Why no one in his right mind should believe the school grades OR the teacher growth scores
The new DOE school grades for elementary and middle schools, euphemistically called “Progress reports,” came out with much fanfare, with 217 schools potentially put on the closing list because they either received failing grades or three “Cs” in a row, more than ever before. As parent leader Shino Tanikawa pointed out in theNew York Post, DOE is using unreliable grades to implement terribly misguided policies. (If you'd like to see your school's grade anyway, you can find it here.)
Last year’s headlines ran like this:School report cards stabilize after years of unpredictability. This year again, reporters cited the the claims of DOE officials, who “highlighted the stability of this year’s reports.”It wasn’t true last year and it isn’t this year either. Here is a figure from Gary Rubinstein’s blog from last year, showing no correlation between the rank order of schools in 2010 and 2011. I suspect the Gary’s illustration will be similar for this year, once he gets