School Report Cards In; P.S. 255 Tops The List

This is P.S. 254, because we didn't have one of P.S. 255 - Photo by Ray Johnson

It’s that time of year again – report cards! And, unlike their students, principals won’t be able to forge their parent’s signatures on their school report cards and return it to the powers that be.

Pity, because they may want to. The Department of Education released its annual school report cards, and 25 percent of schools scored A’s as opposed to 84 percent in 2009. But there’s plenty of debate about how meaningful school report cards are; especially with number skewing that pushes more schools towards the middle, and keeps the number of failing schools at 1 percent.

Locally, the numbers are looking pretty good. All of our elementary and middle schools passed (high school grades aren’t out until November). The best performing elementary and middle school in and around Sheepshead Bay are P.S. 255 Barbara Reing School and P.S. 206 Joseph F. Lamb respectively (the latter is a K-8 school; of 6-8 schools, I.S. 98 Bay Academy tops the list).

The lowest scoring school on the local list is J.H.S. 278 Marine Park, which nabbed a D – a grade dragged down by its performance score of an F (overall grades consider environment, performance and progress). One step above Marine Park J.H.S. was P.S. 194 Raoul Wallenberg, the worst performing elementary school in the area, receiving a C.

Here’s our list of local schools and their grades. For more on school report cards, visit the Department of Education’s website.