This New York Times article tells why pretty much, but the real question remains: how do you set up standardized tests that everyone thinks are fair?
Test Scores Sink as New York Adopts Tougher Benchmarks
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appeared Wednesday with city and state education officials to comment on reading and math test scores released hours earlier.
By JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ and ROBERT GEBELOFF
Published: August 7, 2013 516 Comments
The number of New York students passing state reading and math exams dropped drastically this year, education officials reported on Wednesday, unsettling parents, principals and teachers and posing new challenges to a national effort to toughen academic standards.
Multimedia
Look up individual schools via WNYC's Schoolbook
Readers’ Comments
Share your thoughts.
In New York City, 26 percent of students in third through eighth grade passed the tests in English, and 30 percent passed in math, according to the New York State Education Department.
The exams were some of the first in the nation to be aligned with a more rigorous set of standards known as the Common Core, which emphasize deep analysis and creative problem-solving over short answers and memorization. Last year, under an easier test, 47 percent of city students passed in English, and 60 percent in math.
City and state officials spent months trying to steel the public for the grim figures.
But when the results were released, many educators responded with shock that their students measured up so poorly against the new yardsticks of achievement.
Chrystina Russell, principal of Global Technology Preparatory in East Harlem, said she did not know what she would tell parents, who will receive scores for their children in late August. At her middle school, which serves a large population of students from poor families, 7 percent of students were rated proficient in English, and 10 percent in math. Last year, those numbers were 33 percent and 46 percent, respectively.
“Now we’re going to come out and tell everybody that they’ve accomplished nothing this year and we’ve been pedaling backward?” Ms. Russell said. “It’s depressing.”
Across the state, the downward shift was similar: 31 percent of students passed the exams in reading and math, compared with 55 percent in reading and 65 percent in math last year.
The Common Core standards have been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia. Although not technically national standards, they are ardently backed by the Obama administration and education officials who contend that outdated and inconsistent guidelines leave students ill prepared for college and the work force. New York was one of the first states to develop tests based on the standards. Kentucky, the first state to do so, also reported plummeting scores.
Even with the drop in scores, New York City still outperformed the state’s other large school districts — in Rochester, for example, only 5 percent of students passed in reading and math. And despite its large number of disadvantaged students, New York City almost matched the state’s performance as a whole.
But striking gaps in achievement between black and Hispanic students and their counterparts persisted. In math, 15 percent of black students and 19 percent of Hispanic students passed the exam, compared with 50 percent of white students and 61 percent of Asian students.
Students with disadvantages struggled as well. On the English exam, 3 percent of nonnative speakers were deemed proficient, and 6 percent of students with disabilities passed.
Despite the drop in scores, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appeared on Wednesday at a news conference just as he had in years when results were rosier. He rejected criticisms of the tests, calling the results “very good news” and chiding the news media for focusing on the decline. He said black and Hispanic students, who make up two-thirds of the student population, had made progress that was not reflected in the scores.
“We have to make sure that we give our kids constantly the opportunity to move towards the major leagues,” Mr. Bloomberg said.
In the past, Mr. Bloomberg has bristled at suggestions that the tests were too easy, and too easy to prepare for, to be considered an accurate measure of student ability. Critics of Mr. Bloomberg latched onto the disparities in the scores, arguing that the mayor’s 12-year effort to overhaul city schools had neglected the most vulnerable students. The politicians vying to succeed Mr. Bloomberg, who leaves office at the end of the year, quickly seized on the results.
William C. Thompson Jr., a Democratic candidate who has been endorsed by the city’s teachers’ union, said the results showed that for years the city had put too much of an emphasis on tests at the expense of deeper learning.
- 1
- 2
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: August 7, 2013
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the percentage of students who passed the state exams in English. It is 26 percent, not 27 percent.
Correction: August 7, 2013
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article misstated the percentage of students who passed the state exams in English. It is 26 percent, not 27 percent.
0 comments:
Post a Comment