Five of the city’s elementary schools have been named 2008 No Child Left Behind-Blue Ribbon Schools because of high test scores and improvement among low-income students, the U.S. Department of Education announced today.
Making the list were PS 53 on Staten Island; PS 184 in Manhattan’s Chinatown; and in Queens, PS 113 in Glendale, PS 162 in Bayside, and PS 178 in Jamaica. This is the first year since the current eligibility requirements went into effect in 2003 that more than three city schools made the list. To be eligible for the designation, schools must either post test scores in the top decile of their state or have at least 40 percent of students considered “disadvantaged” who post “dramatically increased” test scores. In addition, they must have made “adequate yearly progress” under NCLB, meaning that all of the student “subgroups” are performing up to par.
Incidentally, the city’s five 2008 Blue Ribbon schools earned, among them, two A’s, two B’s, and one C on their 2007 city progress reports. The progress reports were based on test scores from a single year, while the NCLB-Blue Ribbon awards require three years of data.