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The Independent Budget Office writes a report...
http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/lts2012.pdf
For better or worse, the change on Nostrand is going to make the change on Franklin look minor.
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The Psycho-ologist
big A little a Bouncing B the system may have got you but it won't get me.
Joined: Jan '08
Posts: 440Just a cursory read and I am already skeptical of this report for the following reasons:
1) I know that recent ELA tests have been revised, and I wonder about the standardization of the "revised" tests.
2) The paper quotes "shifts" in study participant numbers due to "special education status". It sounds like they are self selecting. It is so easy to just shift someone to special education classes, and claim that they have cognitive limitations and CANT learn, rather than really address the issue through remediation and hard work in the classrooms. I wonder how much the so called "shift" in numbers is due to partialing out those students who WOULDNT make gains and are therefore placed in "special education".
3) they already admit that they chose the population that moved from grade to grade and defend their research by saying "this will not generalize to the entire school population" due to the qualitative differences between those research subjects who have been able to take consecutive grade level exams (3rd through 7th) versus those would couldn't because they were retained due to poor academic performance.
hmmmmmm........
a teaspoon of kisses and a drop of glee -
If they were posting improvements in "hot button issues", such performance levels, or a narrowing of the achievement gap between the various groups that comprise NYC, I would be more suspect than I am.
As it is, they are stating that not much progress toward such goals are being made.
...depending on your point of view, the teachers either continue to tirelessly teach everyone as best they can, OR a group of total slackers, OR can not be expected to overcome the out of school environment.
I though it was interesting because it didn't say we are in the process of changing the city.
For better or worse, the change on Nostrand is going to make the change on Franklin look minor. -
The IBO has released another report on education, this time on the subtopic of graduation rates:
IBO » Since the 2001–2002 school year, the city’s Department of Education has reported dramatic increases in high school graduation rates. These increases have prompted questions from some education analysts and advocates about how the city calculates graduation rates.
IBO’s analysis of individual student records for the class of 2009 yields estimates of the graduation and dropout rates that closely match the education department’s official calculations.
Going beyond the computation of these rates, this report also looks at questions such as: After four years, how many students in the class of 2009 have been discharged and what were the specific reasons?
How did outcomes differ based on demographic characteristics such as poverty level, country of origin, and race and ethnicity?
How indicative of high school outcomes are factors such as attendance rates and performance on the eighth grade state tests? Among our findings:
• Based on IBO’s calculations, nearly 66 percent of the general education class of 2009 graduated, 12 percent dropped out, and 21 percent were still enrolled after four years. Each of these rates differs by no more than 1 percentage point from the Department of Education’s published rates.
• More than a quarter of all discharged students left in the first semester of their first year, with most of these students leaving during the first days of the school year. The vast majority of discharges were recorded as students who transferred to private and parochial schools in the city
as well as schools outside New York City.• On average, immigrant students graduated at a slightly higher rate than students born in the U.S. But IBO found large variations in graduation rates among immigrants based on their country of origin.
• About 80 percent of white and Asian class of 2009 students graduated, but the graduation rate was 62 percent for black students and 59 percent for Hispanics. Black and Hispanic students were roughly twice as likely to drop out, and also more likely to be discharged, than their Asian classmates.
Class of 2009 students who were proficient in math and English based on their eighth grade test scores were more likely to graduate than students who were not proficient. Students who attended high school more often were more likely to graduate than those who did not.http://www.ibo.nyc.ny.us/iboreports/gradrates2012.pdf
Personal favorite sentence: Students who attended high school more often were more likely to graduate than those who did not.
...it is hard to argue with that.
For better or worse, the change on Nostrand is going to make the change on Franklin look minor. -
Here's the latest edition: http://ow.ly/lxL3H
Stats for everyone!
For better or worse, the change on Nostrand is going to make the change on Franklin look minor.
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