New York City — School Performance Frameworks

New York City's School Quality Reports are the only featured SPF focused primarily on school-level continuous improvement. They feature an array of measures based on student achievement and outcomes, student and family surveys, and on-site quality reviews, without a summative rating.

System Summary:

Schools are rated on seven dimensions of the city’s “Framework for Great Schools” — one rating is based on student academic achievement, while the others draw from periodic site reviews and school surveys. New York City used to have a summative rating for schools, but the report design and purposes were overhauled several years ago after a change in district leadership.

Key Metrics:

The NYC School Quality Reports include a large number of metrics and do not provide an overall school grade or rating. Twenty metrics go into the student achievement rating for an elementary school, and metrics vary by grade level. The primary student achievement metrics for elementary/middle school ratings are growth and performance on state tests, while high schools focus on graduation, college and career readiness, progress toward graduation, performance on state end-of-course exams, and closing graduation achievement gaps. Additional metrics for indicators beyond student achievement such as “trust”, “family-community ties,” and “effective school leadership” are based on data from on-site quality reviews and annual school survey results. However, on-site reviews are not conducted every year for every school, so data may be outdated.

Use Cases:

The primary purpose of the NYC School Quality Reports in their current form is to provide school leaders and district superintendents with consistent data about student and school performance to drive school improvement.

When an earlier iteration of the SPF was first established in 2005, it focused explicitly on system accountability and featured single grades for each school, but in 2014, under a new mayor and school chancellor, the system shifted away from its emphasis on system-level accountability. Currently, it is unclear how the quality reports factor into system decisions like closure, intervention, and improvement strategies.

School quality reports give principals a large array of quantitative and qualitative data that they can use to inform school wide improvement strategies and benchmark their performance over time and in comparison to other schools. However, some metrics, like the results of on-site reviews, are not assessed on a yearly basis and do not allow for timely feedback and improvement.

NYC also uses various versions of the reports as tools to communicate with school leaders, parents, and community members. School quality reports are now available online, in translatable, mobile-friendly formats, and families have the option of viewing more abbreviated snapshot data. But even in snapshots, the information in the reports is dense and complex.

The collection of images below is a sample of the public-facing New York City school quality reports asof 2018-19. Click on each image to view an enlarged version.