Summarizing Learning Environment Surveys from Manhattan High Schools

Learning Environment survey results came out over a month ago. Most people ignore them. Quite a few look at their own school, or schools of a few friends, or a school or two that’s been in the news. Scan 16 pages of tabulated results, and move on. But I decided to look. Maybe the data was readily available. I don’t know. But I searched for schools in the Bronx with grade 9, and downloaded the pdfs. I published an intro, and later a discussion here, and then full results to questions about competence, trustworthiness, support, and collaboration at the New Action website.

And now a friend has done the same for Manhattan high schools.

Four questions were summarized:

The Principal is an effective manager who makes the school run smoothly (Is s/he competent?)
I trust the principal at his or her word (Is s/he trustworthy?)
To what extent do you feel supported by your principal? (Is s/he supportive?)
School leaders invite teachers to play a meaningful role in setting goals and making important decisions for the school (Is s/he collaborative?)

Each question had four responses possible: Strongly agree, Agree, Disagree, or Strongly Disagree for all but the third question, there the responses were: “To a great extent,” “to some extent,” “to a small extent” or “to no extent.” We considered both the percent in the two positive categories, and the DoE’s ‘score’ (they used a 3-2-1-0 weighting, rating each question from 0 to 10).

Is there a clear pattern? As in the Bronx, transfer schools tended to be well-regarded by their staffs, though with exceptions. The average percentage and score in each and every category was slightly higher than in the Bronx. In particular, the absolute number of principals who Manhattan HS teachers don’t trust is about half that of their colleagues in the Bronx.

Full data sets will start going up today. It will be a few days before all four are posted.

For now, the superlatives, those principals rated the best (and the worst) on the teachers’ section of the Learning Environment Survey:

	principal	school	type	percent	DoE score
most competent	Herb Mack	Urban Academy Lab HS	Transfer	100	9.8
most competent	Brett Kimmel	Washington Heights Expeditionary Learning School	6-12	100	9.6
least competent	Alexandra Rathmann-Noonan	*Urban Assembly School for Green Careers	9-10, eventually 9-12	20	2.6
least competent	David Glasner	Urban Assembly Academy of Government and Law	Campus (Seward Park)	13	2.9
most trustworthy	Ingrid Roberts Haynes	Forsyth Satellite Academy	Transfer	100	10.0
least trustworthy	Ron Smolkin	Independence HS	Transfer	32	3.0
least trustworthy	Evelyn Collins	Manhattan Theatre Lab HS	Campus (MLK)	33	3.1
least trustworthy	Henry Rubio	A Phillip Randolph HS	9-12	28	3.6
least trustworthy	Anne Geiger	HS of Arts and Technology	Campus (MLK)	31	3.4
most supportive	Ingrid Roberts Haynes	Forsyth Satellite Academy	Transfer	100	10.0
most supportive	Sam Fragomeni	Harlem Village Academy Leadership Charter School	6-12, Charter	100	9.9
least supportive	Alexandra Rathmann-Noonan	*Urban Assembly School for Green Careers	9-10, eventually 9-12	33	3.3
least supportive	Stephanie Vu	Community Health Academy of the Heights	6-12	37	3.7
most collaborative	Herb Mack	Urban Academy Laboratory HS	Transfer	100	10.0
most collaborative	Louis Delgado	Vanguard HS	Campus (Julia Richman)	100	9.9
most collaborative	Gary Biester	Columbia Secondary School	6-12	100	9.8
least collaborative	Darlene Miller	The NYC Museum School	D2	18	2.4

* The Urban Assembly School for Green Careers had a very low response rate: only 6 of 20 teachers appear to have completed surveys.