School progress reports – comparing apples to lemons by Council Member Robert Jackson In its Sept. 3 issue, the Manhattan Times ran an article announcing the good news that with only two exceptions, every school in District 6 got an “A” grade on its Progress Report. Progress Reports are based on three elements: the school environment (attendance, parent survey responses) counts for 15%, student performance (test scores on NY State exams) weighs in at 25% and student progress (improvement over prior years test scores) counts for 60%. In August, 2009 the New York Times released a comprehensive study of New York State test scores; Community District 6 ranked at the third percentile, coming in 676th out 695 school districts throughout the state. Bad news. Both yardsticks measure rankings on state exams; it’s hard to conceive of a more “apples to apples” comparison. But the strikingly different conclusions illustrate the real challenge in oversimplifying how we measure academic achievement. Both candidates for mayor have made education reform an important part of their respective platform and the Mayor, in particular, has claimed responsibility for significant improvements in the school system. How have we fared here in District 6 schools after seven-and-a-half years of Mayoral Control? In 2002 at the onset of Mayor Bloomberg’s control of the school system, our 27,006 students had access to 37 science labs, art, music or technology rooms throughout the entire district. That was far below the number needed to expose students to the opportunity for a sound, basic education; many schools had zero specialty rooms, with guidance counselors and speech therapists working in bathrooms. Today our students can learn about these subjects or do lab work in 69 specialty rooms. That sounds like an improvement until you learn that we have roughly 7,000 fewer students overall and our middle schoolers have only 10 specialty rooms shared between 17 schools and programs for all science, arts and technology instruction. District 6 class sizes remain among the largest in the city – again despite the drop in enrollment. Forty-three percent of our 8th graders are in classes of 30 or more when the State says 23 should be the maximum; 30% of our 5th graders are in classes of 28 or more and 20% of our kindergartners are in classes of 25 or more where the State standards say classes should be capped at 20. District 6 students remain at high risk for dropping out before they complete high school. The official website for the Department of Education announces “after remaining flat for 16 years, NYC’s graduation rate has increased by 29% since 2002.” This is accompanied by a graph that shows graduation rates climbing from 51% to 66%. You don’t have to score at the top level in math to know that moving from 51% to 66% is a 15% increase – which is the increase that the Mayor’s campaign literature shows, not 29% as he claims on the Department’s website. And even the 15% claim is suspect because it includes summer school graduates and GED’s which the prior years did not. Apples to apples? More like apples to lemons. The Mayor also claims that drop out rates have declined steeply to 13.5%. I ask you: if 66% of the students graduate and 13.5% of the students drop out, what happens to the rest of the kids? That is 20.5% of the students – totally unaccounted for. When you hear for the 85th millionth time that test scores are up and our schools got “A”s, put the paring knife up against that apple, cut to the core and watch out for the worm! In other words, use common sense and your own experience to evaluate the apple to apple claims that do not hold up to real scrutiny. The Manhattan Times is the bilingual newspaper of Washington Heights and Inwood
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