We had an erroneous headline on the online story that ran last week on the state’s newest lists of schools in need of improvement, Peekskill Superintendent Judith Johnson points out.

In fact, she calls the headline “irresponsible” in a letter to the editor scheduled to be published tomorrow.

In the headline we said the schools that had been put on either the state or federal list because one or more subgroups failed to meet one or more benchmarks were “cited as substandard.”

You can’t see the headline by simply going to the website any more—the article was published Sept. 13 and was up on our education page for the standard seven days.

It’s too bad, because the “article itself”:http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060913/NEWS02/609130401 and our accompanying “blog entry”:http://hallmonitor.lohudblogs.com/2006/09/12/improve-or-else/ actually gave the lists some perspective.

It’s simply not true that the schools on the list are deemed substandard. The state and the federal government, whose lists they are, cited those schools saying they were need of improvement because students in one or more subgroups did not meet the standard in one or more areas.

We explained that if even one of nine subgroup of kids (poor, or Hispanic, or special ed students) doesn’t meet one of many benchmarks (such as the percentage of kids who took a given test) for two years, the school goes on the list.

For example, there are nine subgroups. In high school, students must take five Regents exams. And the state grades schools on whether enough students in each of those groups take each test and enough pass.

And we quoted people, including Johnson, talking about how upsetting it is for a community, particularly teachers, when their school goes on the list.

We also talked about how incomplete a picture the lists provide of what’s going on in those schools.

Now, we’ve had arguments with local educators for years over words since the accountability reform movement first got underway.

School folk take, for example, a more narrow view of the words “fail” and “pass” in all their permutations.

We don’t mind saying that a school or a group of students failed to meet a standard, or that a school is failing in that area.

Then there’s “pass.” The state’s scoring system for its tests puts students in Level 1, 2, 3 or 4, depending on how far below or above the standards they score. We tend to add together the students who meet or exceed the standards, hitting Level 3 or 4, and say those students passed the test.

But this isn’t an issue of usage.

UPDATE 9/22: Read Judith Johnson’s letter “here.”:http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060922/OPINION03/609220378/1076