I live in a wonderful neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York. For years, the local public school struggled. It had a poor reputation. Then a new principal arrived, attracted a stable and experienced staff, and the school flourished. Neighborhood families that once sought private school alternatives enrolled in the public school. It became the pride of the community.
A few years ago, when the city’s Department of Education started giving out letter grades to every public school, our neighborhood school got an A. Everyone was very proud. The mayor and the chancellor attended a ceremony at the school to salute its stellar performance and to announce the building of an addition.
But six weeks after the ceremony, the new letter grades were posted, and the neighborhood school got an F. Nothing had changed: Same principal, same staff, same program, mostly the same students.
The next year, the school’s grade went up, but the after-effect of the yo-yo grading left parents disillusioned–not with the school, which they knew and trusted, but with the city’s grading system. They realized that it was meaningless.
Now the latest report cards are out. They are as meaningless as ever. As Leonie Haimson, our city’s leading parent advocate puts it, “no one in his right mind should believe the school grades or the teacher growth scores.”
Some schools plummeted from A to F; others, including highly respected schools, fell to C. No one knows why.
The grades are based mainly on the same test scores that are being used to evaluate teachers. The whole enterprise stinks.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Shouldn’t we grade each bureacrat at Tweed?
Did Leonie ever get copies of their evaluations?
Let us devise a formula for the educrats who do nothing but push paper around.
Once again, I cannot help but comment on choosing to name the courthouse and seat of the NYC Education Department after one of the most infamous and crooked residents of NYC.
Yes, Boss Bloomberg is ensconced at Tweed. How fitting.
That’s an impressive scatter plot over at the link. You’d have to work long and hard to find another data set that makes such a perfect brick of non-correlation.
I think it’s time to teach children about civil disobediance – preferably the day before any standardised test. :->
If children refuse to pick up their pencils for the tests than the whole system of ranking schools, ranking teachers and grading kids fails.
Parents across the nation, OPT YOUR KIDS OUT! STOP the testing, and the house of cards will collapse.
Why is this happening? Its simple, they want to make teaching and public education as chaotic as possible. The schools then deteriorate and reformers can step in to “rescue” the schools and take control.