Melissa Bailey File Photo
How many kids show up to school each day? Do they play well with others?
Those are two new factors the city’s school reform team is looking at as it puts together a way to grade public schools. As part of the school reform drive, the district plans to “grade” six to eight schools into three tiers by March 15 so they can be reopened in the fall, each with its own improvement plan.
Two of those low-performing schools, dubbed “turnaround” schools, will be closed at the end of the school year, Mayor John DeStefano has said. They would be reopened in the fall under new management, likely under new work rules, such as a longer school day.
School communities are waiting to see if their schools will be chosen for the first phase of an ambitious plan to cut the dropout rate in half, close the achievement gap in five years, and prepare students to succeed in college. The plan calls for greater accountability, individualized management, and also greater autonomy for schools that perform well.
Which schools will be the guinea pigs?
School reform czar Garth Harries (pictured) gave a few suggestions Monday in a presentation to the school board. He is working with a reform committee to come up with criteria for grading the schools. The group first came up with a new way to grade student performance.
Monday, Harries shared draft recommendations on how to grade the performance of the schools. He presented them to the school board before bringing them to the reform committee for discussion. That committee is due to submit final recommendations to the board on Feb. 22.
He suggested two new factors to be included in each school’s grade. The first is the school-wide attendance rate. The second is how students behave in class.
Student behavior is measured through a survey teachers fill out about each child. They rate each student on “behavior control, task orientation, and peer social skills.” Peer social skills basically translates to whether a student “plays well with others,” Harries said. Based on those surveys, each school would come up with a percentage of students in grades K to 5 who are graded as “competent” or “highly competent” in those three areas.
Together, the attendance rate and behavioral surveys would give the school a way to quantify its “school environment/ student engagement.” That factor is important, school officials have said, because it recognizes the challenges teachers and administrators face in urban schools where kids struggle with poverty and behavioral issues.
That environmental aspect would make up one-third of the school’s grade, according to the rubric Harries presented.
How kids do on tests, and whether they continue education after high school, would dictate the other two-thirds of the grade.
Here’s how the grading would work, according to Harries’ draft plan: The district would rank schools on three lists.
On the first list, schools would be ranked on “student progress” — defined by the “average student progress on the Connecticut Mastery Test, relative to other students with the same academic history.”
On the second list, they’d be ranked by “student performance.” That would be calculated by two factors: how many students score proficient and above, and goal and above, on standardized tests; and how many students enroll in accredited post-secondary education.
The third list would be the “school environment factors” described above.
Melissa Bailey File Photo
Schools Superintendent Reggie Mayo would look through the lists and find six to eight schools that are easy to grade. He’d look for a couple that are clearly near the top, a couple in the middle, and four at the bottom, Harries said. That decision needs to be made by March 15 according to the teachers union contract.
Mayo said he wouldn’t just go by the numbers — he’d also take into account a school’s leadership, and whether the school is ready to take on the reforms this fall.
The biggest change would come to the “turnaround” schools. They would be closed at the end of the year. The students would remain, but all teachers who work there would have to reapply if they wish to continue teaching there in the fall. According to their labor contract, teachers who get hired to work there may have different work rules, such as a longer school day — and would be paid accordingly.
After hearing Harries’ suggestions, board member Michael Nast looked ahead to future. When the first schools are ranked, people will have a lot of questions, he said: “Why me? Why my school?”
The district will “need a plan for communicating to the public,” he said. School officials agreed.