would be set grade-distribution guidelines, with 25 percent of schools receiving A’s, 30 percent B’s, 30 percent C’s, 10 percent D’s, and the bottom 5 percent of schools getting F’s.
Currently, the progress reports measure improvements, but an unlimited number of schools can receive high grades.
The Department of Education plans to hold several sessions with principals on the proposed changes to get their views. In a memo to principals, Shael Polakow-Suransky, the chief accountability officer, acknowledged Friday that the department’s “accountability tools aren’t perfect,” and said that it would continue to do more to improve them.
“We want to be able to really show how much value a school is actually adding,” he said in an interview.
While the department is responding to criticism that the report cards rely too heavily on year-to-year changes on state tests, the new process could be more confusing to parents. Rather than simply measuring how many students improved on state exams, the new system would use what researchers call a “growth percentile model.”
Students would be compared with others who scored at the same level on the previous year’s test, and improvement would be measured on a percentile basis. So a student who scored a 3 on the test in the third grade and 3.7 in the fourth grade could be in the 95th percentile, while a student who did not improve might be in the 35th percentile.
Mr. Polakow-Suransky said the department expected to have several meetings with parents to explain the changes and would revise the progress reports given to parents to make them easier to understand.
Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, criticized the decision to reduce the number of schools that receive top grades.
“I guess after last year’s debacle the only thing they could figure out was to fix the scores beforehand,” he said. “But as a teacher, if I went in determined to fail 5 percent of my students, I would not be doing my job.”
In the same memo to principals, the Education Department announced that it would begin randomly auditing the grading of Regents exams at 10 percent of high schools this spring. The department also announced that it would begin tracking the number of students who graduate with help from a practice known as credit recovery, which allows students to earn credit for courses by doing work online and outside of traditional classrooms. [/QUOTE]
_http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/education/30grades.html?ref=nyregion
