By Julie Shapiro
The tables turned this week as schools received grades rather than giving them.
The Department of Education handed each school a letter grade, A through F, based largely on test score improvement. With some lauded schools receiving D’s and historically struggling schools receiving A’s, the grades upended reputations and gave D.O.E. critics a cause.
Lower Manhattan, with many well-regarded schools, had a surprising number of low grades, with almost half the schools scoring C or D.
The biggest surprise Downtown came at I.S. 89. Just a month after being the only middle school in New York City awarded a No Child Left Behind Blue Ribbon, I.S. 89 received a D.
“I’m upset,” said Audrey Moore, co-president of the P.T.A. “I don’t think that [the grade] truly reflects I.S. 89.”
The D shows that something is wrong with the scoring process, not that I.S. 89 has a problem, Moore said. She and the other parents are standing behind the teachers and Principal Ellen Foote.
“We’re trying to figure out what we can learn from this report,” Foote said. “We’re being compared to schools that take kids based on very high test scores.”
Rather than comparing schools citywide, the report card ranks each school in a peer group. I.S. 89 has no test score requirements for admission, but other schools in its peer group do, including Salk School of Science, East Side Middle School and Lab School for Collaborative Studies.
“An F or a D is a wake-up call,” Mayor Mike Bloomberg said at a Monday press conference with Schools Chancellor Joel Klein. “The objective is to help schools get better… Now our educators have a new tool to help them see exactly where their schools need improvement and find schools similar to theirs that can help them.”
The grades will become more valuable in the future as they show whether students improve as time goes by, Bloomberg said. Klein said that there will be changes in fewer than a third of the 50 schools graded F. And down the line, if those schools do not improve, there would be further changes or closings, Klein said.
The grades strongly emphasize testing, a focus that is drawing mixed reviews. Student progress on state reading and math tests, measuring how schools help students improve year-to-year, is worth 55 percent. Student performance, including reading and math proficiency and the high school graduation rate, is worth 30 percent. The remaining 15 percent comes from student attendance and school environment surveys taken by parents, teachers and students last spring. Schools that close the gap between the lowest achievers and the highest receive extra points in the grading system.
Local schools that draw primarily Lower Manhattan children posted three A’s, five B’s, four C’s, one D and no F’s.
“The grades opened [people’s] eyes to a lot of schools that are available other than those big-name schools,” said Yvonne Moy, co-president of the Parent Association at P.S. 130.
P.S. 130, a Chinatown school that serves many low-income children from non-English-speaking backgrounds, received an A.
“It’s made our community very happy,” Principal Lily Woo said. “Schools that are not usually acknowledged are getting the limelight.”
P.S. 130’s art program has as much to do with student success as the academic program, Woo said.
“We’re not a test-prep school,” she said. “I don’t believe in just killing them with textbooks and workbooks… Children need a balance. They need to have fun in school.”
P.S. 124 also received an A, but Principal Alice Hom criticized the report for not considering students’ qualitative experiences.
“You can use data to make improvements, but I don’t think it should be the be-all and end-all,” Hom said. “There are other factors that make up a school. The progress report is one piece of it, but it should not be what parents are judging schools by.”
Paul Hovitz, chairperson of the C.B. 1 Youth and Education Committee, is concerned that the report cards will force schools to focus on reading and math to the exclusion of the arts and physical education.
“There is a subtle message going out here: ‘The heck with the other stuff,’” Hovitz said. “We’re interested in our kids receiving a well-rounded education.”
Jane Hirschmann, founder of Time Out From Testing, went even further.
“We think the mayor and the chancellor get an F for their plan,” Hirschmann said.
The report cards do not answer the questions parents have about schools — questions that have nothing to do with test scores, Hirschmann said.
“We want to know how many books our children are reading, are they creative, are they curious, do they ask intelligent questions,” she said.
Olga Livanis, in her second year as principal at NEST on the Lower East Side, focuses on science and languages, not just reading and math. NEST’s high school got an A and the K-to-8 program got a B.
“You don’t have to teach to the test if you teach well,” Livanis said. “If you focus on teaching to the test, children will not learn.”
Another problem Hovitz sees in the test is the improvement-based scoring, which favors students at lower levels.
“If a school has every kid already reading at four level, then there’s no room for improvement,” he said. “Is that a failing school?”
P.S. 234, a high-achieving elementary school in Tribeca, is facing a situation like the one Hovitz described.
Although 96 percent of the students scored threes and fours, P.S. 234 received a B because students did not show enough improvement.
“This scoring system is detrimental to schools that are already doing well,” said Liat Silberman, P.S. 234’s P.T.A. president. “We’ve done so well that in some weird way we’ve shot ourselves in the foot.”
Silberman does not want the principal and teachers to put undue pressure on themselves and the children when the scores are already so high. Still, she recognizes that perfectionism is in the air.
“We’re all very successful Type-A personalities in Tribeca,” she said. “We want our child to get an A-plus and we want our schools to get an A-plus.”
Dennis Gault, P.T.A. co-president at P.S. 89, has not seen excessive concern from parents about the school’s C grade. He expects to work with the school on making improvements based on the score, but said the report card system isn’t perfect.
“It has potential,” said Gault, who is also an elementary school teacher at P.S. 19 in the East Village, which got a B. “It needs time to evolve. It’s a little heavily weighted on the side of tests.”
Gault was also concerned about possible consequences for schools that get D’s and F’s.
“If the report is used in a positive way, to build schools up, that would be great,” he said. “I don’t think it should be used as a means to take people down, to punish educators.”
Along with other principals whose schools got D’s or F’s, Foote will have to submit an action plan to the D.O.E. explaining how she will improve I.S. 89’s grade.
“Does it require a review of our curriculum?” Foote asked. “I guess that’s something we have to look at. Overall, the performance of the school doesn’t indicate that that is necessary.”
Schools that do not improve could face staff changes or closure, the D.O.E. said.
Moore, the I.S. 89 parent, is focusing on a piece of advice that she usually gives to children: Don’t let other people define you.
In the case of I.S. 89, “We know who we are,” she said. “We know that this [grade] does not represent us. We take comfort in that.”
With reporting by Albert Ameteau
