Bronx parent association struck by school closure fever
So many schools are getting turned around, restructured, or intervened-upon these days that parents have added a new phobia to their list: the school-closure fever.
Parents at a Bronx elementary school recently scheduled a protest demanding that their school not be shut down and their principal keep his job. They also wrote a blog post. But the school is not actually scheduled for closure at all.
The Bronx’s P.S. 73 is one of 47 schools in the city who haven’t made the annual progress on their test scores required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act for five years running. The schools are assigned a “Joint Intervention Team,” a group of city and state officials who visit the school and recommend how to improve
What it really means to score “proficient” on New York tests
Parents at a Bronx elementary school recently scheduled a protest demanding that their school not be shut down and their principal keep his job. They also wrote a blog post. But the school is not actually scheduled for closure at all.
The Bronx’s P.S. 73 is one of 47 schools in the city who haven’t made the annual progress on their test scores required by the federal No Child Left Behind Act for five years running. The schools are assigned a “Joint Intervention Team,” a group of city and state officials who visit the school and recommend how to improve
What it really means to score “proficient” on New York tests
A reader recently drew my attention to a deceptively unassuming chart that the city often uses to defend its heavy reliance on state tests.
The chart shows how neatly eighth graders’ scores on the tests predict their future academic success. The higher the score they get, the better their shot at graduating high school with a Regents diploma — the only kind that will count come 2014.
But the reader pointed out that the chart also includes a more frightening statistic: Students who score at a level considered proficient by every measure, a 3 out of possible 4, only have a 55% shot of getting a
The social studies test that some Queens students took twice
The chart shows how neatly eighth graders’ scores on the tests predict their future academic success. The higher the score they get, the better their shot at graduating high school with a Regents diploma — the only kind that will count come 2014.
But the reader pointed out that the chart also includes a more frightening statistic: Students who score at a level considered proficient by every measure, a 3 out of possible 4, only have a 55% shot of getting a
The social studies test that some Queens students took twice
