City Raises Bar and Broadens Coverage to Early Childhood and Select District 75 Schools
Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein today released the fourth annual Progress Reports for 1,140 New York City schools serving students in grades K-8—including, for the first time, 27 early childhood schools and 28 District 75 schools for students with disabilities. The reports give letter grades (A to F) to schools based on how much students learned last year, as well as on student attendance, progress with English language learners and students with disabilities, and the results of parent, student, and teacher surveys.
This year, the State set a new cutoff for passing its annual tests, resulting in lower passing rates in New York City and across the State. In anticipation of this change, in March the City announced that this year’s Progress Reports would use a more precise tool to evaluate student progress, called growth percentiles. Growth percentiles are less influenced by changes in the State tests and provide a more accurate measure of progress for students regardless of where they start. In addition, this year’s Progress Reports apply a set distribution of grades so that only top scoring schools received As and Bs. As a result, 25 percent of schools received As, 35 percent Bs, 35 percent Cs, 4 percent Ds, and 1 percent Fs.
“New York City has set itself apart by using progress as a way to improve student learning,” said Chancellor Klein. “Parents, principals, and teachers want to know more about how their schools are doing, and we’ve answered their calls by making this year’s reports more accessible and easier to understand.”
“This year, we’ve expanded our accountability system to evaluate early childhood schools and select District 75 schools,” said Shael Suransky, Deputy Chancellor for Performance and Accountability. “Next year, we’ll broaden our evaluations by measuring the performance of middle school students on core coursework in English, Math, Science, and Social Studies.”
Results from this year’s Progress Reports for elementary, middle, K-8, early childhood, and select District 75 schools include:
- 289 received an A (25 percent), 396 received a B (35 percent), 398 received a C (35 percent), 49 received a D (4 percent) and 8 received an F (1 percent).
- Since last year, due to the recalibration of State tests and changes to the City’s Progress Report methodology, grades in elementary, middle, and K-8 schools saw a general decline: 296 schools earned the same grade as they did in 2009, 22 schools improved by at least one grade, while 398 schools dropped a grade and 342 schools declined by two grades.
- Queens was the highest performing borough and District 26 was the highest performing district receiving all As and Bs for the second year in a row.
In November the Department of Education will release Progress Reports for high schools. In 2010-11, those reports will pilot new “college readiness” measures that evaluate how well a school is preparing its students for college and post-secondary careers.
The Progress Report is one of several measures that make up the City’s accountability system for schools. In addition, the City releases annual Quality Reviews to judge a school’s leadership, instructional practice, and organization; an annual School Survey, which received responses from over 900,000 parents, students, and teachers this year; and other tools to help school communities evaluate school performance. Learn more about the City’s accountability system at: http://schools.nyc.gov/accountability.
Progress Report Methodology
Progress Reports give each school an overall letter grade based on three categories: school environment (15 percent), student performance (25 percent), and student progress (60 percent). Each of those categories also receives an individual letter grade to better inform families about how schools are doing. “School environment” includes the results of surveys taken by parents, students, and teachers at each school last spring, as well as student attendance rates. “Student performance” measures actual student outcomes—whether elementary and middle school students are proficient in reading and math. “Student progress” measures how well schools are helping students improve from one year to the next.
This year, the performance and progress measures have been adjusted to account for the State’s decision to retroactively raise the bar for passing its annual exams. To accurately measure progress from year-to-year, this year’s reports have adopted a “growth percentile model”. This model, which is similar to one already in use in Colorado and which New York State is considering implementing for the annual State Report Cards, measures the change in student test scores from last year to this year by comparing students who started at similar levels of proficiency.
This year’s Progress Reports also focus more directly on the achievement and progress of students with disabilities, a key component of the City’s new reforms in special education. For the first time, credit given for improving outcomes for students with disabilities is now differentiated based on a student’s individualized program. A school is awarded more points, for instance, for making progress with a student with a more severe disability. Also, new extra credit measures reward schools for excellence in both performance and progress of students with disabilities—also differentiated by disability.
Three-fourths of a school's Progress Report score comes from comparing the school's results to the 40 or so other schools in the City that serve the most similar student populations. The remaining one-fourth of a school's score is based on a comparison with all schools citywide that serve the same grade levels. After scores were calculated this year, school grades were set along a set distribution announced by Deputy Chancellor Shael Suransky in March. In light of changes to the State tests and Progress Report measurement, schools cannot drop more than two letter grades from last year to this year. In addition, schools with top quartile performance in ELA and Math cannot receive a grade lower than a C.
Schools that earned Ds and Fs this year or Cs over the past 3 years could face consequences that include leadership changes or phase-out based on a comprehensive review of their survey and Quality Review scores, last year's results, overall proficiency levels, the principal's length of service, and input from key officials.
The Progress Reports for elementary, middle, K-8, early childhood, and select District 75 schools are available now on the Department of Education’s web site.