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About two weeks ago, DOE officials released a list of twenty elementary and middle schools that they are considering closing.   According to the NY Times, "The schools on the list fit at least one of the following criteria: they got a D or F on their most recent progress report, or a C for a third consecutive year; they were on the state's list of persistently low-achieving schools last year; or they received a C or D from the teams of state and city officials who were sent to review them."

When it released the 2011 Progress Reports to the public last month, the DOE made a point of noting that charter schools received more A's than did their regular public school counterparts. Technically that's true, but technically is about as far as it goes. When we compare the charter middle school A's to the public middle school A's for example, we see that the Progress Reports offer little evidence of better student achievement. In fact, in spite of an uneven playing field that should have tilted the scores in favor of the charters, the Progress Reports actually indicate that when it comes to academics, the middle school charters that got A's did not do that well.

In my last post, I ranted about this absurd graph presented by Marguerite Roza to a symposium of the New York Regents on September 13, 2011. Since that presentation (but before my post), that graph was also presented by the New York State Commissioner of Education to Superintendents of NY State School Districts (Sept. 26). The graph and the accompanying materials are now part of a statewide push in New York to promote an apparent policy agenda, though I lack some clarity on the specifics of that agenda at this point in time. Because this graph is now part of an ongoing agenda in New York and because critiques by other credible, leading scholars similar to my own but less ranting in style, which were submitted to state officials following the symposium have seemingly been ignored (shelved, shredded, or whatever) I feel the need to take a little more time to explain my previous rant. Why is this graph so problematic? And who cares? How could such a silly graph really cause any problems anyway? Let's start back in with the graph itself.

All told, about 30 reports for the 2010-11 school year have been posted online so far, and they include material as varied as the most mundane of details and education jargon and the kind of small, qualitative insights into schools that cannot be found in test scores.

Gotham Schools reports that the New York City Department of Education rolled out this year's school report card grades by highlighting the grades' stability between this year and last. That is, they argued that schools' grades were roughly the same between years, which is supposed to serve as evidence of the system's quality.

Annually, the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools examines the growing student enrollment in public charter schools. This report describes which communities have the highest percentage and number of public school students enrolled in public charter schools

The DOE would have us believe that the high school progress reports it released last week are a neutral evaluation tool where any school can do well irrespective of student demographics and characteristics. As proof it would point to its peer index metric which sorts schools into peer groups based on student characteristics and their eighth grade standardized test scores - the concept being that schools are compared to schools with similar students. Unfortunately the system doesn't work the way it was intended.

"Battles between charter school operators, like Eva Moskowitz, and public school parents and education advocates are nothing new to the mass media. Recently The New York Times ran an article on this topic, featuring Moskowitz and her Success Academy schools. However, too often this kind of media coverage does not accurately portray our side of the story. The SUNY board of trustees recently voted to approve 17 charter applications, 14 of them by Moskowitz, in New York City. It is more important than ever for the public to understand the reality of the charter movement."

"In this post, I address two examples of what I consider statistical smoke and mirrors (in one case coupled with false imagery) used in recent years to re-frame debates over economic and educational "equality" - toward a "post-urban" and "post-racial" domestic policy agenda."

"There was a big to-do recently in New York when new standardized testing results were released and the controversial Success Academies charter chain received very high scores. What, exactly, do the scores really tell us about the schools? Matthew Di Carlo, senior fellow at the non-profit Washington D.C.-based Albert Shanker Institute, explains. This post appeared on the institute's blog."

"But the biggest thing to keep in mind about these results is that most of the important lessons cannot be gleaned from the results alone. Perhaps the most important considerations is how teachers and other stakeholders (e.g., principals) respond to the system. For example, do teachers change their classroom practice based on the scores or feedback from observations? Do the ratings and feedback influence teachers' decisions to stay in the profession (or in their school/district)? How do these outcomes vary between districts using different measures or scoring? These are also questions that really matter, and they are not answerable in the short-term, and they certainly cannot be addressed looking at highly aggregate distributions across rating categories and imposing one's pre-existing beliefs on how they should turn out."

"Overall, then, teacher turnover, in both its attrition and mobility "forms," was quite stable between 2007-08 and 2012-13, although, as usual, there is a great deal of variation underlying the national estimates. And, although it is very difficult to determine the extent to which economic circumstances-the Great Recession in particular-influenced this trend, weakness in the general job market during this period is likely to have played a role."

"So, where should that finger of blame point here?  Or is this just how things work these days - slash the funding of the highest need districts - call them failing - close their schools - give their property and their teacher's jobs to someone else - and claim victory - leaving others, years down the line to clean up your mess? Angry Andy - this is your mess. Now do the right thing and fix it!"

"Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York State, recently released a report called The State of New York's Failing Schools. This report claims to present "statistics and facts" that "expose a public education system badly in need of change" and is designed to support Cuomo's proposal to turn "failing" schools over to private management and convert them into charter schools. But are these public schools failing? Are charter schools the answer? The facts say no. To help concretize the question why don't we take a closer look at one charter chain"

"With the debate over testing roiling Congress and state capitals nationwide, it is important to recognize the damage done to American pedagogy by high-stakes testing and the deleterious effects of punitive accountability on the students who depend on public schools."

"As with the Vergara case in California, a central claim of the New York City Parents Union is that the presence of statutory tenure protections in New York State leads to a persistent and systematic deprivation of a sound basic education which falls disproportionately on the state's low income and minority children. Let's review again the basic structure of this argument."

"As with the Vergara case in California, a central claim of the New York City Parents Union is that the presence of statutory tenure protections in New York State leads to a persistent and systematic deprivation of a sound basic education which falls disproportionately on the state's low income and minority children. Let's review again the basic structure of this argument."

"I'm no-longer surprised these days by the belligerent wrongness of rhetoric around school funding equity and adequacy. Arguably, much of the supporting rationale for the current (and other recent) education reforms is built on the house of cards that when it comes to financing equitably and adequately our public school systems - especially those serving our neediest children, we've been there and done that. In fact, we've been there and done that for decades."

"Families for Excellent Schools of New York - the Don't Steal Possible folks - has just released an impossibly stupid analysis in which they claim that New York City is simply throwing money at failure. Spending double on failing schools what they do on totally awesome ones (if they really have any awesome ones)."

"As I've pointed out over, and over and over again on this blog, NY State maintains one of the least equitable educational systems in the nation."