Tuesday, March 6, 2007

New school grading system; unbelievable!


I recently found out that all District Superintendents are going to be renamed "Chief Achievement Officers" and will report to Jim Liebman, former Columbia law professor and now the CEO of Accountability at Tweed. All are being forced to reapply for their jobs, and in interviews, are being mainly asked questions about data analysis.

Now here is an excerpt from a DoE document, obtained by Ed in the Apple, explaining the new school grading system:

Total Scores are calculated by weighting the values of the Proximity to City Horizon (x1) and Proximity to Peer Horizon (x2) measures for School Environment, Student Performance and Student Progress. As these weightings indicate, Proximity to Peer Horizon counts twice as much as Proximity to City Horizon. These weighted values are then averaged to create scores for School Environment, Student Performance and Student Progress. The school’s Weighted Total Score (excluding additional credit for Exemplary Student Progress) is a weighted average of School Environment (weighted 15%), Student Performance (30%) and Student Progress (55%).

Additional recognition for schools obtaining Exemplary Student Progress as defined above is then added to the overall index using the following formula: .03 is added for each qualifying population as to which the percentage of students making exemplary gains is in the top 20% of all schools within the City and .015 is added for each qualifying population as to which the percentage of students as to which percentage of students making exemplary gains is in the top 40% of all schools in the City. A school’s Weighted Total Score Plus Additional Credit is determined by adding these additional potential points, if any are awarded, to the Weighted Total Score.

Got it? I know that you probably are thinking that this is one of Gary's brilliant parodies. I wish that were the case.

As George Bush Sr. would say, we are all in deep doo-doo.

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