Chelsea K-6 schools pinched by progress reports

Volume 2, Number 6 | The Weekly Newspaper of Chelsea | November 16 - 22, 2007

FIRST IN A SERIES

Chelsea Now photo by Jefferson Siegel

As Mayor Michael Bloomberg looks on, Schools Chancellor Joel Klein points to a “Results by Category” chart on school performance at their Nov. 5 school report-card presentation at P.S. 19, on First Avenue and 11th Street.

Chelsea K-6 schools pinched by progress reports

By Chris Lombardi

When Robert Bender, principal of the popular William Harris School (K-5) in Chelsea, was given his school’s Progress Report last week, the first thing he looked for was the overall grade. And he was stunned: There, in the middle of the page, was a C.

“I know our kids,” Bender told Chelsea Now on Wednesday. “I know they’ve been making progress. I couldn’t believe it.”

Bender is hardly alone in that response to the Department of Education’s first-ever School Progress Reports, nicknamed “report cards” for its A-F grading system. The reports, whose algorithm resulted in many sought-after schools receiving B’s, C’s and even F’s, were immediately denounced both by critics, parents and educators. The DOE insists that if schools look at all data in the reports, they’ll be able to better help their students. In Chelsea schools, whose grades ran the gamut, some local principals and parents agreed, while others, like Bender, just don’t see their schools reflected in the report. What’s still unclear is whether the reports will eventually deliver the “accountability” promised by Chancellor Joel Klein, or whether they will, as feared by education expert Clara Hemphill, “shake parents’ confidence in public education.”

More data, more granular
Using aggregate student test scores in math and English Language Arts (ELA), as well as school surveys and quality-of-life indicators, School Progress Reports evaluate schools in comparison with a “peer group” of schools with similar demographics. While “student achievement” is measured and valued, 55 percent of the overall grade is based on “student progress,” how many students increased their proficiency in these subjects.

The reports were produced with two main goals in mind, according to DOE spokesman Andrew Jacobs. “Number one, they give parents the kind of information they can use, which enables them to ask questions [like]‘What’s really going on in the school? Number two, it’s a tool for principals, with data that’s a little more granular than simple test scores.”

The heart of the reports, said Jacobs, is in that more specific data, which shows how students in the top, middle and bottom third are progressing in comparison to those at similar schools—by comparing their scores on mathematics and English tests with those of the previous year, as well as with a “peer” set of schools that have similar demographics.

The overall grade, reflecting the stated priorities of Chancellor Klein’s “Children First” initiative, gives more weight to progress and even more to the progress of the bottom third, and extra credit for exemplary gains by English-language learners and other at-risk students. At the rollout on Nov. 5, Chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Bloomberg proclaimed the reports as the next step in their “culture of accountability.” Asked if a D or F score would result in schools being fired, or their staffs changed, Klein said simply: “Will there be consequences? You betcha.”

As has been widely reported, the immediate result was a firestorm. The reports’ methodology immediately came under fire, and not just from principals. In addition to the perennial discontent with such a tight focus on test scores, many questioned the concept of coming up with a generic grade at all.

This week, every single newspaper and TV station in New York highlighted some school whose teachers, students and alumni swore its DOE grade was unfair. Leonie Hainsom, the indefatigable director of Class Size Matters, wrote in the Daily News that “rather than helping schools succeed, [the system] yields inaccurate results, demoralizes educators and threatens the quality of education,” and pointed out that the “peer” system was far from perfect: I.S. 89 in Tribeca, she pointed out, had received a D because it was paired with far more selective schools that did not have as many disadvantaged students. And the New York Times editorialized: “Mr. Bloomberg should preserve the heart of the new system. It does a valuable service to students, and teachers, by holding schools accountable for both overall performance and for how much progress students make from one year to the next. But [he] should ditch the simplistic and counterproductive A through F rating system. It boils down the entire shooting match to a single letter grade that does not convey the full weight of this approach and lends itself to tabloid headlines instead of a real look at a school’s problems.”

To Hemphill, author of “The Best New York City Public Schools” and a founder of the nonprofit New York City education watchdog group Inside Schools, the furor is warranted. “I don’t think it benefits a single school, those letter grades,” said Hemphill, who has often been supportive of Chancellor Klein’s reforms. She told Chelsea Now on Monday that she had thought the concept of the reports was a good idea, but that “after I actually looked at them...I realized the method just really didn’t work.” About three-quarters of the reports she scammed gave schools “the grades I think they deserve,” she said, “but the remaining one-quarter were just out of whack.”

In particular, Hemphill, like many others, questioned the use of only one year’s worth of data for comparison. “There were some really good schools that got C’s because of this, like the Salk School [on East 21st Street], whose banner year last year that made this year [appear like] a slight dip. It’s going to end up undermining public confidence in some really good schools.” The DOE states that it’s impossible to include earlier years in a statistically reliable fashion, given changes in state tests.

Part One: It’s not so elementary
For Chelsea’s elementary schools, both of which have been praised in the past by Inside Schools, the progress reports were harsh, both in overall grades and the trends they identified.

The F awarded to P.S. 33/Chelsea Prep comes during a turbulent period for superstar principal Linore Lindy, who was praised by Klein in 2005 as a “dynamo” who had doubled the percentage of her students reading at grade level. P.S. 33’s report shows good results for “school environment,” and the previous years’ gains appear to have held, with 60 percent of students proficient in English. P.S. 33 parent Sepp Seitz told Chelsea Now that his 11-year-old son had lagged a little, until “this year the penny dropped,” and he became more engaged in school, thanks to a “dedicated teacher who knew how to get results.”

But the past year has been a little rough at P.S. 33., which gained some unwanted notoriety last month when some parents called the Health Department about mold in a classroom. In addition, said Seitz, in general the test scores were just not rising. Teachers’ time-tested strategies were not showing results, he said, especially for the kids most in need. And the report card data indicates the same: The school’s math and ELA scores cling to the bottom edge of the average score for their “peer horizon,” with actual decreases for some of the lowest-performing students. To the DOE’s Andrew Jacobs, this should be a warning sign: “If other schools, with similar students, are increasing proficiency, while across the board you’re staying still or sliding back, it’s a reason to be concerned.”

Now, said Seitz, parents weren’t as shocked by the F as they were determined to help fix it. “We’ve been in parent-teacher conferences, talking about how to come up to snuff.” Any school that receives a grade of C-F is required to submit an improvement plan—with quantifiable goals and actual consequences—to DOE. But Linore Lindy “is totally devoted to the task at hand,” said Seitz. “She’s a fighter, and she’s gonna keep going until she gets the thing done.

But a few blocks downtown at the William Harris School, principal Robert Bender still feels his school’s C grade was a mistake. Famous for its use of the arts to nurture children’s development, the school scored high on “school environment,” and most of its students are proficient in both math and English: 63.4 percent in ELA and more than 70 percent in math, a pace about average for the school’s “peer horizon” (schools with similar numbers of disadvantaged students). But the report card also suggested a possible Achilles heel, in figures on math proficiency. While 48 percent made at least one year of progress, the average actual change in proficiency was almost nonexistent (from 1.0 down to -3), suggesting that half of the school’s students may be failing to catch on in the crucial subject.

“For the principal of that school, it’s probably worth finding out why the progress in math is behind the ELA,” said Jacobs. “I think they’ll find that certain kind of students are struggling. And remember—even if 80 percent of your kids are proficient in math, 20 aren’t. And it’s important for them.”

In addition, the William Harris School’s population—with few English-language learners or special education students, and its substantial gifted program—afforded fewer opportunities to make the kind of progress that would have brought up its overall grade. Bender told Chelsea Now that while he couldn’t yet comment in detail, he wanted to emphasize that the reliance on a single year of data had done a disservice to the school.

Both Bender and Lindy are new principals, having taken the helm of their respective schools in 2005. As a result, they are unlikely to suffer the capital-C consequences Klein mentioned last Monday. “With new principals, we work closely to make sure they have what they need,” said DOE’s Jacobs. With all schools with low grades, he said, “we look closely at everything: their track records, their Quality Reviews, everything. Only if their schools then fail repeatedly, over several years, would we consider something dramatic,” like closing the school.

But to some, like P.S. 33 parent Seitz, the shake-ups this week, for all their chaos, may make sense.

“Maybe it’s good,” he mused aloud. “This kind of oversight. Maybe it gets it all out into the open.”

Next week: Unexpected A’s for Chelsea’s middle and high schools