State Officials Release English And Math Test Results

New York state education officials are ready to release the results of the statewide English and math tests given to students in grades 3-8 in the spring. These numbers ticked up from 2014 (30.6 percent in reading; 36.2 in math), but the scores are still far below the days pre-Common Core tests, which were introduced in 2013.

“The transition to new learning standards is not easy, and success isn’t instantaneous”, state Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia said in a news release.

Those students were more likely to be white, from wealthier districts, and were more likely not to have passed last year’s test, according to the state education department. In New York City proper, nearly nobody refused tests, but just a few miles away in Long Island entire cities saw over 50 percent of their students defy exams.

The modest gains in the third year of Common Core testing of New York’s public school third- through eighth-graders could be heartening.

First, she noted that numerous top math students in eighth grade are already taking algebra I, which has its own test, and those students would not take the regular math test as well.

As expected, the full data confirmed that more students in urban and higher-needs districts took the tests than did students in suburban/rural and low-needs districts.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has backed using test results in teacher ratings, saying it was important to have some objective data in the mix, and the April 1 budget deal kept them as a substantial element.

That said, we’re not alone.

Only one of the Poughkeepsie’s four elementary schools, G.W. Krieger, had a significant percentage of ELA refusals – about 15 percent, or 51 students. “Whether they’re up or down, they tell us virtually nothing meaningful about students or their teachers”, said union president Karen Magee.

Twenty percent of students opted out of exams this year, a huge increase compared to recent years.

In Nyack, 34 percent of students in grades 3-8 showed proficiency in 2015, no change from 2014.

Commissioner of Education Margie Vandeven said, “These new standards raised the expectation for learning in Missouri”. This also was the first time students in grades three through eight were tested online for these assessments.

Despite the system being in such flux, Vandeven said she is pleased with the scores reported this week. “Most schools have internal tests that they use to determine how much students grew and improved”.

The leaders of the “opt-out” movement hoped to cripple the data-collection apparatus by reducing the pool of student results until it is statistically invalid. And in the Math assesement, only 7-percent out of 9,600 students scored at a proficient level.

Individual student score reports will be available to schools to share with parents in the coming weeks.

Low-need communities continued to outperform high-need communities in 2015 as they did in previous years, state officials said.