School: Bad info led to spot on list
Incorrect student data led one city high school to be cited for poor performance by the state despite the school’s repeated attempts to correct the information, according to a Rochester School District principal.
Dr. Freddie Thomas High School principal Sandra Jordan told school board members last week that district administrators failed to correct an error that caused nine students to be counted in the wrong grade.
Now, as the district prepares to send plans for two dozen underperforming schools to the state Department of Education, some school board members are questioning whether the data in those plans can be trusted.
If Freddie Thomas’ status remains unchanged, it could cost taxpayers $90,000 this year and next, because schools that don’t meet standards are eligible for grants to help them improve. The school also risks further penalties: Prolonged failure to meet state standards under the federal education law known as No Child Left Behind can eventually result in school closure.
“We knew we met standards this year. … Someone told us we didn’t — that’s because nine students were placed in the wrong cohort year,” Jordan said during a school board meeting last week.
For Freddie Thomas, moving those nine students to the correct cohort — the group of students who enter high school in any given year — would make the difference between being in good standing and a School In Need of Improvement for English Language Arts test scores.
“The school did not provide us with enough validated evidence for us to make the proposed change regarding students in the 2005 cohort,” said Rochester School District spokesman Tom Petronio.
Besides, district officials say, if just a few students can put a school onto the state’s list of substandard performers, then that school was too close to the line to begin with.
Even so, no school wants to be on the Schools in Need of Improvement list, particularly if it doesn’t belong.
In the case of Freddie Thomas, the district appealed to the state once already this summer. The state Education Department said that appeal was denied, and provided no further details.
But Jordan said it never should have gotten that far. She tried all summer to get district record-keepers to get the data changed, long before it was sent to the state at all. The appeal happened later, after Freddie Thomas was designated a School in Need of Improvement based on the incorrect data.
Finally, last week, Jordan said she met with Superintendent Jean-Claude Brizard. She said the district would submit the corrections, effectively filing a second appeal.
“Jean-Claude could not have been more helpful and supportive,” Jordan said, but she wished the district had taken the appropriate action months ago.
At the Nov. 12 meeting of the school board’s academic achievement committee, principals and assistant principals from the two dozen district schools not meeting state standards presented their plans for improvement. After finding obvious errors in the data attached to those plans, some school board members said they weren’t surprised that Jordan found an error.
“She has a good handle on her numbers,” board member Allen Williams said. “Somewhere, somebody didn’t make the corrections that she submitted.”
Williams also raised questions about the data included in the reports from several other schools that will, if approved by board members at tonight’s business meeting, be sent to the state.
“The form itself, in a lot of cases, did not match up with the narrative the principals supplied, and when I started doing some checking … the data was way, way off,” Williams said this week. Under district policy, the reports submitted by the schools are not public because they have not been approved by a vote of the school board, though principals outlined them publicly in the meeting last week.
“I’ve always been critical of the evaluation department,” said board member Cynthia Elliott. “If we had an evaluation department or accountability department that was more than just a clerical department … I think we would have the information — the real information — that we need in order to make the right decisions.”
Test scores in a variety of subjects and student classifications determine the status of each school in the eyes of the state, a requirement of No Child Left Behind. Those that are not in good standing must submit improvement plans.
While most of the other schools presenting their improvement plans last week focused on professional development or other ways to improve student achievement, Jordan said Freddie Thomas would keep doing what it’s been doing.
She said she knew months ago that her school surpassed high school ELA standards this year after failing to meet them last year. The school’s seven guidance counselors — one for every 150 students — spend “over half their day managing student data,” Jordan said.
When she was notified that the school hadn’t met standards, she knew something wasn’t right.
“The schools that own their data from the beginning to the end know where they’re going to turn out,” Jordan said.