If you ask Mayor Bloomberg, Brooklyn’s It Takes a Village Academy looks like the jewel in the city’s public-school crown.
The Flatbush high school graduated 86 percent of its students last year and got an A from the city in students’ “College and Career Readiness.” Its overall rating from Bloomberg was tops in the city: 98.7 percent — nearly perfect.
But Bloomberg’s numbers and letter-grading system for city schools mask a heartbreaking statistic: Only 11.8 percent of students at It Takes a Village were ready for college after four years at the school.
That’s right: Even though most of the kids managed to graduate, barely more than one in 10 was actually prepared for the rigors of higher education or for good jobs, based on their test scores.
And the same screwy mismatch is largely true for the city overall. Last week, when Bloomberg & Co. handed out annual report cards rating individual high schools, most appeared to be thriving: Some 71 percent got As or Bs, and 92 percent at least passed.
Which sounds great.
Trouble is, just 29 percent of kids citywide actually left high school college-ready last year. That is, less than a third of last year’s grads scored well enough on their Regents exams or passed CUNY entrance exams to be deemed ready to move on.
Talk about fun with statistics.
Even the 29 percent figure is inflated: If graduates enter college, the military or a work-training program, it boosts their old high schools’ readiness score, whether or not kids were actually up to the challenge.
This isn’t to say that It Takes a Village is a complete failure. On the contrary: It’s in a tough neighborhood, and almost half of its students are new immigrants still learning English.
That they manage to graduate in four years is a feat in itself — and a testament to the school’s teachers and principal.
But what are parents to think if the school gets an A from the city, even in the college-readiness category — despite the fact that nearly every graduate leaves unprepared for college or the workplace?
Bloomberg & Co. may have all the fancy-shmancy evaluation metrics and grading rubrics in the world. But they aren’t properly conveying how well a school is meeting its most important task: to prepare kids for life beyond, be it at college or work.
Again, we know the challenges for schools are not always easy to meet, especially in New York. But Step One is to be honest about what’s being accomplished.
And if kids are graduating without the skills to succeed in college or the job market, their diplomas are worthless — as are those high marks for their schools.
Yes, the city does seem to recognize that its core mission is to provide sufficient skills for life after school.
“It’s one of the biggest goals we’ve set for our schools,” says the city’s chief academic officer, Shael Polakow-Suransky.
It also, rightly, sees the grades as tools with which to enforce accountability — that is, to push schools to improve.
But if that’s the case, it really needs to fix its school-grading system. Pronto.
An unvarnished measure of college and career readiness would serve the city and its families — and let everyone know just how much work remains to be done.