Posted on 03/16/2023 6:21:01 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I guess this is one way to deal with public schools utterly failing to educate: just lower the standards for what counts as proficient.
New York state has decided to permanently lower the math and reading proficiency standards due to the dramatic fall in test scores since the COVID lockdowns destroyed children’s educations. A committee has reported that student performance has been permanently damaged and that lower competence has become “the new normal.”
New York will make it easier for students to reach “proficiency” on state math and English language arts tests, calling last year’s lower scores the “new normal.”
A scoring committee that reports to the Board of Regents said Monday that they must take into account the results of last year’s tests for students in grades three through eight. Some schools posted shocking results — in Schenectady, no eighth grader who took the math test scored as proficient. And the scores for the third through eighth grade tests throughout the state were much lower in 2022 than in 2019, a result no doubt of the absence of in-person learning during the first year and beyond of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The committee handles all scoring, not just this year’s changes.
I remember the halcyon days when everybody was convinced that kicking kids out of school to protect students from a nonexistent threat would harm nobody. “Kids are resilient,” we were told. Parents who wanted their kids back in school were heartless grandma killers. Any fears about learning loss were right-wing conspiracy theories.
Apparently not. I am shocked.
Lowering the standards is yet another in a long line of betrayals for students. We don’t have public schools as a luxury: getting an education is vital for the lifelong success of the kids we send to the schools.
Public educators betrayed students by abandoning them during the pandemic, and they are betraying them again by refusing to help kids regain the education they have lost. This lowering of the standards isn’t to benefit the students, but to make life easier for the very people who betrayed the kids in the first place.
Public schools aren’t run for the benefit of children. If they were they would do a much better job of educating kids. The educational standards are far too low already, and lowering them is just one more concession to the adults who make a living off the system.
Teaching hard? Well, I guess we will make it easier for you by not requiring you to teach. And what about the good teachers who really are in it for the kids’ benefit? Their jobs have been made yet more difficult. The only people benefiting are the ones who want to show that they are succeeding.
Tests show the schools are failing? Change the test so the schools look better.
Honestly, given public schools’ real mission–the creation of a cohort of cultural Marxists–I don’t understand why they bother with reading and math anymore. Why test at all, if they don’t care about whether students are learning.
Change everything to drag studies, climate activism, and gender transition and be done with it. Maybe riot studies too, since rioting is now a public health imperative.
Anybody with any braina is out of NY.
For the last 20 years or more, they have to pass all Regents tests to graduate.
“You had New York State Regents exams years ago.”
Oh, yes. The dreaded Regents Exams three days in a row, twice a year. No pressure. Arrrrgh!
By that some logic they could drop the state crime rate to zero by repealing all the criminal statutes on the books.
They could get better teachers if they would hire non-Ed grads and got rid of the union-ish certifications. IOW, regular people with real educations and life experiences. But that would threaten the livelihoods of the incumbents who have a stranglehold on what can be hired.
Ironically ... NY is one of the most difficult states in which to home-school.
I believe that home-schooled children there are required to submit & follow a set/detailed curriculum (to be suggested & approved by the local school system) — they must submit quarterly reports as well as have the children take a yearly test/assessment & they must score above a certain percentage or face being forced back into the public school “system”. No “fudging” the results of those tests allowed ...
how low can they go ?
I thought they already get a passing grade for writing their name on the paper.
The democrat party’s plan to dumb down America goes on unabated.
In the General/Chat forum, on a thread titled New York State PERMANENTLY lowers math and reading standards due to the dramatic fall in test scores , bitt wrote: so if your kid’s stupid, move to NY...
Slaves don't need to read and write - education makes them dangerous and gives them 'ideas.'
“New York state has decided to permanently lower the math and reading proficiency standards”
Yeah, that’ll solve the problem.
> Just give ‘em all 100%. That’s equity, right? <
Even in the worst city schools where I taught, most of the kids were good. They just needed direction, and a firm set of rules.
But no administration had the courage to put that in place. It was so much easier to declare an “equity” policy, as you noted. And do you know who suffered the most? It was those good kids. Little was asked of them. And so they graduated with few skills.
Whole generations of kids (mostly black) are lost this way.
yeehaw! That logic makes my head spin.
From what I’ve seen among a lot of young people, it seems to be rampant anti-intellectualism’ - a ‘Cultural Revolution’.
Yeah, some are horrific.
But, the real problem lies in the system itself. The school boards, unions, contractors and administrators.
Potemkin Education
They can’t get better teachers?
- - - - - - -
I think nutrition or something else is causing the transvestite craziness and other problems, including low marks.
Most teachers vote Democrat and they are worse every year.
The students are probably the cause.
That is very similar to what NYC did. Even kids who never showed up had to get a 55, not a zero. That was a tremendous disservice to kids who attended class and at least tried. Honest teachers hated this sham, but newbies thought it was "fair", "equitable" and all the other hallmark words of the brainwashed.
I don’t think it’s nutrition. It’s brainwashing.
Young people want to fit in, be popular, and matter. They try to conform to what seems to be the ‘cool new thing’, especially if their milieu or the media cleverly makes it attractive.
And they only learn in school what they are taught.
In the past we had more attentive parents, and social mores that wouldn’t tolerate this stuff. Fortunately, a lot of the parents seem to be waking up.
Everything goes back-and-forth,throughout history. The tide will turn again.
Unfortunately, sometimes the ‘turn’ is over reactive; and sometimes powerful civilizations suffer and lose in the process.
But in the long run, the spiral has always tended upward, no matter how slowly at times.
Agree. I have two sisters who taught school. Both were union teachers. The master’s degrees they got were from a subpar college.
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