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Sudbury Public Schools was in the news lately, but perhaps not in the way it would like.
The U.S. News and World Report dropped its elementary and middle school rankings, and none of Sudbury’s elementary schools cracked the top 50 in the state. The rankings were:
General John Nixon Elementary: #53
Peter Noyes Elementary: #57
Josiah Haynes Elementary: #61
Israel Loring Elementary: #205
While three of the elementary schools were close to the top 50, the result for Israel Loring Elementary was a significant fall-off from the rest of the district. Loring’s Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment (MCAS) results also lagged behind the rest of the elementary schools.
On the bright side, Ephraim Curtis Middle School came in at 25 in the state middle school rankings.
Rankings are controversial for a variety of reasons, ranging from questions about data accuracy to methodological flaws, and many educators insist that rankings don’t accurately capture all of what is happening in their schools. For a local example, we refer you to Lincoln-Sudbury Regional High School’s response to recent inaccurate data used in the Boston Magazine ranking of high schools.
Compounding the tough stretch for Sudbury Public Schools was an expose by the Boston Globe that chronicled the recent trend of districts requiring parents of students with special needs to sign nondisclosure agreements relating to accommodations made for individual students. The Globe attained copies of these agreements from districts across the entire state and published them in redacted form. The documents were redacted by the districts, presumably to protect the privacy of students and families, before sending them to the Globe.
Unfortunately for SPS, their efforts to redact the documents fell short, with the names of parents and students plainly visible in many of the documents initially published by the Globe and reviewed by Sudbury Weekly.
In some documents it appeared that a marker was used on a print copy of a document that was then scanned into digital form. In others it appeared as though a pen was used to scribble over information. In yet other documents, the district failed to redact mentions of a name or other personally identifying information.
In reviewing the documents again prior to publishing this story, it appears the documents have been updated with digital black-box redactions, though we were unable to confirm with the district if they resubmitted documents to the Globe.
SPS was asked for comment on the Globe story, and to clarify if the district submitted updated documents with more effective redactions. We have not received a response as of the time this article was published.