Mayor Bloomberg prides himself on being data-driven. And he has certainly turned the public schools into data-obsessed institutions. Test scores rule all decisions. Accountability matters more than anything else.
One of the proudest achievements of Mayor Bloomberg and former Chancellor Joel Klein was the adoption of report cards for schools, with a single letter grade for each school. Unfortunately, the latest report cards show that the Mayor’s reforms have failed. The Mayor decreed that any school that received an F or a D or three consecutive years of a C is a failing school. After a solid decade in which the schools were controlled solely by the mayor, more than a quarter of the schools are “failing schools.”
By any measure, ten years should be enough to prove that your strategies have worked. But failure continues, year after year, with no victory in sight.
As we see in the following post by a New York City data analyst, New York City’s public schools continue to show dramatic disparities along lines of poverty and disability and language. And large numbers of schools, by the city’s own data, are failing.
How can we improve schools if we refuse to tell the truth?
The recent release of school report card grades in New York City provides another opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of educational initiatives in the nation’s largest school system. As this is the New York City’s Department of Education’s own data it would seem reasonable to expect that the mayor and his education appointees would use it to evaluate whether or not the things they are doing work.
So what does their data tell us about charter schools? What does it tell us about whether or not New York City’s schools are getting better? Are schools who educate the city’s neediest students getting the support they need? Are the reforms in New York City working? Are the people who run the system willing to accept what their own data is telling them? Or does dogma rule. Let’s look at the facts.
1) What does the Department of Education’s own public data tell us about charter schools in New York City?
Here is the data:
Charter Schools Non-Charter Public Schools
% of special education students 14.2 18.1
% of special education students in “resource room” 5.8 4.4
% of special education students with intermediate needs 3.9 5.9
% of special education students with the greatest needs 2.1 7.7
% of English Language Learners 6.0 14.1
Economic need index .63 .67
What it says:
Charter schools in New York City are not serving the same population as New York City schools overall and certainly not the same population as the other schools in the needy districts they initially opened in. And they are definitely not educating students with the most needs. They serve fewer students with disabilities, fewer English Language Learners, a more economically advantaged population and fewer of the highest needs students. Recent research has shown that charter schools in New York City have a tendency to use suspension and other means to get rid of challenging students. So why does the mayor insist on claiming that charter schools are putting non-charter public schools to shame? Why do his educational appointees repeat the same tired lines? Do they not know that their own data shows that charter schools are not serving the neediest students? Or will they insist of touting charter school no matter what the facts say?
Whatever the answer is, as citizens we must acknowledge that the neediest students deserve an education too and schools that work with such students should not be shamed publicly for taking on the challenge.
2) What does the Department of Education’s own public data tell us about tell us about schools that work with the neediest students?
Here is the data:
Poorest 20 Schools Richest 20 Schools
Average % of students proficient in English 30 88.6
% of students proficient in English in
lowest school in category 8 79.9
% of students proficient in English in
top school in category 59.4 99.5
Average % of students proficient in Math 45.7 91.9
% of students proficient in Math in
lowest school in category 21.4 80.4
% of students proficient in Math in
top school in category 61.8 100
What does it say?
The lowest performing rich school has a 20% higher level of students scoring proficient on the New York State English test than the highest performing poor school. The lowest performing rich school has an almost 20% higher level of students scoring proficient on the New York State Math test than the highest performing poor school.
Although the mayor and his appointees in education insist that poverty is irrelevant their own data suggest that it isn’t. Although they claim that there are schools that prove that poverty is irrelevant their own data shows that the highest performing poor schools don’t even come close to the lowest performing rich schools. This does not mean that we should throw up our hands in despair. What it does mean is that the mayor and his education appointees need to face reality and take ownership of and responsibility for the situation. They need to fund poor schools, at the very least, at the same level as the rich schools. Right now they are giving the rich schools more money than the poor schools. They also refuse to look at what needs to happen inside and outside of schools to help them meet the needs of students from challenging circumstances. They would rather refuse to admit the facts that their own data reveals. Why? Is it because it is easier for them to deny the truth? Is it because they have no idea what to do?
3) What does the Department of Education’s own public data tell us about tell us about the last 10 years of education reform in New York City?
The Data (New York City grades schools on a curve so the number of grades in each category in a single year are predetermined):
23 schools got Fs
80 schools got Ds
114 schools got Cs or lower for each of the past 3 years
3 schools got As that got Fs last year
12 schools got As that got Ds last year
8 schools got Bs that got Fs last year
16 schools got Bs that got Ds last year
6 schools got Cs that got Fs
Roughly 40 other schools got Ds or Fs in one of the 2 years prior to this one, but did not get a C or lower 3 years in a row.
What does it say?
Based on the New York City Department of Education’s own method of school evaluation over 25% of their schools have been deemed failures and worthy of closure (not including schools they are already closing). Of course, although the mayor and his educational appointees swear that the school report card grades are accurate they must know otherwise. After all, they haven’t attempted to close a quarter of all New York City schools!
They claim that the school grades are steady from year to year and point out that only 14% of schools moved more than one grade this year. Of course, since there are only 5 possible grades that doesn’t mean very much. It is like a teacher telling a student “your test grades have held steady between 30% and 90%.”
They give 60% of schools A or B grades but only 10% of schools have 75% or more of their students reading on grade level.
Again we wonder if they know their own data or refuse to acknowledge it for other reasons. Is it easier for them to assign grades with little underlying meaning than to help schools improve?
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