City Releases Latest School Quality Guides

New York City education officials released on Tuesday school quality guides and "snapshots" covering the 2014-2015 school year, providing data on metrics like performance on state tests, how a school helped the lowest performing students and how many students passed their classes. 

The guides also gave information on qualitative measures of each school, such as whether a school offers rigorous instruction and how well teachers collaborate. 

Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration released its first version of the quality guides last year, replacing the school report cards that assigned schools an A-F letter grade.

The latest guides showed a slight uptick of graduating high school seniors last year enrolled in either a two- or four-year college, vocational program or public service program, up two percentage points to 53 percent. The city's overall college-readiness rate also was up, reaching 35 percent compared to 33 percent last year.

“I am encouraged to see more of New York City’s talented students pursuing college, but we have so much more work to do,” said Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña in a statement. “As we continue to strengthen instruction and put students on the path to college and careers, the redesigned School Quality Reports will play a meaningful role in engaging parents as partners and helping educators assess and improve their craft.”

The guides include new information based on community feedback: they show more indicators of student progress, and how well schools are helping its lowest performing students. They also included more information on school culture, including extra-curricular activities, sports or art courses on offer.

This latest round of school-by-school data came as parents and students apply to middle school and high school, with applications due Dec. 1.

Parents of the city's youngest students will apply to kindergarten soon, beginning Dec. 7.