Comments on: Urban Schools Deserving of Far More Credit than They Receive

By: Education in Urban vs. Suburban Schools: Comparing Apples and Oranges? « brigitteknudson.com

Sun, 11 Jan 2009 10:58:19 +0000

[...] on standardized tests, resulting in low test scores for many big city schools. Similarly, the blog Openeducation.net, edited by Tom Hanson, provides a detailed analysis of Yglesias’s article, asserting that [...]

By: Urban Schools Deserving of Far More Credit than They Receive « NYC School News Aggregator

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:07:22 +0000

[...] Urban Schools Deserving of Far More Credit than They Receive – OpenEducation.net [...]

By: avoiceinthewilderness

avoiceinthewilderness — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:05:04 +0000

Actually, I forgot to mention that the growth measurement is part of the progress report of which the QR is a part of.

By: Are Urban Schools Performing Better Than We Think? | The Chancellor's New Clothes

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:22:24 +0000

[...] Open Education features commentary by Matthew Yglesias at TheAtlantic.com which looks at the performance of urban schools from a different perspective and challenges the “data” that is being used to measure such performance. [...]

By: avoiceinthewilderness

avoiceinthewilderness — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 16:04:56 +0000

When the public sees statistics, they do not see them in context. One can look at the test scores from a high school in an affluent suburban school and then see those from an inner city school and say, “What is the school doing wrong?”
They do not realize the difficulties and deficiencies that schools in inner cities face and how hard many of us work to close these huge chasms.

The one thing that I like about the Quality Review that New York City conducts is that it measures growth of schools, taking into account the academic level of students who enter.
In my school, the majority of incoming freshmen score very poorly on 8th grade ELA and Math tests. The growth that we achieve is pretty incredible given the fact that we start with students with huge deficiencies- many are 4 and 5 years below grade level.
However, if you looked at our numbers out of context, we would not appear to be doing as well.
This can prove to have an adverse affect on schools in which students enter having tested at higher levels.
In addition, schools are measured against “similar schools” meaning schools in which the student population is similar in demographics.
Of course, the QR process has many other problems-like paying ridiculous amounts in fees to outside organizations to conduct visits, but that is unfortunately, a sad characteristic of the corruption involved in city school districts.
Still, I think that this is a start.

By: woodlass

woodlass — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 02:38:40 +0000

I’d love to agree about New York and Boston, but how would one know anymore how well the kids are doing? Tests are easier than they were, and credit recovery allows kids to pass who really shouldn’t. Educrats define “success” differently from teachers anyway.