The New York State Education Department’s accountability system distorts school performance in absurd ways and with perverse results.
SchoolBenchmarker™, an innovative school comparison tool
SchoolBenchmarker? is an innovative school comparison tool. It allows any school in New York State to find similar schools performing at higher levels. Prism has recently updated SchoolBenchmarker? for Cornell’s New York State Center for Rural Schools.
Strategic planning has big payoff for school districts
School superintendents are faced with difficult resource allocation decisions. Where will I get the biggest bump in performance per dollar spent, they wonder. In this post are examples from four very different school districts. Impressive performance gains at each demonstrate why wise school superintendents invest in strategic planning as part of their continuous improvement efforts.
Minimum qualifications for NY’s Commissioner of Education
The New York State Education Department has posted the job of Commissioner of Education. The stated qualifications are boilerplate and underwhelming. I suggest that NYSED’s HR department amend the posting to add the following.
Applicants for the position of Commissioner of Education must demonstrate
– The ability to inspire the state’s professional educators to extraordinary levels of performance.
– Evidence of having eliminated wasteful, bureaucratic burdens on school districts.
– A history of transparency as a leader.
All Kinds of Kinds transforms a junior high
With vision, ingenuity, passion and a riff on a country music song, North Park has transformed itself through a program they call All Kinds of Kinds.
State ed predicts sharp decline in ELA and Math pass rates
The New York State Education Department is predicting a sharp decline in ELA and Math pass rates.
Binghamton now using CohortTracker™?
The Binghamton City School District is now using CohortTracker™. CohortTracker™ is an early warning system that allows school districts to track the real-time status of each active high school cohort (and every sub-group and individual within that cohort) vis-a-vis graduation – from the moment of their enrollment. School district personnel using CohortTracker™ always have at their […]
The critical importance of target setting
In a recent local appearance, Olympic gold medalist Shannon Miller touched on the critical importance of target setting: “Are you training for a 5K? Set your goals. Are you working toward a promotion? Set your goals. Battling cancer? Set your goals, see them through.” At Prism, we couldn’t agree more: goal setting must be a […]
App swarm: giving school leaders the decision support they deserve
State education departments collect formless oceans of data. But they rarely make that data available to school districts in a timely way or in a form that supports decision-making. In New York State, for example, last year’s graduation rates were published at about the same time that this year’s grads walked across the stage. And […]
Benchmarking as an improvement tool
Race to the Top has school improvement teams working especially hard to improve performance. With the the New York State Center for Rural School’s official release of the innovative SchoolBenchmarker™ it’s a perfect time to ask: How can I use benchmarking as a school improvement tool? Read on at http://prismdecision.com/benchmarking-as-an-improvement-tool