Slight gain seen in English, math scores in city schools

The New York State Education Department on Wednesday released the results of the statewide English and math tests for students in grades three through eight.

Among New York City students, 35.2 percent met proficiency standards in math, up from 34.2 percent past year.

The results of the statewide English and math tests are out, and much of the discussion will inevitably focus on what school districts must do in the coming year.

NYSUT said that about 32 percent of teachers move from one category year to year in their evaluation scoring, but with students not taking the exams, it creates “junk science” to use the tests to evaluate teachers.

State officials pushed back, urging parents to have their children take the exams in order to better track student achievement. Now we’re going to have a different test next year. A Level 4 student excels in the Common Core learning standards for the grade level. State Education officials say they are sticking to the tougher standards despite the backlash. About 48.9 percent of eighth-graders passed, a drop from 52.5 percent in 2014.

Elia said the city’s English scores are “definitely moving up”, but noted that math scores “have not gone up as strongly”.

In Ramapo Central, where 41 percent of students opted out of the tests, The number of students who scored the best on English tests jumped from 61 percent last year to 67 percent this year. In math, 45.2 percent scored proficient or advanced.

“Because those students have been taught those standards for the longest period of time, that’s why we’re pleased to see that both in ELA and math those students are outperforming what the projections show”, Vaughn Rhudy, executive director of the West Virginia Department of Education’s Office of Assessment, said. So far, there’s no national data on student performance in other states that administered the test in the spring and no data from previous years in Missouri that could be used for comparison. They were more likely to be from a wealthy or average-need district, and they were also more likely to have struggled on state tests, having earned scores in 2014 that showed low or partial proficiency.

Nationally, between about 30 and 40 percent of students in states with Common Core were expected to score at proficient levels.

She added: “Since these are brand new tests that set a new baseline for student performance, we can not compare the results with MAP tests of the past”. Grades 4-6 scored higher in English than grades 3, 7, and 8 in English.

Elia counters that there’s still valuable data from the 900,000 students who did take the exams.

Also in the mix is Congress’ debate over possible changes to the federal No Child Left Behind law that mandated many state exams in the first place.

“We’re seeing progress, particularly in reading, thanks to a city administration that really cares about student learning, increased availability of appropriate curriculum and training, and hard work by teachers and students”, he said in a statement.

When asked during a news conference how DESE officials can know if improvements are being made if testing standards keep changing, Vandeven said, “I think what you’re pointing to is the importance for ensuring that we have time to transition to new standards, and that’s really what we did”.

The state teachers’ union criticized the results, saying the high opt-out rate made it impossible to determine whether students were actually improving.