State Test Scores Released; 20% of Students Opted Out This Spring

At the state level, English proficiency is up less than one percentile-31.3%, compared to 30.6% a year ago.

Results showed that 38.1 percent of students scored well enough to be considered proficient in grade-level math, up from 36.2 percent in 2014 and 31.1 percent in 2013.

“More New York City students are meeting the higher bar set by the Common Core standards, and that is a testament to the extensive work we’ve done to innovate and improve instruction across our schools”, said Fariña in a statement. Last year, only seven percent of students didn’t take the tests.

James Shuls, an assistant professor of educational leadership and policy studies, said the goal of field tests is to show how well an exam accurately reflects what students know.

On the issue of opting out, Vargas says it may have skewed their results because the biggest opt out numbers in the city district came from the highest performing schools.

The city’s modest test-score gains were shared by every racial and ethnic group, though not every grade. His district followed a similar track, but with more improvement in the math score. The State Legislature is now requiring that Common Core standards and testing be evaluated continuously by education experts. “We need to go from nearly there to good to great, and that takes time”.

Elia said that federal government officials are looking at the possibility of withholding millions of dollars in federal aid to school districts that abet student opt-out from testing. “These test results are not reliable, valid or accurate indicators of either student learning or teacher effectiveness”.

In reading, the percentage of students meeting expectations – meaning they scored proficient or advanced – ranged from 55 percent in sixth grade to 59 percent for fifth grade.

The Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education plans to release school district level results next Monday.

In addition, Huntley said state education officials send the district reports on where students did poorly on these tests.

Hamburg Superintendent Michael Cornell, whose district had 49 percent refuse the test, lays out part of the problem: “We don’t have any way of knowing how they might have done had they taken the test”, he said. In the Capital Region, just under 27.5 percent of students didn’t take the tests. Some statisticians counter that the computer models used to create growth scores for teachers are too unreliable to use this way.

Overall, students performed better on math tests than they did on language exams.

Elia disagreed. “900,000 students’ test scores shouldn’t be discounted”. So, state education officials had to use alternative methods for figuring out what score would mean students are proficient in the subject matter and deserve a diploma.

“Whether they’re up or down, they tell us virtually nothing meaningful about students or their teachers”, she said in a news release.

New York State uses some of the toughest Common Core tests in the country.

The New York State’s Teachers’ Union was vocally supportive of the opt out movement, and did not waste time suggesting that the test results prove the invalidity of the data.