Progress Report Follies

Just a few more foolish details.

Schools receive extra credit for moving special ed kids to a less restrictive environment, eg from a self-contained classroom to a collaborative team class (regular class, two teachers). That credit does not depend on whether the move is appropriate. Oh. And schools save money by making the move. Oh. Does the DoE ignore bad behavior? Encourage it? or reward it? Oh.

Most specialized high schools got As, but those with lower cut scores got Bs. How do they calculate grades?

They hate that the Bronx still has a few big high schools and CTE schools. F F F F…. Undermine the schools, and grade them while they scramble to deal with rapidly changing circumstances.

College Ready? The new stats (“metrics” is a mistake, since nothing is actually being measured) include a 75 on some regents exams. OOPS!  On regents, 65 (passing) is calculated, based on analysis. 85 (mastery) is calculated, based on analysis. But that 75? It lands where the cubic regression falls… fairly meaningless.

And the numbers? Gary Rubinstein does the best job I know of destroying the use of s.d. in creating grades. Read it. And watch this:  My school had perfect scores on one of the regents. I think every kid over 85. Maybe all but one over 90. But the mathematically indefensible practice of setting scale based on standard deviations, and the strange weighting of grades, ensures that the scores we get best, count against our score. (not complaining, we got off easy. But the system makes no sense.)

The Progress Reports are a waste of money. The scare people, without reason. They get schools to focus on improving progress report scores, instead of on teaching kids. And that is shameful.