Teachers Want Less Reliance On Tests for Scoring Schools

The United Federation of Teachers would drastically reduce the city's reliance on standardized test scores for judging school performance under a plan for a report card system for schools that it rolled out yesterday.

The UFT president, Randi Weingarten, speaking yesterday morning at a breakfast meeting of the business group Association for a Better New York, presented a plan that borrows some aspects from the Department of Education's new system implemented

this year that assigns letter grades to schools. The UFT plan retains the letter grade system and the inclusion of test scores as a measure of a school's progress, but it departs from the current system in its emphasis on the efforts of the school to educate its students and not only how the students performed as a result of those efforts. The accountability system proposed by the union would include additional measures for curriculum, safety, and "teamwork," referring to a school's ability to foster effective relationships between teachers, parents, and school administrators, in addition to test scores. It would also grade schools on the extent of the Department of Education's support for each individual school.

Some school principals and others have criticized the current grading system, saying schools with reputations for high performance were tarnished with bad grades this year that didn't reflect the reality at the schools.

"Some of the grades didn't gibe with what people thought of schools," Ms. Weingarten said after her speech. "We want one comprehensive accountability system that teachers understand, resonates with parents, and that the whole city will say okay, this helps give us a road map to help fix our schools."

The chief accountability officer for the Department of Education, James Liebman, who developed the school report card system, attended the speech. He said afterwards that the Department of Education was happy to listen to Ms. Weingarten's ideas, noting that the department had already anticipated some of her suggestions and would be making changes to the report cards.

He added: "We think we've got a great system right now for measuring how well schools improve the outcomes of the students. That's our focus. It's a single-minded focus."

Council Member David Yassky, who attended the speech, said he plans to introduce a bill as early as next week that would seek to transform Ms. Weingarten's suggestions into law.

"I think this got it just right," he said of the union plan.