NAEP SCORES FLAT WHILE THERE ARE VERY FEW REPORTED INCIDENTS IN QUEENS HIGH SCHOOLS

Question:What do the latest National Assessment of Education Progress scores and the Queens High School incident reports for the last two years have in common?

Answer: They show more evidence, as if any further proof is necessary, that everybody should be skeptical about anything coming out of the NYC Department of Education or the New York State Education Department concerning test scores or incident reports or probably anything else.

From Leonie Haimson, the Executive Director of Class Size Matters:

1-This week marks the beginning of state testing for grades 3-8 in New York. Check out my blog post on why many parents are still opting their children out of these tests-- and why you should consider doing so as well. The exams have no diagnostic value, and have led to an era of damaging test prep, the false branding of too many kids as "failures" and in many schools, the loss of a well-rounded education. And despite the misinformation put out by some administrators, no child will have a lower score entered in his or her record for opting out and no school will lose funding as a result. 

2-Meanwhile, the scores of the more reliable low-stakes national exams called the NAEPs were released late last night --- showing that across the country, student achievement has been flat over the past decade, except for a slight increase in 8th grade reading, while test score gaps between low and high performing students have widened.

The results are a huge rebuke to wrongheaded corporate reform agenda of high stakes testing, charter expansion and Common Core standards that has prevailed over this period and that was supposed to lead to more equity and more learning.

Over the last four years, in New York state and NYC, the story is much the same. There have been no significant increases in any subject or grade since 2013, except for a sharp decline in 4th grade math of five points in NY State and seven points in NYC. You can check the NAEP data yourself here, or a summary here.

All this goes to show that my 2016 blog post was correct that the increase in state and city test scores over this period was illusory and that we had entered a new era of state test score inflation. Let's hope this puts an end to the endless Groundhog days of state and city officials holding self-congratulatory press conferences, and articles that assume the rise in test scores is real and could be due to charter school expansion or the Common Core. But I wouldn't count on it. It's too easy for educrats to manufacture signs of improvement when there are none.

Now we go to Gene Mann's The Organizer, where we can see the Queens High School Incident Reports from the last two school years.

I think the world of Middle College and it is a safe school but not one incident in two years? It's a little hard to believe. Same goes for the numbers from just about every school listed below.

From the Organizer:

Below please find the safety reports filed by Queens high schools for the past years. If the number of incidents reported doesn’t seem to match up with your own experience, you see what the problem is.

School	School Number	2016-2017	2017-   2018
International High School for Health Sciences	236	0	0
Veritas Academy	240	0	0
Queens HS for Language Studies	241	0	0
Institute for Health Professions	243	0	0
Queens Preparatory Academy	248	1	0
Queens School of Inquiry	252	0	0
Energy Tech	258	0	0
Pathways College Preparatory School	259	0	0
Frederick Douglass Academy VI	260	0	0
Voyages Preparatory (South)	261	0	0
Channel View School for Research	262	0	0
Flushing International High School	263	0	0
Academy of Finance and Enterprise	264	0	0
Excelsior Preparatory High School	265	0	0
High School of Applied Communication	267	1	1
George Washington Carver	272	1	4
East-West School of International Studies	281	0	2
Preparatory Academy for Writers	283	2	3
York Early College Academy	284	0	0
World Journalism Preparatory	285	0	0
Young Women's Leadership School, Astoria	286	0	0
Civic Leadership Academy	293	0	3
Pan American International High School	296	0	0
Bard High School Early College	299	0	2
Academy for Careers in Television and Film	301	0	0
Queens HS for Information, Research, and Technology	302	0	0
Goddard	308	0	0
Academy of Medical Technology	309	1	0
Queens Collegiate	310	1	4
EPIC HS (South)	314	0	0
Business Technology Early College	315	5	4
Rockaway Park	324	0	0
Cambria Heights Academy	326	0	0
Eagle Academy III	327	2	12
HS for Community Leadership	328	0	0
EPIC HS (North)	334	1	0
Queens Satellite High School for Opportunity	338	0	0
Jamaica Gateway to the Health Sciences	350	0	0
Rockaway Colegiate	351	0	0
August Martin	400	0	1
Benjamin N. Cardozo	415	0	2
John Bowne	425	0	2
Francis Lewis	430	1	0
Martin Van Buren	435	3	1
Forest Hills	440	7	4
William Cullen Bryant	445	0	1
LIC	450	0	2
Newtown HS	455	0	1
Flushing	460	0	0
Richmond Hill	475	2	1
John Adams	480	1	0
Grover Cleveland	485	1	0
MAST	492	2	0
Bayside	495	1	2
Humanities and Arts	498	0	1
Frank Sinatra	501	0	0
InfoTech	502	1	0
Hillcrest HS	505	5	9
Middle College High School at LaGuardia Community College	520	0	0
Townsend Harris	525	0	0
International High School at LaGuardia Community College	530	0	0
Queens Academy	540	0	8
HSAB	550	0	0
Newcomers HS	555	0	0
Robert F. Wagner	560	0	0
Queens HS of Teaching	566	3	0
Academy of American Studies	575	0	0
Baccaulareate School for Global Education	580	1	0
Maspeth High School	585	0	0
Queens Vocational	600	0	0
Aviation	610	0	9
Thomas Edison CTE	620	4	9
High School for Construction Trades, Engineering and Architecture	650	0	0
Robert F. Kennedy	670	0	1
Queens Gateway	680	0	1
Queens Metropolitan High School	686	0	6
Queens HS for the Sciences	687	0	0
High School for Law Enforcement and Public Safety	690	3	1
Voyages Preparatory	744	3	2
Queens Transition Center	752	14	18
North Queens Community High School	792	0	0
The Young Women's Leadership School	896	1	1

Bottom line: There is plenty of underreporting going on with safety incidents and lots of grade inflation all over the place on state tests and course grades that was checked by the NAEP scores.