Published: July 23, 2002
To the Editor:
In ''Complex Calculations on Academics'' (news article, July 16), you suggest that Edison's performance rating system is flawed because it relies on average gains made by students in all grade levels and all subjects, when an average could be misleadingly high by great gains in a couple of grades or subjects. Your citation of Schomburg Charter School as an example of this phenomenon is an anomaly; of the 62 schools that received positive ratings, only two had a majority of negative scores.
You also cite two major school systems, not known for high academic performance, that would receive positive ratings by using Edison's methodology. But you use only half of Edison's metric. What distinguishes Edison schools is not only the magnitude of average annual gains but also the consistency of those gains across all schools -- statistics that, together, are unmatched.
Chief Education Officer
New York, July 19, 2002