What good are state report cards to school districts?

HARLEM VALLEY — Responding to their school district’s state-issued “report cards,” local superintendents attempted to put the results in perspective.First, all three superintendents pointed out that the 2009-10 report cards are the first to use a new system of standards for the math and English tests.Test results were broken up into four levels, Level 1 being the lowest and Level 4 the highest. Levels 3 and 4 are considered passing. This year, the ranges for each level on the math and English tests were adjusted so that students would have to earn higher test scores to be classified as Level 3 or 4.Millbrook Superintendent Lloyd Jaeger pointed out that the reason for the change was that the previous definition of levels did not accurately indicate the future success of students on New York State Regents exams in these subjects. The levels on the science tests were not changed as they seemed to be more accurate.“There were more 3s that actually were 2s that needed improvement. The logic behind the shift was to raise expectations,” said Jaeger.The change is evident in the report card assessment results. The percentage of students testing at Levels 3 and 4 in math and English dropped considerably for the North East (Webutuck), Pine Plains and Millbrook school districts.The changed standards also had an impact on statewide results. An extreme example of this is the statewide seventh-grade English results. In 2008-09, 80 percent of students were at Levels 3 or 4, while in 2009-10, only 50 percent were at that level.The science results were consistent with previous years, with all of the local district schools scoring higher than the state average.At Webutuck, Superintendent Steven Schoonmaker included a breakdown of the scores in the district’s weekly newsletter. His report compared the mean scores during the last two years rather than the percentage of students in Levels 3 and 4, which he said he feels is a more accurate way of comparing results.“I don’t want anyone to think that either I or we are satisfied with the results,” Schoonmaker said. Webutuck tested below the state average in eight of 16 categories. “But I think [comparing the mean scores] doesn’t show as big of a gap statistically.”Pine Plains tested below the state results in eight of 16 categories, but Superintendent Linda Kaumeyer said she felt that it was a positive report card, pointing out that the district had achieved accountability in all categories (Webutuck did as well) and that comparing districts was often an “apples to oranges” situation.“Often the media like to compare district to district,” she said, “and I understand that it’s information the public wants to know. But in order to get a true picture, this is just one piece of the puzzle.”Millbrook scored higher, sometimes by substantial margins, than the state average in all categories except for seventh-grade math.Schoonmaker was blunt with his opinion of the report cards.“District report cards are not particularly helpful,” he said. “They generate what I like to call political data, which is designed to justify the expenditure of money rather than improve student performance. What really is valuable is not the report card but the item analysis we can take from the individual tests.” Jaeger of Millbrook agreed and said that departmental meetings have been held to discuss not only the overall grade results, but also those of individual students.Both Pine Plains and Webutuck conduct their own testing at different points throughout the year, and both superintendents said that the data on the report cards do not come as a surprise to the district.“If anything, the report cards are less helpful [than Webutuck’s own testing] because you get it once at the end of the year,” Schoonmaker said. “At that point, the grade is already over. But what we’ve done is bench-marked assessments to drive our own academic intervention services.”The shared goal, Kaumeyer stressed, was the education of students.“The bottom line is we’re constantly working hard to assist students to raise the bar as high as they can,” Kaumeyer said. “The New York State District Report Card creates a measure by which educators and the public can compare district to district because everyone’s taking the same test. But it’s really just a snapshot of that point in time.”Kaumeyer said that rather than comparing, for example, the scores of eighth-grade math in 2009-10 to the scores from eighth-grade math in 2008-09, it is more accurate to compare the scores of a particular class of students as they rise through the grade levels.“It’s a concept of measuring growth over time,” she said.Schoonmaker disagreed, saying the seventh- and eighth-grade tests are different. Jaeger observed that all of the area school districts are small and that the performance, high or low, or just a few students can skew results.School districts are given a much more detailed breakdown of each of the tests before a simplified version is released on the state education department’s website for public consumption. “From there, we can see what subjects are strong or weak and even break it down to individual students, classes or instructors, in terms of identifying the best,” Jaeger said. “We’re interested in identifying successful teachers so ones who are struggling can replicate that success.”The New York State District Report Cards can be viewed, in their entirety, at www.p12.nysed.gov/irs/reportcard.