2009 ELA Results

NY State Education Department website with test scores is here.

News and commentary:

New York Times here.

Daily News, Juan Gonzalez here.

ELA and Math Test Scores -- Experts Question Increases

State test scores for 2008 can be found here (Math) and here (ELA)

An expert who serves as the State's top technical adviser on testing is concerned about grade inflation and has called for an independent study of this year's unusual and unprecedented rise in test scores across the state. Writing in the NY Sun, Elizabeth Green has the story here.

Elizabeth also has a disturbing story about cheating on the state tests here. An excerpt:

A sixth-grader at M.S. 201. said that a teacher once looked over his shoulder and said, "Ooh, is that right? Is that the right answer?" encouraging him to erase and try again.

Meanwhile, 11 of 12 P.S. 48 graduates interviewed last week said they were coached during the state tests.

They said that teachers would look over their shoulders and instruct them to try again and again until they got answers right.

"They'd be like, 'Is that the right answer?' — until they make sure it's right," a sixth-grader said.

"When I was at 48, I never went to class, and I still passed the test," a seventh-grader said. "If you go to graduation, you pass."

Higher test scores could pay off for M.S. 201's teachers this year. The school is one of about 200 participating in a trial project to give teachers bonuses if their students perform well on state tests.

The bonuses average $3,000 a teacher.

Under the Bloomberg administration, test results have been woven into a complex system of carrots and sticks where principal bonuses, teacher merit pay, school ratings, school budget bonuses, principal dismissals and school closings all hinge on test scores. It is not surprising that pressure to score high has lead to a culture of test prep, grade inflation and cheating.

Update: see the NY Sun for a properly skeptical oped about the sharp rise in NY State test scores.

Childrens do learn! But do the Mayor and George Bush?

Yesterday, President Bush stood in front of a group of New York City elementary school students with the Mayor by his side. He urged the renewal of NCLB by saying "Childrens do learn when standards are high and results are measured."

Then the President praised Bloomberg for "moving aside bureaucracy that will inhibit the people he has selected to achieve the goal."

Bloomberg used the occasion to defend high-stakes tests: "As they get into high school, they have to decide whether to hang out with a gang, whether to hang out with somebody who has a gun, whether to try drugs, whether to act responsibly when it comes to sex...They're faced with whether to get married, whether to stay in school. We are, our children are facing high-stakes tests all the time."

As many experts have noted, there are all sorts of tests in life.

So why should the only tests that count in our school system be those given on paper, with multiple choices? Shouldn’t other measures of achievement count for our students, as they do in real life?

Update: According to the NY Times, the official White House transcript of Bush's remarks corrected his grammar.

NY ELA tests much easier in 2005

Check out this NY Sun story -- disclosing a UFT study that concluded that the 2005 NY state ELA 4th grade test was as many as six grade levels easier than the same test in 2004. There was much comment at the time -- including hearings at the City Council -- looking into this issue, but the UFT study has not been previously disclosed.

The Daily News recently reported evidence showing that the 4th grade math test of the same year was also much easier. Mayor Bloomberg used the big jumps in NYC test scores to coast to an easy re-election.

Do we get to revote?

2007 ELA and Math Test Scores for NYC Public Schools

Quick links to 2007 test scores:

English Language Arts (ELA) click here and Math here. (Source NYC DoE)

(NY State Education Department has the ELA here and Math here)

Commentary on the results:

NY Times has an interview on the Math scores with former Board of Ed assessment chief Robert Tobias here.

Diane Ravitch on Math here and ELA here and here.

Juan Gonzalez of NY Daily News on ELA here

NY Sun Op-Ed from retired Board of Ed analyst Fred Smith here

Diane Ravitch: Another Look at the 2007 ELA scores

Jonathan posted a good question in his comment. He said that he was more interested in the year-to-year changes of the same cohort (value-added), rather than comparisons of the fourth grade to the fourth grade.

This is not difficult to do, and the annual testing of students in grades 3-8, which started in 2006 in response to the requirements of NCLB, makes it feasible to compare the performance of the same cohort of students as they advance through the grades.

*In grade 4, 56.0% met the state standards in 2007 (levels 3 & 4); a year earlier, 61.5% of the same cohort met the standards, a drop of 5.5 points.
*In grade 5, 56.1% met the standards; a year earlier, 58.9% of the same group met them, a drop of 2.8 points.
*In grade 6, 49.7% met the standards; a year earlier 56.7% of this group met them, a drop of 7 points.
*In grade 7, 45.5% met the standards, compared to 48.6% who met them in 2006, a drop of 3.1 points.
*In grade 8, 41.8% met the standards in 2007, compared to 44.2% of the same group in 2006, a drop of 2.4 points

The data also permit us to look at the eighth grade cohort longitudinally. The group of students who are now in eighth grade were in fourth grade in 2003. In 2007, 41.8% of this group met the standards; in 2003, when these children were fourth graders, 52.5% met the state standards, a drop of 10.8 points.

Considering the score changes from the perspective of "value-added," the steady decline in test scores is even more alarming than the comparison of grade-to-grade, because there are no gains at all.

These year-to-year comparisons for the same grades suggest that progress has been sluggish at best. After five years of mayoral control and four years of the Children First "reforms," test scores decline steadily for each cohort.

Now the Chancellor promises to add new tests, with the expectation that more testing means more learning. This is not good news. Testing is not a substitute for a sound curriculum and effective instruction.

Diane Ravitch

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.)