New York releases results of spring student testing

It’s not clear how teachers who had few students take tests will be evaluated.

This was the first year the tests were given online for grades three through eight.

The scores released Tuesday by the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education are the first from a new assessment given in the spring.

No test is flawless, but letting students opt out means parents are denied a marker of progress.

Elia counters that there’s still valuable data from the 900,000 students who did take the exams. In math, the number of students who scored at the proficient level has increased by seven points in two years to 38%. Among those, only 5-percent scored at a proficient level. Under the old test standard last year, the same age group tested at just over 50 percent proficient or advanced in English language arts. Older students, Vandeven said, experienced changes, which could have led to lower scores. “No matter what I do in my classroom, the reading material is still not appropriate”. In 2014, less than 1,100 students in the county refused ELA tests.

The fact that so numerous boycotting students did not pass last year’s tests suggests that this year’s statewide results could be slanted in some way. “I hope the opt-out efforts doubles (next) year, sending a clear message from parents and taxpayers to the state”. “The teachers union was wrong to fuel the opt out frenzy, which served the needs of adults at the expense of children”.

There is a federal requirement that 95 percent of eligible students take the tests.

“Teachers across the state are working hard to help students reach the high bar we’ve set for them”.

Education officials said they have data for individual districts but did not want to release it this week so the spotlight could remain on the statewide numbers. In English language arts, there was a slight decline, to 8.1 percent from 8.5 percent. Other Dutchess district refusal rates ranged from 14 percent in Rhinebeck to 41 percent in Pine Plains. In some local districts with high opt out rates, about half of the students refusing to take this year’s exams were special education students.

“In my own observation, parents in upper-income levels have the resources” to hire a tutor if their child is struggling, Cardinale said.

Queensbury Superintendent Douglas Huntley said, by and large, there weren’t big increases or decreases in scores across the state. They also review their in-house tests. In math, that number came down from 15 percent to 13 percent.

“It would be a huge mistake to read anything into these test results”. “Most schools have internal tests that they use to determine how much students grew and improved”.

Despite the system being in such flux, Vandeven said she is pleased with the scores reported this week. And in the Math assesement, only 7-percent out of 9,600 students scored at a proficient level.

Education officials and unionized teachers across the state have long butted heads over the validity of state test scores as an accurate measure of learning and, by extension, a teacher’s ability to teach.

“We have a lot of work to do”.