School Rating System Needs Improvements
Editorial

Last week, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein introduced the first ever "report cards" for the 1,400 schools in the New York City system. The howls of indignation are still ringing in our ears and, as far as we can tell, Klein and Bloomberg are still ducking shots from all directions while still maintaining their commitment to the new program for rating city schools.

Some of the criticisms seem justified. A system that gives a school whose students rank in the high 90s on state mathematics and English language proficiency tests received an overall rating of "D". Other schools, with students whose group scores on the tests hover in the 50 percent range- barely average and by some standards, barely adequate- received "A" and "B" grades. And Bard College H.S. Early College, unique in the city in that its graduates earn two years of college credits and an associate's degree along with their high school diplomas, is receiving a "C" grade, acceding to a draft copy of the report card. We find this of particular concern since a second Bard College H.S. Early College, in addition to the original campus on the Lower East Side, is slated to open in Queens next September.

Educators and parents at some schools, particularly those which like Bard H.S., are nontraditional and high-performing, maintain that while the new "report card" rating system, which is driven by standardized test scores, may be a good way to measure whether schools are imparting basic knowledge, it is less useful and may even prove harmful for schools on the higher end of the performance spectrum. It makes no sense for a school with students that performed well on tests to receive a "D" or possibly even an "F", which latter grade can cause a school to be threatened with closing and its faculty fired or reassigned.

Most of the schools that received "A" or "B" grades earned those marks because, according to the complicated rating system, the students attending performed well on tests and the school in question bettered its performance from last year. This is a worthwhile objective and we commend those schools that earned their high marks because the school as a whole surpassed its performance of the previous year.

The school report card system, however, still has its deficiencies. The letter grade marking practice, involved though the mathematics that computed those marks may be, does not address another challenge posed daily and hourly to teachers and administrators, mostly to teachers, today. No power on earth seems able to make some students sit down, close their mouths and open their ears, if not their minds. No adequate procedure exists for getting truly troublesome students out of a classroom where other students want to learn and teachers try to teach. This particular problem is a many-headed Hydra, with causative factors including indifferent or absent parents, inadequate early childhood preparation for school and popular culture that actively discourages academic achievement. These problems will never be completely solved, but until they are addressed much more rigorously than they now are, chaos will continue to reign in far too many of our classrooms.

The Bloomberg-Klein report card system is a step in the right direction, even given its flaws. It should, however, be regarded as the start of a fair and equitable rating system, not the sum total. Before any action is taken, especially toward schools that were accorded such poor marks that they are threatened with closure and their administrators and faculty with dismissal, we need to evaluate the evaluation plan as well as the schools. John F. Kennedy (1914-1963) indeed, declared "Life is unfair", but that does not relieve all of us of our inherent responsibility to address as much unfairness as we can. The rating system for the New York City school system is a case in point- and a good place to start.