Thursday, January 9, 2014

Chancellor Fariña: Progress Reports and Quality Reviews | JD2718

Chancellor Fariña: Progress Reports and Quality Reviews | JD2718:

Chancellor Fariña: Progress Reports and Quality Reviews

JANUARY 9, 2014 PM31 2:24 PM



Things under de Blasio/Fariña will get better for the schools, students, and teachers of NYC. They might get a whole lot better. They certainly won’t get worse.
One area we should watch is “Accountability.” De Blasio’s campaign already promised
“in his first year in office, Bill de Blasio will eliminate letter grades of schools. Overall progress reports will remain available for parents, and educators, experts and parents will be convened to determine if the progress reports are the most effective long-term way to evaluate schools.”
Dropping the letter grades is a welcome change. It provides some immediate relief. But we should expect more relief than just that from “accountability”
The word, in today’s anti-public-education-reform parlance, does not mean what it sounds like. Their version of “accountability” creates scores for schools. (They also will be producing scores for teachers as part of the new teacher evaluation). The NYC Accountability systems involve two parts.
The first is a “Quality Review” where reviewers who may or may not be familiar with your school,