Yes indeed, when it comes to NYC student achievement, it's Groundhog Day over and over again

For the last two years, the State Education Department and the NYC Department of Education have claimed their favored reforms were working, based on increases in the state test scores that were imaginary.

In 2016, the tests were shorter and given untimed, and there were changes in the scoring methodology that effectively lowered the cut scores for proficiency.  Yet the test score increases led Chancellor Carmen Fariña to proclaim, "We have seen incredible improvement on these exams."   At the time, this reminded me of nothing more than the claims made by Chancellor Klein during the Bloomberg era, before that test score bubble burst, leading me to ask, "Have we entered another era of mass delusion and state test score inflation?" 

So yet again, we have a Mayor using these unreliable and possibly invalid test results to "prove" that Mayoral control works and using it for his political advantage.  Again, we have a State Commissioner who says the results show that the state's educational "reforms" are leading to more learning. Again, the NYC Chancellor and a UFT president are drinking the Koolaid, to justify their preferred policies.  This time, in addition, the charter schools are also touting the results to "prove" their superiority.  

I told the NY Times that I believed the increases were illusory, and in response the NYSED spokesperson said my analysis was “flawed, irresponsible and misleading.”

Last year,the city and state test scores increased again, and again, the champagne corks popped. Commissioner Elia claimed that the increase in proficiency rates since 2013 was evidence that the state's students and schools were making progress. The Mayor's press conference was even more celebratory.  

Mayor de Blasio press conference, Aug. 22, 2017

Yet again, I questioned whether this was real, noting that the trends hadn't so far been matched  on the NAEPs, and added:

There are many ways to show increases in proficiency -- a metric notoriously easy to manipulate -- including making the tests easier, shorter, giving them untimed, and/or changing the scoring by lowering the raw scores to scale scores or the cut scores need for proficiency.  The state has used all these tricks over time.   

Well, the 2017 NAEP scores for the city were finally released this week, and it turns out that my skepticism was well-grounded.  According to the analysis by the National Center for Education Statistics, there has been NO significant change in average scores for NYC students in any grade or subject since 2013 on these more reliable assessments - except for a significant drop in 4th grade math. 



The same is sadly true for the state test scores - which haven't seen any significant increases since 2003.



As I said to the NY Daily News, "We’ve had so many years of the state and the city claiming these great improvements — but in reality there have been none. It’s an endless Groundhog Day.”  

Let's hope the new Chancellor will be more forthright than Klein and Farina, and begin making taking stock and make the real changes in our schools that NYC students desperately need to improve their opportunity to learn - including smaller classes in all grades.

Latest NAEP scores reveal a "lost decade" of corporate reform with no improvements for NY or NYC

 

The 2017 results of the low-stakes national exams called the NAEPs were released late last night --- showing that across the country, student achievement has stalled over the past decade, except for a slight increase in 8th grade reading, while test score gaps between low and high performing students have widened.  As the Wall Street Journal reported, "American students had nearly flat results in math and reading on a national exam, continuing a pattern of stagnation over most of the past decade, as some of the lowest performers fell further behind."

The results are a huge rebuke to wrongheaded corporate reform agenda of high stakes testing, charter expansion and Common Core standards that prevailed over this period and that was supposed to lift all boats, lead to more equity and more learning.

Over the last four years, in New York state and NYC, the story is much the same. There have been no significant increases in any subject or grade since 2013, except for a sharp decline in 4th grade math of five points in NY State and seven points in NYC. You can check the NAEP data yourself here, or a summary here.

All this goes to show that my 2016 blog post was correct that the increase in state and city test scores over this period was illusory and that we had entered a new era of state test score inflation. Let's hope this puts an end to the endless Groundhog days of state and city officials holding self-congratulatory press conferences, and articles that assume the rise in test scores is real and could be due to charter school expansion or the Common Core. But I wouldn't count on it. It's too easy for educrats to manufacture signs of improvement when there are none.