THE NYC SCHOOL SURVEY: EXAMINING OVER- AND UNDER-PERFORMING SCHOOLS

DISCUSSION

Overall, this has been an incredibly interesting and thought-provoking project. Initially, I figured that there would be a clear distinction between each over- and under- performing schools in regards to their survey responses for every single question and statement. However, that obviously was not the case.

When examining schools, one stark difference that I noticed between the over- and under-performing schools was the distribution of Low Income Students. Most students in the under-performing schools are defined as low-income students, whereas the over-performing schools have a much wider distribution. Additionally, there are over-performing schools spread across all five boroughs and in a number of districts. For the under-performing schools there are less districts and boroughs and more schools in the same districts. This raises a number of questions for me. For example, what are the resources like in these districts? How much does income play a role in these school performances? And who's income has the largest impact on student/teacher performance? Is funding proportionally distributed in districts in the same borough?

​

Nonetheless, there not being many differences between student responses on the survey suggests that students do not really understand how to adequately evaluate their educational experience. When I think more about  this, I realized that this does make sense. Students that have attended over- or under-performing schools their entire life only have one perception of education. There is nothing for them to compare it to, to determine whether it is "good" or "bad." Differences in agreement on question 6, suggest that students in over-performing schools are more likely to: listen carefully, follow rules, pay attention, behave, do their work, try hard to get good grades, feel it is important come to school, and think doing homework is important than students in under-performing schools. Again, this is consistent with what is expected of an over-performing school but it's still important to acknowledge that students in the under-performing schools also had high agreement scores on these statements. The teacher agreement scores support these findings as well. Teachers in over-performing schools were more likely to agree with each statement that evaluated students performance in class. Conversely though, question 21e asks how many students participate in class discussion, and this has the highest agreement among the statements for under-performing schools. This raised the question that maybe students do actively want participate but are not able to build on other ideas or provide constructive feedback to their peers because they haven't learned the critical communication skills to do so.

​

One of the most interesting findings for me was the differences in question 8, which surrounds bullying/harassment/intimidation. Students in under-performing schools are two to three times more likely than students in over-performing schools to agree to those statements, indicating that those events take place significantly more often in under-performing schools than over-performing schools. These findings result in me questioning the safety of the students. It also just makes me wonder simply why is this prevalent in under-performing schools? What factors affect these bully/harassment/intimidation situations in schools and how does it affect learning? Personally, I believe that it has a lot to do with socio-emotional intelligence. This time period is critical for SEL (socio-emotional learning) development in children. If students were better able to manage their emotions and behaviors they may be less likely to act in theses negative situations. Question 23 on the teacher survey touches upon this idea. Statements 23f and 23g have the lowest scores in both under- and over-performing schools. Both statements focus on social-emotional learning and behavior regulation. Perhaps if there was more focus on these aspects, that would address some of those issues.

​

There are a number of questions that remained unanswered for me after the overall comparison, so I felt that the district 14 deep dive may be able to shed some light. I figured that focusing in on one single district would eliminate a number of outside factors, one them being specifically the income question. Since these schools were all in one district, I figured that they would have a similar student demographic. However, the deep dive only left me with a number of other questions. From the student perspective, the scores mostly followed the overall trend of over-performing schools performing better than under-performing but the comparison of the two under-performing schools revealed some stark differences in scores. On the other hand, the teacher survey revealed results that contrasted the overall comparison. For example, teachers/principals in under-performing schools are more likely to have greater communication and involvement with parents/guardians/families than in over-performing schools. I would have expected it to be the opposite, but it seems that these under-performing schools attempt to help their students in anyway that can. Moreover, question 21 revealed that one of the under-performing schools (El Puente Academy) performed better than the over-performing school on a number of statements. If El Puente Academy was removed, then a comparison of The Brooklyn Latin School and Lyons Community schools would have followed the previously identified trend of over-performing schools performing better. As far as adult behavior and the other miscellaneous questions, it suggests that there are not clearly identifiable trends, mostly due to the variation of scores between both under-performing schools. 

​

I conducted a little more research on schools located in district 14 and one I found that The Brooklyn Latin School is the only over-performing high school in this district, all other high schools have a GreatSchools rating of 5 or below. Additionally, the Brooklyn Latin School is actually one of NYC's specialized high schools. There are nine selective specialized public high schools, all of which are run by the Department of Education, that cater to students that are academically or artistically gifted. To learn about specialized high schools, click here. The fact that The Brooklyn Latin School is a specialized high school raises another set of questions. If students that live in this district would like to attend this school, they must be accepted through the SHSAT. For students that have attended under or lower performing school in this district, this may be incredibly difficult for them. Do students in this district have the same resources as students that attend The Brooklyn Latin School? Are students in this district educationally prepared to score high enough on the SHSAT to be accepted into a specialized high school? Are specialized high school necessary? How are they funded? What districts are they in? Do they require more resources than other schools in their district?

There are number of questions that I have currently in regards to this topic. Again, conducting this analysis was incredibly interesting and revealed some insightful findings. I think that the major takeaway from this research is that students and teachers in both under- and over-performing schools do not have drastically different thoughts, attitudes, and behaviors. It also seems that a school can not simply be defined by a numeric score to determine whether is under- or over-performing. I think that this analysis revealed that there are a number of layers involved in determining performance of schools. It cannot be attributed to simple just the students, teachers, the principals, location, funding, etc. There are obviously a number of different facets that need to be considered when evaluating school performance to understand how and why a gap exist, then how to address issues to close the gap.