Jobby Jobs

I will have a job next year, and not one beeping groceries. A real job where I teach secondary level students in English Language Arts. If I don't, then I might just have to go back to Asia. Perhaps Taiwan this time.

Hopefully, this real job of mine will be in the City. Yes, New York City. Today at work, I was beeping some news papers, and I noticed the New York Post was running an article on NYC schools, and the new "report card" that the city put out on schools. There was also an article in the New York Times. At first it sounds fine and dandy, but like much of the school ranking going on with No Child Left Behind (NCLB), it leaves some margin for error. A large margin.

One of my main concerns with these reports is that there is substantial weight put on student improvement. NCLB tests at particular grade levels every year, and measures improvement on these scores. Two different groups of students are being tested. The tests done in NYC were given to the same group of students as they progressed through the school. So if the fourth graders were given a test, they were also given a test in fifth grade and this progress was measured. Progress is good, but one of the problems we see with both of these ranking systems is that the schools on top don't get that fair shake they so deserve. If a student gets a ninety-five this year, I'm going to go ahead and wager they won't do so well next year. If a student gets a sixty-five this year, chances are with a little intervention they'll do better next year. So even if your sixty-five student improved ten points, they wouldn't be doing as well as your ninety-five student that declined ten points, but the school with the improvement gets a better ranking. Consequently, I'm not really sure how much we can glean from these types of reports.

Anyway, if you're interested, the website to see the "report cards" on the 1,224 city schools that got ranked it's here:

NYC School Progress Reports

The link takes you to a page where the results are in a downloadable xls file.