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.
They can’t get better teachers?
Proving either the bureaucrats want the drop to continue, or they’re too stupid to be allowed in any position with decision-making authority. Especially those who want the authority without the responsibility of being held accountable.
Pakistan and India may have better scores that New York State now
lockdowns crushed our young people...blame the pro lockdown folks....they own this.
RE: They can’t get better teachers?
Like the Police, They’ve all fled NY to other states.
That’s too bad. I believe my NYS education was top notch — but I graduated over 50 years ago.
Well,, democrats never did cotton to slaves who could read anyways.
At present those broken pipes lose about 26% of the gas that enters the networks of pipes underground. Take a morning walk on your neighborhood street at sunrise when the air is still. Especially in summer months. You can smell gas everywhere. Once the air begins to heat up and rise, traffic stirs it up, the breeze begins, it disappears. But look at the trees on the streets. Die back. Yellowing leaves. Stunted leaves. They are getting poisoned by the leaking gas lines under the streets.
Just watch season 4 on The Wire.
The Empfire State. Over $25,000 per pupil in our school system, and in the district next door my Daughter in Law has to beg for contributions. Sickening.
No. Anyone with an Ed degree is worthless outside of working in fast food, and even there it’s questionable.
I taught for decades in an urban school district (not in New York). And here’s how we handled falling test scores. The minimum district test score became 50%. So should a student score less than 50% on any test, the district’s computer software automatically changed his score to 50%.
So let’s say that a kid showed up for a test, and he didn’t bother to answer a single question. He left the paper blank. He scored 50 points out of 100.
We teachers hated that. Every one of us did! It didn’t matter. Test scores went up. And the superintendent could brag on TV about how great the district was doing.
It was all a sham, of course.
I think our young people were failing even before the lockdown. We’ve got kids getting into University now who never would have done a few decades ago.
Lockdown just contributed more degradation to the long, general downgrading of educational standards that we’ve seen over decades.
so if your kid’s stupid, move to NY...
Good for them.
“That’s too bad. I believe my NYS education was top notch — but I graduated over 50 years ago.”
Well, when you had a math class, you learned math. A sample of directly out of one of the woke ‘math’ books banned in FL was posted a few weeks ago. The students were asked who Maya Angelou is, where Maya Anelou was born, etc. It may have been appropriate for an English class, or a social studies class, but it had nothing to do with math.
They had the common sense to remove the book from the schools in FL. I have no doubt they’re using it, or books like it in NY math classes. Then, when the kids have to take an Achievement Test and answer math questions, they have no clue. Why would they? They’ve been learning about Maya Angelou instead of long division.
Just give ‘em all 100%. That’s equity, right?
You had New York State Regents exams years ago. A Regents diploma was even better than a NY State diploma. Not as good as a NY State former highway department worker who got free rides on the Tappan Zee Bridge and free rides on the Thruway.
Current members:
Lester W. Young, Jr.
Chancellor
Member at Large
Dr. Young received his Doctoral Degree in Education (Ed.D.) from Fordham University, specializing in Urban Education and Human Development; and the Master of Science Degree (M.S.) from Brooklyn College. (Surprise!)
Josephine Victoria Finn
Vice Chancellor
3rd Judicial District
Vice Chancellor Finn graduated from the State University of New York at Oneonta receiving a B.A. in Psychology and Black Studies and from the University of Buffalo Law School where she received a J.D. She has been admitted to the practice of law for 35 years and is trained in mediation.
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