When we predicted griping yesterday over Chancellor Joel Klein’s latest school-accountability reform – school report cards – we assumed many folks would be surprised (outraged?) by the grades. In that regard, the reports yesterday did not disappoint.
Parents – and, even more so, teachers and administrators – who’ve long regarded their schools as excellent, or close to it, may have been truly shocked to receive C’s, D’s or even F’s.
On the other hand, some grades – say, a B rather than a D – may have come as pleasant surprises for some schools.
All of which has led critics to dismiss the entire program as a data-driven, bureaucratic Rube Goldberg hokum.
It’s not.
Well, maybe a little Rube Goldberg.
It is complicated, and does have some way to go before it can be fully relied on as an accurate measure of the performance of any given school.
The grades, for starters, are based on numerous factors – year-to-year “progress,” overall “performance,” results at similar schools, survey findings, attendance rates and other indicators.
How can anyone possibly control for so many simultaneously moving parts?
Moreover, key data come from a new computer program: the Achievement Reporting and Innovation System. Who knows what gets fed into that black box, or how it spits out results?
And since the grading system is new, it uses only information compiled from this year and last. Thus, a school that did well, say, five years in a row, but fell back a bit this year, would be penalized – because the earlier years aren’t factored in.
(In the future, data from more years will be used.)
Actually, if anything, the grading may have been too easy – not too hard.
After all, only 149 of the 1,224 schools got a D or an F. Who’s to doubt that performance could be far better at a lot more schools than that?
To be sure, Klein is on the right track in trying to grade schools. It’s a necessary first step toward holding them accountable for their performance.
Which, in itself, is a necessary new concept for public education in New York.
Not only will principals and school staffs receive rewards – or penalties – based on their grades, but parents will have an opportunity to pressure the schools to improve (or look to transfer their kids out of them), once they see an objective measure of how well the schools are doing.
And, frankly, the data will give Klein & Co. the leverage they need to close some consistently under-performing – but politically well-connected – schools.
Bottom line: Some of the complainers will never be happy – but then, not all schools can be “above average.”
Nor do some of the weaker educrats care to have their performance rated.
Klein & Co. are to be applauded for trying to rate the job schools are doing.
But it’s going to take a while to get out all of the kinks – at the very least, to get folks to understand what the grades actually measure and why schools thought deserving of better grades aren’t getting them.
So far, so good.