Ignoring Accountability: Threatening to Close Beach Channel

As I wrote earlier this week, Joel Klein’s DoE ignored its own accountability system — Progress Reports and Quality Reviews — when it made its list of schools to close. That system has cost our schools vast resources in time, money, and talent. DoE created the system and it created the “closing standard.” Then it tossed it out.

The spurned closing-school standard reads as follows:

Schools that receive an overall grade of D or F on the Progress Report [or three C’s in a row] and a score below Proficient on the Quality Review are subject to school improvement measures. If no significant progress is made over time, a leadership change (subject to contractual obligations), restructuring, or closure is possible.

Schools that fail do not automatically close, of course. DoE lists other factors it will examine. But it is the Progress Reports and Quality Reviews that trigger a closer examination of the school.

As I pointed out in the earlier entry, fourteen of the twenty schools DoE wants to close have not “failed” the accountability standards laid out by the DoE. In my previous entry I wrote about the School for Community Research and Learning. Today, let’s look at another: Beach Channel High School.

The standard above comes from Beach Channel’s Educational Impact Statement, and in the same statement the DoE tells us that “the school’s overall scores on the DOE’s accountability tools do not meet standard criteria for closure…” [bold added]. That’s true. The school received a D on the Progress Report, but because it also “passed” the Quality Review (and in fact had passed it for three years in a row) it was not a candidate for closure. In spite of that, the DoE simply ignores its own high profile accountability assessments, and says that in 2009, it “conducted an assessment of Beach Channel’s capacity to improve student performance…” and determined that it ought to close.

Say what? I asked this before, and I ask it again: what is this mysterious utterly opaque “assessment” that the DoE conducted? What isolated item of data did it seize upon? We do not know. DoE does not say. But why did this other, undocumented assessment outweigh the judgment of three separate reviewers, over three separate years who spent two days each at the school in an intensive and comprehensive review designed — at great expense and effort by the DoE — to get a close and comprehensive look at the capacity of the school? What kind of mismanagement is this? These were DoE’s own reviewers, not the State (whose assessments of school quality DoE has been ignoring for years). They were trained to judge the schools by a standard the DoE itself had created, and upon which the DoE had intensively trained them. And judge they did. Last year over two dozen high schools received lower QR grades than Beach Channel, but Beach, is on the chopping block nonetheless.

Let’s look at a little of what the most recent Quality Reviewer said (all three reviews can be found here). As documented in the New York Times two years ago, Beach Channel suffered sudden changes when students normally zoned for Far Rockaway High School (which the DoE was planning to close) were sent to Beach Channel. A year later, here is what the reviewer had to say about Beach Channel and its resilience.

The road has been long and challenging but one, which the entire staff appreciates, is beginning to reap the rewards for their endeavors and sustainability. Students respond by attending more regularly, participating more fully in the life of the school and leaving many of their personal issues at the gates of the building.

Much of this transition is due to the formation of a number of small learning communities within the large school. Each of the communities has a specific academic theme, … Since their inception three years ago the positive impact is striking. Not only have the academics of individual students risen but also the effect throughout the whole school is evident for all to see. There is no doubt this one inspirational move is improving the quality of student learning. An assistant principal oversees each small community and this is a good example of distributive leadership. Another positive effect of this manifests itself in the continuing good use of data to demonstrate progress as well as promote a healthy rivalry between the four communities. Additionally the school’s professional development program is helping teachers acquire new skills to meet the challenges of moving the school further forward. The support of outside organizations plays a significant part in this movement of overall school improvement.

Does this sound like a school ready for closure?

I say again today what I said earlier this week. I am not advocating for or against this school. That is for the school community to do. But I am deeply troubled that the systemic, standardized Quality Reviews, which consume the time and energy of a great deal of the best talent in the system, are tossed aside for a DoE mysterious “assessment” conducted in 2009. One or the other is true: Quality Reviews are Exhibit One in DoE mismanagement, or else Beach Channel is Exhibit One in DoE’s arbitrary decision to close the school.

Take your pick.

Tagged: high school, Queens, school closings