My name is Seth Pearce. I am a senior at LaGuardia High School and a member of the NYC Student Union (http://nycstudents.org), a citywide, student-run and created, education advocacy organization. I am writing to you to express both my support for your new school Progress Report program and my criticism of some of its parts.

At last week's NYC Student Union meeting, students from schools around the City discussed the Progress Reports. Some students supported them and others didn't. There was, however, a general agreement on the need for accountability in our schools.

Mayor Bloomberg and his Chancellor Joel Klein released “school report cards” which gave 50 schools a grade of “F” (99 got a “D”) The grades are based, almost entirely (85%) on a measure of how individual children improved (or didn’t) on two standardized given a year apart. Thus, the number of data points on which grade rests is really one. As a result of that one date point, children is “F” schools will be allowed to transfer out. In addition, “F” and “D” schools are at risk of being shut down by Mr Bloomberg & Mr. Klein To get a feel for how careless the evaluation system is check out this Daily News article about a school with very high scores which earned an "F"

As a result, of the paucity and unreliability of the data underlying the letter grades Leonie Haimson, writing at the Public School Parent Blog, of Class Size Matters points out:

But whether your child's school received an "A" or a "F", remember -- these grades are based 85% on one year's test scores alone . As such, experts say that the results are so unreliable as to be nothing more than a winning the lottery or a roll of the dice.
These grades are merely another simplistic, misleading attempt by this administration to look tough – and evade their own responsibility for the inadequacies of our schools

The motives and methods of Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his Schools Chancellor Joel Klein on education issues are mysterious to me. In Tuesday's NY Post, Katheryn Wylde, the head of the NYC Partnership wrote an intensely swiftboatish personal attack on Educational Historian and frequent Bloomberg critic Diane Ravitch. You should read it yourself, but the gist is that Ravitch is a flip-flopper. In my view the article comes out of the Rove playbook and is remarkably un-nuanced -- it's deceptive about the facts

As it transpires, the real attacker of Ms. Ravitch was Mayor Bloomberg's Department of Education; Ms. Wylde only their tool. The NY Sun's education reporter Elizabeth Green reveals that the "content" of Ms.Wylde's attack on Ms Ravitch was actually concocted at tax-payer expense at the Tweed Courthouse. What are these guys, thinking, drinking?