P.S. 277 Scores a “C” in city-wide progress report

Progress Reports grade each school with an A, B, C, D, or F. These reports are to help parents, teachers, principals, and others understand how well schools are doing—and compare them to other, similar schools. Most schools received pilot Progress Reports for the 2005-06 school year in spring 2007. Progress Reports for Early Childhood and Special Education schools will be piloted during the 2007-08 academic year.

This is how our P.S. 277 faired:

• Overall Score – 42.29
  • (Highest Score 104.4 – Lowest Score – 0.447)
• Environment Category Score – 0.651
  • (Highest Score 1.035 – Lowest Score – -0.141)
• Performance Category Score – 0.845
  • (Highest Score 1.122 – Lowest Score – -0.109)
• Progress Category Score – 0.131
  • (Highest Score 1.148 – Lowest Score – -0.263)
• Overall Grade: C

The Scoring was based on:

School Environment (15% of score), including attendance and the results of parent, student, and teacher surveys.

Student Performance (30% of score), as measured by elementary and middle school students’ scores each year on the New York State tests in English Language Arts and Mathematics. For high schools, student performance is measured by diplomas and graduation rates.

Student Progress (55% of score), as measured by how much schools help students progress during the school year in subjects such as reading, writing, math, science, and history. Schools’ progress scores also rise when they help English Language Learners, special education students, and students who are not performing well at the start of the year improve.

Links

• PS 277 City Website
• Learning environment survey report 2006-2007 (PDF Link) This report provides a view of a school’s learning environment based on responses from parents, teachers, and middle and high school students to the annual Learning Environment Survey.
• Quality Review Report 2006-2007 (PDF Link) The Quality Review Report describes what reviewer saw at the school — what life is like there. The report identifies some of the strengths in the school, as well as areas where improvement is needed with suggestions for making improvements.

UPDATE: Check out the great reviews of 277 from the Quality review report (above)

What the School Does well

1. The principal communicates her vision for the school with great clarity, leads by example and empowers her staff, students and parents to make decisions.
2. The school operates as a large family where there is mutual trust and respect and where there are very high expectations of every member.
3. The academic intervention team does excellent work in ensuring that no child falls behind.
4. The students are fine ambassadors for their school; they strive hard to succeed, are willing to help each other in class and to take an active role in evaluating their own work.
5. Teachers collaborate extremely well to refine the quality of the curriculum and assessment.
6. The school is at the heart of the community, has established excellent communication with parents and caregivers, and makes valuable use of the area’s natural resources.

Those are some great remarks

What the School Needs to Improve

1. Accelerate the progress of Black students and boys, through better use of data analysis in planning.
2. Consider the most appropriate learning styles to enable boys to reach the same exceptionally high results as girls in English language arts.
3. Ensure more students to achieve level 4 by placing a greater emphasis on evaluating the quality of students’ learning.
4. Make the process of goal setting even more rigorous by identifying very specific interim goals and by introducing a more formalized schedule to evaluate progress towards them.