NationStates Jolt Archive

Hmm, what do we do when schools don't meet the mark? We slash their funding, close them down and send the failing kids elsewhere to other already overcrowded schools and pretend we fixed the problems. Under New York City's new punitive educational "grading program", close to 50 New York public schools are in danger of closing at the end of this year unless they can make sufficient progress within a semester to "not fail".

50 Public Schools Fail Under New Rating System

By ELISSA GOOTMAN and JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: November 5, 2007

Under a blunt new A through F rating system, whose results Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled today, 50 public schools across New York City, most in Manhattan and the Bronx, have been designated failures, placing them in danger of closing as early as the end of the school year and putting their principals’ jobs on the line.

Another 99 schools across the city received D’s, according to the complex formula the Education Department used to assign the letter grades to more than 1,200 schools. Although the department had planned to assign the grades around a curve, more schools than expected — 23 percent — received A’s. Thirty-eight percent of schools received B’s.

Of the five boroughs, Queens had the highest proportion of A schools, 28.85 percent, and the lowest share of F schools, .77 percent. On Staten Island, where many residents pride themselves on their local schools, the reverse was true; 5 percent of schools received A’s, while 8.33 percent received F’s.

City officials have described the report cards as the linchpin of the Bloomberg administration’s efforts to overhaul the school system. Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein has repeatedly said that the grades, which are based on a calculation that compares schools with similar populations and gauges not just proficiency but the gains that individual students make year by year, are the most accurate and comprehensive way of determining whether schools are moving their students forward year by year.

The largest portion of a school’s grade, 55 percent, is based on the improvement of individual students on state tests from one year to the next, a so-called growth model analysis. Thirty percent of the grade is based on overall student achievement on state tests. An additional 15 percent is based on the school’s environment, measured by attendance figures and parent, teacher and student surveys.

The grades also reflect a comparison of schools with similar student populations. Elementary school populations are grouped mainly by racial and socioeconomic background; middle and high schools are grouped by students’ test scores from previous years.

Because the grades are based largely on improvement, not simply meeting state standards, some high-performing schools received low grades. The Clove Valley School in Staten Island, for instance, received an F, although 86.5 percent of the students at the school met state standards in reading on the 2007 tests.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, some schools that had a small number of students reaching state standards on tests received grades that any child would be thrilled to take home. At the East Village Community School, for example, 60 percent of the students met state standards in reading, but the school received an A, largely because of the improvement it showed over 2006, when 46.3 percent of its students met state standards.

Some grades lined up with longstanding reputations. Some of the city’s most prestigious and selective schools — like Stuyvesant High School and Anderson School, both in Manhattan — received A’s. In Community School District 26 in Queens, long considered a top district citywide, 52 percent of schools received A’s, the highest share of any district.

Twenty-three high schools did not receive grades, and officials said they were still under review. The decision not to release those grades came after some principals panicked that their draft grades were based on inaccurate data. In an e-mail message to high school principals on Friday, James Liebman, the Education Department’s chief accountability officer, wrote that those schools would receive their report cards within a week of the rest of the schools.

The newest schools in the city, including small high schools that have not had a graduating class, did not receive letter grades at all.

The report cards also include a "quality review" report, an observation of the school written by one of several consultants hired to visit the schools last year.

Some parents and educators have already complained that the grades are simplistic and place too much emphasis on standardized test scores.

Chancellor Klein has said that principals who receive D’s and F’s could face administrative reorganization at their schools, or be removed from the system entirely. Principals who do well on the report cards are eligible for bonus pay, and teachers at certain schools whose schools’ grades improve from this year to next will also be eligible for bonuses, under a recent agreement with the city teachers’ union.

The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/education/05cnd-reportcards.html?hp)

Whenever I think of 'No Child Left Behind' I always picture the Kurt Russell movie, 'Soldier'. Especially that scene near the beginning when they're all children and they are running in formation. One child is lagging behind the others. Then a humvee pulls up next to him and a man with a gun gets out. BLAM!


No child left behind. :p

Whenever I think of 'No Child Left Behind' I always picture the Kurt Russell movie, 'Soldier'. Especially that scene near the beginning when they're all children and they are running in formation. One child is lagging behind the others. Then a humvee pulls up next to him and a man with a gun gets out. BLAM!


No child left behind. :p

You sir already win the thread, even though an argument hasn't even begun yet. :cool:

EDIT: I'm sigging this

The only thing worse than wanting to go to war with Iran is wanting to give the NCLBA a bigger club to hit with. Bloomberg is made of fail.

Hooray for public education:

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/CAMB/27640~No-Stupid-Questions-Posters.jpg

:D

How about if we form a union, and sign an agreement, guaranteeing the supervisor's wage rate increases, regardless of the performance of their workers. Then, we could give them 2-3 months off in the summer, during which time we demand no hours of professional development. Then, we could protest the fact that they don't compete fiscally on a scale with professionals who work the full 2,080 hours.

Oh, here is the part where someone explains to me that teacher's work harder and longer than other employees. Of course, there main function is to teach, and, at least by current standards, in 50 of the schools, they are failing miserably. So, just maybe, all of them aren't working quite so hard.

No, I think your response is fair and just. Let's just keep on funding the mill and let them continue to regenerate current results.

Would you rather place a child in an environment where they are comfortable, but failing miserably, or crowded in an environment that has proven the capability to succeed?

I say dozer the places, and build government subsidized shopping centers. That way, you send a message to the industry that they pass or fail, and you generate jobs for kids these loser teachers have been failing.

:headbang:

Just a question...

Why is it when school's funding gets cut the first things to go are the music, theatre, and art programs?

How about if we form a union, and sign an agreement, guaranteeing the supervisor's wage rate increases, regardless of the performance of their workers. Then, we could give them 2-3 months off in the summer, during which time we demand no hours of professional development. Then, we could protest the fact that they don't compete fiscally on a scale with professionals who work the full 2,080 hours.

Oh, here is the part where someone explains to me that teacher's work harder and longer than other employees. Of course, there main function is to teach, and, at least by current standards, in 50 of the schools, they are failing miserably. So, just maybe, all of them aren't working quite so hard.

No, I think your response is fair and just. Let's just keep on funding the mill and let them continue to regenerate current results.

Would you rather place a child in an environment where they are comfortable, but failing miserably, or crowded in an environment that has proven the capability to succeed?

I say dozer the places, and build government subsidized shopping centers. That way, you send a message to the industry that they pass or fail, and you generate jobs for kids these loser teachers have been failing.

:headbang:

Let's put this into an analogy so that you can understand how fucking dumb punitive educational standards are.

This is equivalent to cutting off your arm because it is not performing satisfactorily, and then transferring all the functions that arm did to your other arm, and then expecting everything to be just fucking dandy.

Closing the schools will accomplish absolutely nothing, espescially when your realize that these schools that are to be closed are from the most impoversished areas of NYC. They spend a pittance on education there, and pay teachers piss poor salaries, and force them to use a mindnumbing Taylorist method of education.

Kids are expected to shut up, do rote memorization, and just become mindless automatons as preparation for the working world. Gee, I wonder why they fail...

Let's put this into an analogy so that you can understand how fucking dumb punitive educational standards are.

This is equivalent to cutting off your arm because it is not performing satisfactorily, and then transferring all the functions that arm did to your other arm, and then expecting everything to be just fucking dandy.

Closing the schools will accomplish absolutely nothing, espescially when your realize that these schools that are to be closed are from the most impoversished areas of NYC. They spend a pittance on education there, and pay teachers piss poor salaries, and force them to use a mindnumbing Taylorist method of education.

Kids are expected to shut up, do rote memorization, and just become mindless automatons as preparation for the working world. Gee, I wonder why they fail...
Or rather.

You break you thumb, so you cut it off and hope your hand keeps working find. You realize you are pretty fucked without your thumb so you chop off your hand. Then you realize your arm is useless so you off it too.

Why don't they hand some school vouchers?

Why don't they hand some school vouchers?

Cuz that does nothing to solve the problem of public schools failing. Mr. Top 1 percent of the glass gets to get off the sinking ship, but everyone else gets to sink with the cargo.

This is why compulsory schooling is shit. Half the kids who fail (thus bringing down the averages of the schools) are the same kids who don't want to be there at all.

Public schools need major improvements. And I'm alright with vouchers only if they can only be paying for secular private schools.

Let's put this into an analogy so that you can understand how fucking dumb punitive educational standards are.

(I'm on a school board in Oklahoma. Very aware of the limitations of educational standards. Can't say I like them, but don't really like Sarbanes-Oxley either. Still have to learn to function within it, or I fail at my job.)

This is equivalent to cutting off your arm because it is not performing satisfactorily, and then transferring all the functions that arm did to your other arm, and then expecting everything to be just fucking dandy.

(Great analogy, but if your right arm isn't a functional part of your body, and you had limited resources, would you keep feeding it until your left arm starved?)

Closing the schools will accomplish absolutely nothing (freeing limited resources for other schools meeting standards?), espescially when your realize that these schools that are to be closed are from the most impoversished areas of NYC (Would they be less impoverished if students from the area were to be more successful?). They spend a pittance on education there (admittedly not involved with NYC schools but public schools typically have federal allowances based on headcount?), and pay teachers piss poor salaries (I thought that teachers were part of a national union and salaries were fixed based on education and experience?), and force them to use a mindnumbing Taylorist method of education (for my part, as long as everyone is measured on the same scale, and the teachers know what the measurement system is).

Kids are expected to shut up (Sounds like local policy decisions to me), do rote memorization (again, choices by individual teachers and students shape this), and just become mindless automatons (aren't there numerous examples of successful people growing from out of this culture?) as preparation for the working world (where they will not be given a different grading scale based on historical culture/environment?). Gee, I wonder why they fail (Maybe, just maybe, people reinforce their failure until it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy?)...

My graduation class included nuclear physicists, farmers and drug dealers. I became a Controller. Why is it that if three generations all become accountants, we don't consider it discriminating, and make one of them a lawyer?

This is why compulsory schooling is shit. Half the kids who fail (thus bringing down the averages of the schools) are the same kids who don't want to be there at all.

Public schools need major improvements. And I'm alright with vouchers only if they can only be paying for secular private schools.

Students who fail fail because they don't excel in an academic environment. They don't thrive off reading books and writing tests. It's unfair to say that the students who flunk don't want to be there. The ones who flunk, there are those who want to be in school, just not a school that is so academic minded. They would benefit from a technical school that offers a more hands-on environment that has students doing.

Or rather.

You break you thumb, so you cut it off and hope your hand keeps working find. You realize you are pretty fucked without your thumb so you chop off your hand. Then you realize your arm is useless so you off it too.

So, what you are suggesting..... You break your thumb. You go to the doctor. He says "Your thumb is rotten, your wasting your money on your thumb, and the infection will spread. You have two choices... Cut off your thumb, and save your arm, or go to a place where they don't have arms, get a job that doesn't require arms, and complain with them about how the world has mistreated you because rich people have thumbs, and enjoy griping until you die of infection."

The real crime is continuing to use taxpayer money to fund failure. The Arizona Cardinals Bears don't suck in football because they live in Arizona, and its hotter their than in Minnesota, or because the NFL discriminates against them. They suck because they sucked before, and they didn't dislike it enough to quit sucking. They'll suck until the get tired of it. Then they will sell the franchise to Jerry Jones, and he won't put up with sucking!

This is why compulsory schooling is shit. Half the kids who fail (thus bringing down the averages of the schools) are the same kids who don't want to be there at all.

Public schools need major improvements. And I'm alright with vouchers only if they can only be paying for secular private schools.

Students who fail fail because they don't excel in an academic environment. They don't thrive off reading books and writing tests. It's unfair to say that the students who flunk don't want to be there. The ones who flunk, there are those who want to be in school, just not a school that is so academic minded. They would benefit from a technical school that offers a more hands-on environment that has students doing.
I disagree with both of you.

Although FSA is right in that some kids don't want to be in school, his suggestion that this accounts for up to half of failures is bunk. In addition, his implication that the best cure is not to try to educate kids who don't like school is dangerous bunk, because an uneducated populace is not one that can rule itself.

And although Kryozerkia is right in that some kids would do better in a school that emphasized work skills over academic skills, an increase in vocational schools would in no way address the dismal failure of schools at early grades. There is very little point in sending 4th graders to vocational schools, and even by high school level, when they might conceivably choose vocational training over academic training, they will still have to be able to read, write, do complex math, and have a basic grounding in social studies and history to advance at all in their vocational skills and get a decent job afterwards. Also, once you've increased all these vocational schools for kids who don't have the aptitude for academics, you'll have to convince employers to stop demanding college degrees for every piece-of-shit hourly-wage job.

In my grandparents' day (1930's-1940's), college was optional. You went to college to pursue academics or to gain highly specialized professional training (medicine, law, science, teaching, etc.). If you wanted to go into office administration, construction, retail, or a host of other perfectly good businesses, demonstrable skills counted for more, and you did not need a degree to "get in on the ground floor." One of the main reasons for this was that you did not need a degree to prove you weren't illiterate or totally uneducated. In their day, people graduated high school with a level of liberal arts education that today we don't see until college.

I was in the NYC school system in the years it went totally to hell -- in the late 70s, when the city went bankrupt. I was on that ship when it sank. And I attended what was, technically, a vocational high school -- one NYC's "magnet schools," which were vocational high schools for white color or highly skilled professions. Mine was the High School of Art and Design, specializing in the commercial arts. I majored in advertising design and illustration. To get into that school, I had to have very high elementary grades and present a portfolio of 15 artworks (minimum) and take an on-site design skills test. Graduation from that school was dependent on my academic grades, not my art class grades, and the program was "college prep," i.e. academic. Students carried both the academic and the vocational class load.

When I applied to A&D, it was in the upper 10 percent of city schools for academic performance, it had a full art history program (absolutely required for art schools), had fully equipped printing studios (including a newspaper press), was funded to subsidize student art supplies (very expensive), had a music program and band, and held titles of All-City Champions in tennis and wrestling.

Then the city went bankrupt and slashed the Board of Education budget, which passed the cuts on to the schools. By the time I entered A&D a year after applying, the school had no art history program, no music program, no sports program and no teams. The print studios were shut down and off limits (too expensive to run the machines), the HVAC system broke down and was never repaired (so much fun in the photo labs and lithograph/screenprint studios -- aaahhh, solvents!), AND students had to buy ALL their own equipment, amounting to hundreds of dollars a month. And it just went downhill from there. Before I applied, it was known that all the major ad agencies and design houses sent recruiters to A&D graduations to scarf up grads for entry level jobs. By the time, I graduated, all you could get with an A&D diploma was sympathy.

Guess what? Not a lot of us enjoyed being in that school after that. My friends and I, in particular, were notorious for showing up in class only to take tests or deliver papers. If we had no test that day, we'd skip school the entire day and spend it touring art museums and galleries -- studying art and art history. The teachers knew what the deal was, because they were getting screwed just as badly as we were. As long as we aced those tests and delivered the papers and projects on time, they never questioned where we did our work.

My point is that you cannot ignore the effect of bad schools. It is foolish to try to blame school failures on unmotivated students or simply suggest that students don't learn because they can't. It is the job of schools to educate, not to educate only those kids who make it easy. EDIT: Educating the kids at A&D should have been easy. They were all high academic achievers already and were focused and motivated to work hard. Yet the school failed -- their fault, not ours.

I love the way people just shrug off failing schools and say shut them down and hand out vouchers, as if fewer schools can do a job a larger system couldn't. Another phenomenon I was in the system to witness was the enlargement of class sizes to unmanageable numbers. Every single time the size of a class exceeded 30 students, overall performance dropped. If you shut down schools, rather than fix them, and send the students to other schools, making fewer schools carry a greater load, you will only be enlarging the class-size in those schools and damaging their performance capabilities. NYC's action will lead to nothing but more failures.

So, what you are suggesting..... You break your thumb. You go to the doctor. He says "Your thumb is rotten, your wasting your money on your thumb, and the infection will spread. You have two choices... Cut off your thumb, and save your arm, or go to a place where they don't have arms, get a job that doesn't require arms, and complain with them about how the world has mistreated you because rich people have thumbs, and enjoy griping until you die of infection."
Then you get a second opinion from a real doctor who tell you to splint it and try not to jam it into things and it should be fine in a few weeks.

The real crime is continuing to use taxpayer money to fund failure.
The crime is judging success and failure by standards that are so arbitrary that they are beyond absurd.

What the schools are gonna do is just make the tests progressively easier so that they can get an A in the 55% of their total grade. THAT is why this system is going to fail. Instead of shutting down schools maybe they should find the problem and fix it instead of pushing it under the rug.

Also about the art drama etc...

They cut those because the school boards want tangible grading that they can see and have no need for interpretation. Even though cutting out those is an aweful idea for those who don't excell in the two things that "matter": math and science.

Whew, glad I got that out of my system.

And although Kryozerkia is right in that some kids would do better in a school that emphasized work skills over academic skills, an increase in vocational schools would in no way address the dismal failure of schools at early grades. There is very little point in sending 4th graders to vocational schools, and even by high school level, when they might conceivably choose vocational training over academic training, they will still have to be able to read, write, do complex math, and have a basic grounding in social studies and history to advance at all in their vocational skills and get a decent job afterwards. Also, once you've increased all these vocational schools for kids who don't have the aptitude for academics, you'll have to convince employers to stop demanding college degrees for every piece-of-shit hourly-wage job.

Yes, there is a need for basic and semi-complex math (enough to do a tax return and maintain a budget is what every student should have) and reading & comprehension skills in everything that we do. No one can deny it, but there reaches a point where it becomes obvious some students can do well in one type of learning environment, while others may need something that meets their needs. True that no 4th grader is ready to make the choice. The choice should be made available in grade 10.

By the time students are in grade 10, they've probably been given some freedom and have been educated to the point that they can handle basic every day transactions. This is also when we begin to think more about what we want to do.

There should be a split created here. One for a technical and vocational education and one for an academic education.

You're right about standardised testing. It's bullshit and a false way of measuring true success. Just because little Johnny fails at science doesn't mean he would fail at fixing your car. He just needs to find what he's good at.

The crime is judging success and failure by standards that are so arbitrary that they are beyond absurd.[/QUOTE]

I wouldn't disagree, to some extent. However, as a school board member, I always like to say the following..... The problem is easy, give me "the next fifteen words." In other words, while I will stand on my belief that failing schools should be penalized and, in some cases, the death sentence observed, I would love to hear, given the resource limitations, how you would change the measurement system. Cheating a testing system is much more difficult than simply awarding grades. Any manipulation/skewing of measurement would be easier to accomplish as variation of measurement is applied.

Hmm, what do we do when schools don't meet the mark? We slash their funding, close them down and send the failing kids elsewhere to other already overcrowded schools and pretend we fixed the problems. Under New York City's new punitive educational "grading program", close to 50 New York public schools are in danger of closing at the end of this year unless they can make sufficient progress within a semester to "not fail".

UGH. I know so many kids going to schools like that. I would have gone to an F school, likely, if I hadn't gotten into a magnet high school. *depressed*

Click Stand;13191284'] They cut those because the school boards want tangible grading that they can see and have no need for interpretation. Even though cutting out those is an aweful idea for those who don't excell in the two things that "matter": math and science.

Whew, glad I got that out of my system.

Also, even with people who do excel in math and science, fostering creativity is very, very important. Creativity in math and science is a really good thing...

Also, even with people who do excel in math and science, fostering creativity is very, very important. Creativity in math and science is a really good thing...

Sorry but I'm one of those people who really hates math so I may be too biased to see clearly. How can you be creative in math...besides drawing pretty graphs.

Click Stand;13191543']Sorry but I'm one of those people who really hates math so I may be too biased to see clearly. How can you be creative in math...besides drawing pretty graphs.

Pretty much all of the highest levels of math are extremely, extremely creative. Good luck wrapping your mind around something like the Poincare conjecture*, manifold calculus, or non-Euclidean geometry without a very creative mind capable of thinking outside the box. The most advanced levels of theoretical mathematics require a lot of creative thinking.

*Actually, I don't think it's a conjecture anymore.

Oh well... Yanks do not really need schools, because 65% of them leave high schools (and with a certificate) without knowing how to spell elementary words such as "your" vs. "you're".

Pretty much all of the highest levels of math are extremely, extremely creative. Good luck wrapping your mind around something like the Poincare conjecture*, manifold calculus, or non-Euclidean geometry without a very creative mind capable of thinking outside the box. The most advanced levels of theoretical mathematics require a lot of creative thinking.

*Actually, I don't think it's a conjecture anymore.

Yeh but unfortunately (or fortunately) to get there you have to go thru a lot of time doing the same standard calculations over and over and over again. (Aside: That is why I loved proofs, no formulas you just had to be smart and problem solve and there was no sure right way to do it, a lot of fun though today I have completely forgotten how to do them.)

Anywhoo back on topic: I don't know how to judge schools but what I do know is that shutting them down is always the wrong option. Publicly funding education, with all its pitfalls and suckiness, is always the best way because we need an educated populace in democracy to make informed decisions. Without public schools only the rich would be able to afford education and we would have the late 19th century all over again and nobody wants that.

I now expect this rather weak arg to be ripped to shreds.

This is why compulsory schooling is shit.

Word.

Pretty much all of the highest levels of math are extremely, extremely creative. Good luck wrapping your mind around something like the Poincare conjecture*, manifold calculus, or non-Euclidean geometry without a very creative mind capable of thinking outside the box. The most advanced levels of theoretical mathematics require a lot of creative thinking.

*Actually, I don't think it's a conjecture anymore.

I guess it's just one of those things that I'll never get. All I see in math is something that can either be right or wrong(though I have no idea about the whole theoretical thing).

I wouldn't disagree, to some extent. However, as a school board member, I
probably know nothing about education at all.

Yes, there is a need for basic and semi-complex math (enough to do a tax return and maintain a budget is what every student should have) and reading & comprehension skills in everything that we do. No one can deny it, but there reaches a point where it becomes obvious some students can do well in one type of learning environment, while others may need something that meets their needs. True that no 4th grader is ready to make the choice. The choice should be made available in grade 10.

By the time students are in grade 10, they've probably been given some freedom and have been educated to the point that they can handle basic every day transactions. This is also when we begin to think more about what we want to do.

There should be a split created here. One for a technical and vocational education and one for an academic education.

You're right about standardised testing. It's bullshit and a false way of measuring true success. Just because little Johnny fails at science doesn't mean he would fail at fixing your car. He just needs to find what he's good at.
You think 10th grade is when students should commit to the course of their lives? That's age 15. Kids at that age aren't even considered old enough to have sex, vote, drive, serve in the military, own or rent property, sign binding contracts, or hold a full time job without their parents' permission, yet you think they're old enough to decide what skills they're going to need or not need in their lives. I disagree in the strongest terms.

You want Little Johnny to "find what he's good at." So do I, but how is he supposed to find it, if he doesn't try a bit of everything? Hm?

I absolutely oppose any and all efforts to separate vocational education from academic education AND steer children into one or the other. I refuse to endorse anything that would amount to "workers' education" separate from "intellectuals' education."

I believe that there is no reason whatsoever that children should not enter high school fully competent in all the basic skills you mention above (i.e. learn elementary skills in elementary school), and then in high school, get a thorough grounding in academic subjects, whether they like it or not. And I see absolutely no reason whatsoever why schools that emphasize vocational training should not include a full academic program as well (as mine did, which it tried to maintain even as the wheels were coming off). In other words, I see no reason why a person who leaves high school ready to open an auto body shop, should not also be able to competently discuss literature, if they want to.

EDIT: I don't expect everyone to achieve the same level in academic or vocational training, and maybe vocational schools could put less emphasis on academic scores for graduation (or maybe they shouldn't; mine didn't), but no child should be allowed to miss that aspect of education, even if they decide not to carry on with it. Vocationally focused students should learn academics, and academically focused students should learn some basic work skills, because you never know what you're going to need or want in life.

<snip>

Anywhoo back on topic: I don't know how to judge schools but what I do know is that shutting them down is always the wrong option. Publicly funding education, with all its pitfalls and suckiness, is always the best way because we need an educated populace in democracy to make informed decisions. Without public schools only the rich would be able to afford education and we would have the late 19th century all over again and nobody wants that.



Word.

Though in my opinion, there are people who want the 19th century back. I'm not one of them.

Pretty much all of the highest levels of math are extremely, extremely creative. Good luck wrapping your mind around something like the Poincare conjecture*, manifold calculus, or non-Euclidean geometry without a very creative mind capable of thinking outside the box. The most advanced levels of theoretical mathematics require a lot of creative thinking.

*Actually, I don't think it's a conjecture anymore.

Yes, that. Also, a creative education fosters flexibility of mind, which is needed in sciency and mathy jobs when technology is advancing at such a high pace.

http://www.nycboe.net/Accountability/ProgressReports/default.htm

Here's the link, if you want to see it.

My school got an A.

Click Stand;13191284']What the schools are gonna do is just make the tests progressively easier so that they can get an A in the 55% of their total grade.

Hadn't you heard? Most of this is based on standardized exams.

What will happen to the fifty schools, should they be closed, is this: 100% of the teachers will be jobless. They will all have to reinterview to stay in the building and about 40% will be able to stay.

The school will be broken into probably four "academies", and each one will have its own set of administrators -- basically quadrupling the number of Indian Chiefs.

Then Mikey and Joel will pat themselves on the back and consider it a job well done while the kids go to the same school, in the same neighborhood, with different teachers, no guarentees (because, of course, the neighborhood, health, proper nutrition and the home environment have nothing to do with academic progress -- it's ONLY what happens in school) and 60% of the workforce is left scrambling willy nilly for a position.

I believe that people are grossly over-reacting to the grading system.

The statistics from the report were as follows: "Of the 1,224 elementary, middle and high schools surveyed, 23% received A's, 38% received B's, 25% received C's, 8% received D's, and 4% received F's" (quoted from gothamist, checked the source first - board of ed for NYC)

Yes, 50 schools failed and yes, it sounds like a lot, but relative to the size of New York, it's a tiny fraction of 4%

Moreover, these 4% are not being shut down rather given an improvement window after which they will be further evaluated. Should there be inadequate improvement, the school will realistically not be shut down, rather face administrative reform. So yeah, the school might get a new principal, but if it can't pass the city's evaluation system, shouldn't that be regarded as a good thing?

Click Stand;13191543']Sorry but I'm one of those people who really hates math so I may be too biased to see clearly. How can you be creative in math...besides drawing pretty graphs.
Well, certainly some subjects where math is applied go hand-in-hand with creativity, I've heard that's the case with engineering...