Saturday, April 28, 2007

Show Must Go On


It seems that my school is losing points in the rating systems due to the number of regents exams our students complete by eleventh grade. We give the American History exam in January of their senior year, so that puts us at a big disadvantage. Too bad no one cares that our grades are some of the best in the city. To compensate for this, Principal Suit has decided to give the Math A regents to all kids who never passed it and are in the tenth grade or higher. Some of these kids are running single digit averages in the first term of a four term sequence. So what do we accomplish if we get some of these kids to pass? Our stats go up. The kids still know nothing. And, the worse part is we are rubbing salt into the wounds of the poor kids who know they are not capable of passing this test. But Principal Suit wants his performance bonus. I guess he doesn't care how many innocents are being knocked down along the way.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This rating system needs to be exposed, widely.

A school's score is essentially the weighte sums of its percentile rank in a set of areas, compared both against similar schools and against the city as a whole.

Percentiles. These are relative scores, ranked against other schools.

Each school is required to improve its scores by a few points each year. Did I mention these are relative scores? Someone has to go down, right?

Reminds me of the Lake where everyone's above average....