Mayor Bloomberg is intent on closing as many public schools as he can before he leaves office at the end of 2013 (his third term). He has already closed about 150 schools, maybe more, of the 1,100 or 1,200 that he started with. He has added hundreds of new schools. I’ve lost count. Maybe he has too.
The mayor loves privately managed charter schools, competition, and choice. He has done his best to promote those ideas over the past ten years. There was a time when the mayor and his public relations team sold the idea of a “New York City miracle,” but those claims blew up in 2010 when the state acknowledged that it had manipulated the passing score for years. When scores across the state were recalibrated, the “miracle” about which Bloomberg and Joel Klein had boasted for years evaporated. Now, the big boast is about climbing graduation rates, but since 80% of the city’s graduates require remediation in the city’s community colleges, those claims too must be taken with a large helping of salt.
By now it is clear that the mayor’s central “reform” strategy is to close schools, fire the entire staff, and open new schools, either small schools in the same building with new names or charter schools. Many schools that were the heart of their local community have been killed during the time in which the mayor has ruled the schools with an iron hand. Most of the closed schools had low test scores, and he assumed it was because they were bad schools, but they enrolled disproportionately large numbers of poor students, students with special needs, and English language learners. As large high schools closed, the new schools tried to avoid enrolling the same students, to burnish their own scores.
Last week, at a press conference called to announce that 1,100 professors across New York state had signed a petition opposing high-stakes testing, Pedro Noguera of New York University (who recently resigned as chair of the State University of New York’s charter school authorizing board) denounced the mayor’s school closing strategy as a “shell game” that harmed the city’s most vulnerable students. In a blistering critique, he said that our public officials literally have no idea what they are doing and cling to failed policies rather than listen to their constituents.
Last Friday, an independent arbitrator ruled against the mayor’s plan to do a “turnaround” at 24 public schools. Originally, the mayor planned to close 33 schools outright, but some powerful politicians stayed the executioner’s hand and got him to reduce it to 24. The mayor doesn’t listen when thousands of parents and students show up at public hearings, but he does listen when the head of the State Assembly’s education committee complains.
The mayor’s usual strategy is to just close the school outright, but he wanted to get millions of federal dollars available for the “turnaround” so he proposed to fire at least half the staff instead of everyone. The United Federation of Teachers sued to block the closings, on grounds that it violated their contract. The arbitrator agreed with the union.
The city will appeal. The mayor is defending the children, of course. Stay tuned.
The NYS June 2012 Alegbra Regents test was based on a possible 87 points and a chart converts raw scores to scale scores:
Integrated Algebra Conversion Chart
Click to access ialg62012-cc.pdf
Reported Score. Raw score/total possible points = percentage correct
65. 30/87= 34.48%
Certainly a student who got more than 65% of the Regents incorrect should NOT be getting a grade of 65% but that’s what is happening.
95. 83/87 = 95.40%
90. 77/87 = 88.5%. Or. 78/87 = 89.65%.
85 68/87 = 78.19%
80. 55/87 = 63.21 %. Or 56/87= 64.36%
How can a score of 80 be as low as 63.21% correct while a 90 is as high as 89.65%?
That’s 26% difference!!! And why is 90 student needing to be curved up?
Regent scores make no sense when the world believes 80 and 90 on a scale of 0-100 to mean something else, certainly NOT a 26 point spread.
In any case, shouldn’t 65% be passing?
Passing is 34.48% correct. Pathetic. Apologies to those who were proud of their 66 and 67 scores! Those who scored a 95 did actually work to earn it (and got shortchanged a little in the process!)
Kids can get different amounts correct on the Algebra Regents and wind up with the same score.
79, 80, 82, 83, 86 can result from 3 different raw scores
What kind of math is this?
And why not curve so generously for every year of math so the standards would at least be consistently strange and low level?
How many parents truly understand what their kids Regents grades mean?
This is even worse than the 1-2-3-4 system of elementary school assessments because everyone at least knows that’s vague.
People believe a 65 means 65 or an 80 means 80. That is so not the case here. Red flags that students need help should be raised and waving wildly at what used to be and are still comsidered to be respectable grades.
Here’s a thought…
Why not have a Regents exam based on 100 points that is scored logically (0-100, with 65 passing) so students, parents and teachers will know where kids stand No raw scores, scale scores, conversion charts. Every grade will be distinct and meaningful, every point earned.
Grades are important feedback in the academic health of students. Why does NYS give false positive information out?
Could you imagine bank statements like this? Writing checks when you don’t have the money in the bank your statement says you does? How is this any different from telling kids they achieved levels of mastery they don’t have? Students may not be not prepared for their next math course yet they are passed and not given any given helpful information to remediate their challenges.
Also, why give kids lower grades than what they actually scored? The top students in Geometry who worked hard to score 92-95 actually scored 93-96. There is no score for 99 on the Geometry Regents. There is no score for 98 on the Algebra Regents. The Trig Regents, however, allows multiple opportunites to score 92, 95, 98 and 99. Actually, if you make it to Trig, odds are you will score in the 90s since NYS is going to help put you there whether you deserve it or not!!! You can score a 90 once you achieve 82.85%!!
Why should students be motivated to try harder when scoring of these exams basically inflates the grades of the neediest students just for showing up? Or takes away points from those who’ve worked hard?
There is no way to know where a student stands and no justification for this convoluted system of grading. A 95 should be a 95 not a 89% (Trig) and not a 96.51 (geometry). A student should be able to score a 99, losing just one point on a short response if that’s all their mistake was. College and career readiness should be based on clear and easy systems, not readjusted to fit scoring designed to keep moving students along the educational conveyor belt, no matter how poorly they are doing. Many schools include Regents scores in student averages which allows the misrepresentation to continue.
Perhaps a federal law needs to be passed that provides for clear and concise truth in student grading by state agencies. Seems that would be a better plan than racing to the top of system that is broken.
Thanks for explaining this. I can tell you that parents do not understand how it works because it was never explained to them. Do upper middle class parents whose children go to specialized schools in NYC even care though? Some of the Regents, supposedly exit exams for hight school, are given in middle school! Do elite private colleges care, or do they only look at SAT/ACT? CUNY/SUNY should care because that is where the bulk of working class students go!
There really is no “explaining this” in the sense that we are talking about the reality of teaching and learning. All the statistical/mathematical manipulation is just pure “mental masturbation”. It’s a ruse. It’s “baffle em with bullshit”. In other words it holds as much water in the “real” world of teaching and learning as a three gallon bucket with no bottom. It is a complete waste of time, money and energy for results that are completely invalid. Sounds harsh but the truth is what it is.
For discussions of the invalidity of the whole standards and standardized testing paradigm see: Wilson’s dissertation “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” at: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577 or his book review “A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review” at http://www.edrev.info/essays/v10n5index.html .
Because Bloomberg defends gun control and marriage equality, some view him as a progressive or a liberal. He is not. He is first and foremost a corporatist, someone who does not think the rules should apply to him. All you need consider is the hundreds of millions he spent to first change the city charter so he could run for 3rd term and then to defeat a not particularly strong opponent. In a sense his 2009 campaign was a model for Mitt Romney’s primary campaign, and if he thought he could have won there is little doubt that Bloomberg would have found a way to run for President, but because he switched to Republican to run for mayor when the city Dems would not clear the field for him, he could not run as a Dem, and his positions on gun control and gay rights were toxic in the Republican party. I think he calculated that while he could run as an independent or third party candidate, he could not win, and would merely throw the election to a reactionary religious right Republican.
He is another man who because he is wealthy thinks he cannot be wrong and that his wealth entitles him to impose his views through his dollars – just like Bill Gates, Eli Broad, the Waltons, and – yes – Mitt Romney.
Diane,
Where is the NY Times coverage? It is pitiful. Do you think writing or calling to ask why they are silent on this issue would even help? Please don’t tell me Bloomberg controls them, too.
Linda he does control the NY TImes, they are all afraid of him raising the information rates he sell the paper, and not to mention he is trying to buy it.
Although the number of school closings wasn’t totally eliminated, it was refreshing to read the article that indicated Bloomberg could not get his way completely on this request.
Why is it that everytime a “corporate” type deals with numbers…they corrupt the system? Yet Mayor Bloomberg says he is defending the children. (Scratch out ‘defending’. scratch in “using”) . Disgusting crooks Someone, somewhere should be collecting all these stories of ‘manipulated test scores’ that pop into the news and call it “Corrupted Data”. Surely,some court, somewhere will call it fraud. Maybe then, it will hit front page headlines.
It’s like you guys miss the obvious. Have you ever read from Harry Browne? The Govt. MUST break your leg, so they can hand you a crutch and say, see we fixed it.
Sadly the Administrators and those running the schools ONLY care about the $$ so they do exactly what the Govt. tells them to do which ultimately destroys public education.
When it’s destroyed, they can then go in and hand us all a “crutch”.
Do you not see that happening.
The Progressive educators pushed radical reforms on schools (fuzzy math, whole language, Constructivism, group learning, project based learning, Outcome Based Ed, Real World Learning, Political Action, etc) setting the public schools up for complete failure.
These are fads that will continue to fail children and the schools jumped on them and sold them to parents, teachers and school boards like they were going to transform education.
Instead of sticking to what works, they set themselves up for failure and now Bill Gates, Marc Tucker, Obama, Duncan, Jeb Bush, Rhee, Chris Christie, etc. will fly in to save the day.
Sorry teachers, but you are nothing but the fall out from the reform movement.
Why? Because the unions are so progressive, all they cared about was their power.
They should have made ACADEMIC EXCELLENCE a priority and guess what, the schools would be successful, teachers would be appreciated and supported by the public and the politicians wouldn’t need to find a “crutch”.
So go on and keep spouting the old song and dance about how you aren’t paid enough, or that your pensions should be saved while they burn down your house with you standing in it and completely ignoring the flames and smoke.
I will fully support school choice because public ed has been destroyed while teachers and the unions watched it crash and burn.
You will now become babysitters while computers teach the kids and I can assure you that no parent will want to pay high wages to babysitters.
This is the reality no one seems to notice.
I graphed the data from the NYS conversion table. It appears that a bit of mathematical wizardry has been used to massage the data to resemble a somewhat misshaped curve with a steep slope on the lower and upper ends of the curve and a relatively flat slope for median raw scores. On first glance, the graph looks like a distorted approximation of the old bell-shaped curve. Has anyone done a deeper analysis of the math behind the conversion process?