Diane Ravitch: ELA scores no cause for celebration

The recent release of English Language Arts scores for grades 3-8 by the New York State Education Department was treated as a cause for celebration by the New York City Department of Education. Chancellor Joel Klein said that the scores showed that "the system is clearly moving forward."

Actually, the news was not all that positive. None of it was terrible, but the scores were mainly flat or declining. Overall, in grades 3-8, 50.8% met the state standards. This represented an increase of one-tenth of 1% over the scores in 2006, when 50.7% met the standards.

*In grade 3, the scores dropped by 5 points, from 61.5% in 2006 to 56.4% in 2007.

*In grade 4, they dropped nearly 3 points, from 58.9% in 2006 to 56.0% in 2007.

*In grade 5, they dropped by .6, about half a point, from 56.7% in 2006 to 56.1% in 2007.

*In grade 6, they increased by 1 point, from 48.6% in 2006 to 49.7% in 2007.

*In grade 7, they increased by a tad more than a point, from 44.2% in 2006 to 45.5%.

*In grade 8, they increased by 5.2 points, from 36.6% in 2006 to 41.8% in 2007.

The big news, according to the Department of Education spinmeisters, was not that scores in grades 3-7 were either declining or flat, but that scores in eighth grade were up significantly. They downplayed the curious fact that eighth grade scores were up across the state by 7.7 points, from 49.3% to 57%.

Nassau County eighth grade scores jumped from 69.8% to 77.4%, nearly eight points. Suffolk County saw a gain in this grade of 9.3 points, from 61.1% to 70.4%. In the troubled Roosevelt, Long Island, district, under state control for the past five years, eighth grade scores leapt by an astonishing 22 points.

Gains of this consistency in district after district suggest to testing experts that the test for the eighth grade was decidedly easier than in years past.

The grade that is most interesting to contemplate in the latest test results is fourth grade, because the state has reported fourth grade scores continuously since 1999. (In grades other than four and eight, scores are available only for 2006 and 2007.) Furthermore, these are children who started school under the current regime of mayoral control.

This is the grade that is the true testing ground of mayoral control. Recall that the Children First agenda was first implemented in the schools in September 2003. When Children First began, 52.5% of the fourth graders met state standards. As of the latest ELA scores, 56% met state standards.

Thus, after four years of Children First, reading scores in the fourth grade are up by a total of 3.5 points. In the five years before the initiation of the Bloomberg-Klein regime, reading scores in fourth grade increased from 32.7% to 52.5%, an increase of 19.8 points.

This may explain why the Chancellor and Mayor have reorganized the schools yet again, why they are continually in search of new assessment tools, and why they are planning to offer cash and pizzas for higher test scores. In four years under their control, the schools have not shown dramatic achievement. In fact, their record does not match what was accomplished in the previous four years under Chancellor Rudy Crew and Chancellor Harold O. Levy.

Unfortunately, achievement has actually stalled under the current regime.

Diane Ravitch

For more on the ELA results, see this NY Sun oped by Fred Smith. He points out that while Tweed is attributing the relatively flat results to greater numbers of ELL students included this year, in 2005 they glossed over the fact that a large part of that year's gains were due to fewer ELL students being tested, as well as large numbers of low-scoring Hispanic and black 3rd graders who had been held back.

(Also see the SED website for the recent test results, as well as this pdf file from DOE, including some extremely confusing charts.)