Can Something Really be Good and Bad at the Same Time?

Rachel Fink on June 22, 2011 in School Paragraph

So asked John Merrow on Monday in a blog post and a segment on the PBS NewsHour that examined reading at PS 1 in the South Bronx of New York City.

Merrow initially selected this high-poverty school for a visit on the basis of its low scores on reading standardized tests. Just 18% of the school’s 4th graders read on grade-level – as he put it, “strong evidence of a failing school.” Yet Principal Jorge Perdomo welcomed Merrow and the Newshour crew, and let them know that PS 1 is actually a great school. And upon observation, Merrow realized: It might be.

According to the segment, the school’s students are enthusiastic and eager to learn, and teachers provide a supportive and nurturing environment – “strong evidence that the school is a success.”

In addition, Merrow found that the school’s first graders were reading “confidently and competently” – both in decoding and in comprehension. So he went to investigate why the school’s fourth graders weren’t doing so well. Some adults offered suggestions: Life is catching up to them – they have become aware of family issues such as incarceration or alcoholism, for example – and reading is not important anymore. The 4th grade reading test is harder than earlier grades, and it covers subjects that disadvantage their students (a poor child in the Bronx might have less background knowledge than kids in other locations about dragonflies, for example).

While certainly those factors could play a role, Merrow discovered something else. In working with two 4th grade students reading below grade level, both could correctly answer test questions (see for yourself in the segment). As Merrow points out, the personal attention may have helped, but he does not appear able to reconcile the performance of these students in-person and the test scores of the school in general. Some thoughts he throws out:

Maybe the kids are terrible test takers? Maybe there’s too much stress (there’s a couple of weeks of test-prep build into the schedule)?  Perhaps there’s a fundamental contradiction between testing reading and reading itself?

I certainly don’t disagree with any of those suggestions.

And I also don’t disagree with what Merrow points out in the segment: There are likely many other schools like this. How should they be judged? “Do you believe what you read, or what you see?”

This is an enormously difficult question to answer. We at the Learning First Alliance have long supported multiple measures for school accountability. But I think Merrow missed a chance to push further on this issue, and to convey the urgency with which it should be addressed.

As of now, most public schools are judged almost solely on test scores. And many of the education policies proposed at both the federal and state level only increase reliance on this one narrow and imperfect measure.

For example, if on the basis of these test scores, PS 1 were identified to receive federal school improvement support, Principal Perdomo would be out. All four of the school improvement models allowed by the federal government require replacing the principal, with some leeway if the principal was very recently brought in to oversee a turnaround. But Perdomo has been leading the school for five years…long enough that test scores should be up, if you believe the School Improvement Grant criteria.

If on the basis of these test scores, the school failed to make AYP for multiple years, the school would be required to offer supplemental educational services and public school choice to all students. 

And if teacher evaluations were based on these test scores, the fourth grade teachers at the school would likely receive poor evaluations, which could result in their dismissal. If teacher pay were based on these scores, they might not make as much as their colleagues in other schools. In both cases, teachers might be tempted to leave for a school in a better neighborhood where students are more likely to score well.

So in addition to just asking the overall question of “How should we judge schools?,” as Merrow did here, we need to also revisit how we already judge schools, and what we use those judgments for.

Image from the PBS NewsHour segment mentioned here.

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