Posted on 08/01/2010 7:04:51 PM PDT by neverdem
LINDA L. SINGER, the principal of Public School 255 in Gravesend, Brooklyn, has some phone calls she is dreading to make.
Among them: informing 10 families that their children, scheduled to enroll in gifted programs, will no longer qualify, because of new, tougher grading on state English and math exams. And letting the rest of the teachers know that their A-graded school, which had shown consistent progress for years, plunged to a 65 percent passing rate in English, from 85 percent, according to standardized scores released last week.
“When I got these scores I thought I would die,” Ms. Singer said, echoing the feeling in many principals’ offices throughout the city. “Everything is changed.”
There were large drops in passing rates across New York, reflecting new requirements intended to correct for years of inflated results. The exams, state education officials said, had become too easy to pass, their definition of proficiency no longer meaningful. Citywide, the proficiency rate in English fell to 42 percent, from 69 percent last year; 54 percent reached grade level in math, down from 82 percent.
As the plummeting scores sunk in, principals planned strategy and contemplated the unraveling of other achievements, which they were suddenly informed were illusory. In New York City, where test scores are the cornerstone of school accountability, the new numbers, principals feared, could mean the end of their A grades from the Department of Education; a rise in negative teacher performance reviews, which are based partly on state tests; and substandard principal performance reviews.
But some of the principals’...
--snip--
At some schools, the drop was breathtaking. At Public School 85 in the Bronx, known as the Great Expectations School, there was a literal reversal in fortune, with proficiency on the third-grade math test flipping from 81 percent to 18 percent....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
>>Anyone over age of 40 probably got in at the tail end of good public education. Everyone else, it is pure luck if you can get a good or even fair education.<<
I’m 27. Things may be worse now, but “in my day” you could still get a good education if you stuck to the advanced/honors courses. Those were geared to kids who were actually interested in learning and willing to be challenged. In my junior year, a scheduling conflict forced me to drop down into the “high”-level class (one step down from advanced) for my 20th century history course. It was such a comedown that even the 16-year-old version of me was appalled. We spent most of our class time on things like coloring maps and making collages. Just a taste of the education you apparently get if you go through public school taking the “high” courses.
Dats phat.....
The answer is not politics all the time. It is quite easy to create a test which is very difficult and where the average of all the people taking it is well under 50%. In fact, the best test is probably one where the average of all test takers is 50%, so that it is possible to demonstrate that one is either well ahead of average, or well behind it.
As an example, I recall a chemistry test I took at MIT in my freshman year. I had challenged freshman chemistry and was allowed to take second year chemistry. I felt I did poorly on the test, and when grades came back, I had a 35%. Fortunately, that was the best grade in the entire class, and the class average was about 20%. Clearly the test was very difficult, but that is no reason to assume that all 500 students in the class has suddenly transformed into dolts.
All advanced testing should be graded "on a curve". The traditional mindset that A=90-100, B= 80-90, and so on is an artifact, but correcting to these values is valid if it allows parents to evaluate test results according to their own common misconceptions.
It depends upon what the score represents.
A typical goal of standardized testing is to rank the test-takers on a percentile scale. This permits comparisons of different groups of people; for example, students at two different schools.
If we were to administer an algebra test to 100,000 eighth-graders, and the goal was to determine how well the concepts had been learned, we would not want to make the test so easy that a significant percentage make a perfect score. It might be reasonable to design the test so that only twenty-percent would correctly answer more than half the questions.
If a sample population showed eighty-percent scoring only 40% correct answers, then the test should be made easier. If eighty-percent scored 60%, then the test should be made more difficult. By making such adjustments, the test scores would form a distribution without too large a percentage of students either getting all questions right or all questions wrong.
Assuming that the sample population was sufficiently representative of the target population, then the test could be administered to the 100,000 students with the expectation that eighty-percent of the total will score below 50%.
A school whose students had an average score of 50% on this test could be given a "score" of "80", representing the fact that the average student scored at the 80th percentile; that is, higher than eighty percent of all students taking that test.
The problem with such a test is that it cannot be used to determine whether the average student, or even the most advanced student, has "learned algebra". Only a test designed to demonstrate some minimum level of proficiency can do that. My point is that "proficiency" testing is one thing and "qualification" testing is quite another thing.
The article tells us that the New York school system is quite confused about its testing. It doesn't tell us anything about whether the students are learning what they need to be taught. But my guess is that they are not now nor have they ever been taught what they need to know.
What does the sign on the left say?
I was with some teachers the day NC gave their first standardized tests. The teachers were stunned that the tests in no way covered the material they had been told they would cover. They said their students hadn’t been taught the materials they were being tested on.
Oops.
Obama Health Care will be similar quality, I’m sure.
On the NY State Regents exam for Algebra, you only need to get half of the multiple-choice question right to pass, and not even bother with the 9 open-ended questions. This is make up for the fact that they asked some of the stupidest questions, and when you least expect it, ask several questions requiring depth of knowledge in minor Algebra topics that are usually glossed over because there’s over 100+ topics that need to be taught. That’s the curriculum for you: mile-wide, inches-deep.
The article is, indeed, believable...
I’m 58, and grew up in the military. Because of that, I attended schools all around the country.
It was my experience that the quality of education ran from one extreme to another as you changed schools. The best school I attended was 8th grade in Virgina Beach. I moved from there to a high school that was pretty much a child-care facility and taught nothing. I could have easily gone to college with what I learned in 8th grade. Come to think of it, that’s exactly what I did.
Nice one!
"Proficiency" testing of undergraduate chemistry students should certainly be graded on a curve. I have experienced having professors throw out exams when the results failed to have the ability to discriminate between students that the professor had intended or which demonstrated that somehow the professor had failed to impart the knowledge sufficiently well.
Should those same students later wish to become "certified" for purposes of becoming professional chemists, it might be perfectly reasonable for a certification agency to administer a "qualification" test, with the expectation that every sufficiently trained graduate of chemistry will pass and those not sufficiently trained will fail.
Bravo!
The various subgroups of students are all performing exactly as one expects them to do. And nothing is going to change that.
I think that the scale you refer to holds students to a higher standard and that if you do this, they will perform to this standard. I do this with my own children and they perform as expected. I would hate to see the results should I ‘dumb down’ my expectations just to satisfy their desire for an easier job of it. Also, just because one can test into a higher class does not mean that they belong there; either academically or socially. Just as someone who fits into a certain size should wear it if it shows every pudgy ‘curve’ of their entire body. As the saying goes, “Spandex is a privilege, not a right.” The same can be applied to many situations. (not spandex, per se, but the ability to apparently move beyond one’s perceived abilities.)
If one believes that students aren’t ‘taught to the test’ in our current public school system, I believe this shows a general lack of knowledge regarding our current school system. Having worked in said system, I have seen how students are taught in this manner and also that some students are passed simply so that they move onto the next grade and ‘become someone else’s problem’.
Maybe they were lexdysic.
OMG, I said that on Facebook once. I said "Remember that Universal Health Care will be run by the same folks running our public schools." Oh, the fury. Every lib I'm linked with freaked out in every direction.
I try.
You're good.
One of the questions asked about the effects of pollution on the Black Forest in Germany.
We never once covered such material in school and I missed the question, lowering my score. I was ready for biology, physics, chemistry and such.
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