Statistics

The DoE reported its new statistics the other day. They apparently went down in the early grades. They then spoke about why this was true. I actually agree and don't agree with them. The truth is that No Child Left Behind has created a bizarre testing program that penalizes NYC and other cities with large immigrant populations. It seems as though the NCLB people are attempting to keep cities from cheating and have created an even worse situation.

The DoE and in particular the principals of elementary schools are notorious cheaters. They have been guilty of classifying large numbers of kids as ESL kids and then keeping them out of the tests. The NCLB decided that every student had to take the test after one year in this country. The existence of a rule is a good idea. The problem is that one year is not enough time. Three years is a much better number. As I wrote about a long time ago when I was placing kids in the Bronx smart ambitious principals fight to keep ESL kids out of their schools. What the feds need to do is create a clear and fair rule.

One of the rules the feds want to use is the one about graduation rates. The feds want to count who graduates and divide this against who starts the ninth grade. The DoE doesn't like this one either. They want to add in those who graduate in August. This is not a terrible thing to do. I actually think the DoE is correct in this. August doesn't stop a kid from going to college in the fall. Lots of kids screw up something and need that final summer school push to get out. This should not be held against the schools. I also think we need to have a 5 year graduation rate statistic available to us. In NYC this may be the most important statistic.

I understand that the Newsweek choice of 100 best schools is flawed. It uses AP tests and IB tests as a benchmark. Principals find they can cheat the system by putting lots of kids in AP classes. Still, this may not be so bad. In my ex-school the last principal had pushed to create AP and IB courses. On one level it would seem that we did not have enough students to fill these courses. This was true. We did not have enough students working on a high level. The reality was that putting kids in classes that were beyond them on paper motivated kids to work to a higher level. This is a great thing.