Posted on 03/17/2023 1:00:33 PM PDT by grundle
Committee tells Board of Regent the lower scores are the "new normal"
ALBANY — New York will change what it takes 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 to determine whether schools are showing improvement from year to year. On Thursday, the committee wanted to clarify that they must also reset scores because the tests will have new performance standards.
Last year 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 methodology, not just this year's changes.
In setting the lowest score a student can get to reach each achievement level, teachers on the committee consider what content a student must know, the committee told the Board of Regents.
They reorganize the tests, ranking every question from easiest to hardest based on the percent of students who got it right. Then they decide how far into the test the student had to get, in terms of correct answers, to be rated a level 3, which means they are proficient.
“How much third-grade math is just enough for me to put you in proficiency,” said Technical Advisory Committee Co-Chair Marianne Perie, explaining that they decide what is borderline but “good enough.”
Then the committee considers how many students won’t reach proficiency if they set the score at that point.
That’s where last year’s scores matter.
“Yes, there’s learning loss between 2019 and 2022, but in some ways we don’t want to keep going backwards,” Perie said. “We’re at this new normal. So for New York we are saying the new baseline is 2022.”
The committee is resetting the lowest scores — called cut scores — for each achievement level on this spring's new ELA (English language arts) and math tests.
“Right now we’re setting new cut scores for 2023. This is the baseline moving forward,” Perie said.
Over the summer the committee will do the same for the U.S. history Regents exam, with the change taking effect in 2024.
Some teachers have been pressing for tests to be “re-normed” so that students can pass at a lower level than in previous years, reflecting their learning loss.
But the executive director of the Alliance for Quality Education said the whole idea of changing the minimum score needed to be considered proficient diminishes people’s confidence in the tests.
“I think that just speaks to the politics of test scores and why so many families have been joining the opt-out movement,” Executive Director Jasmine Gripper said in an interview Wednesday.
Parents are realizing “that test scores aren’t a true reflection of learning,” she said, adding that changing minimum standards is nothing new. When she was a teacher, educators would encounter students who were rated as proficient but were not truly proficient, she said.
Board of Regents Chancellor Lester Young Jr. spoke in favor of the tests, describing a meeting years ago in which parents were shocked that their eighth graders didn’t qualify for certain high schools based on the school entrance exams, even though teachers had given the students good grades for years. He called that “unconscionable.”
Gripper agreed that parents should be told if their students are struggling, but said the state testing comes with big consequences: Schools with poor scores can be labeled as failing and placed in receivership.
“It destabilizes the school,” she said. “The most senior staff tend to leave with their expertise.”
Board of Regents member Frances Wills also questioned the tests, saying public confidence in education has declined since state testing for students in third through eighth grades began.
“In my perspective, we’re still wrestling with that: public perception of what the standardized test means,” she said.
She suggested adaptive tests, which offer easier or harder questions based on what the student gets right, as well as alternatives to testing.
“So you don’t put a test in front of a student and completely demoralize them,” she said, adding, “We’re looking at new ways to measure what students know. The idea that there’s more to a student than that standardized test.”
To all those that have to endure DEI training, this is what “equity” really means. It isn’t about propping up people that need it to see over the fence, it’s about lowering the fence so everyone can see. The fence is your standard of living.
It’s just communism wrapped up in a different excuse - everyone will be equally miserable and illiterate. Then the world takes over because they’re not doing this crap.
Potemkin Education
And they will eventually be flying planes and performing surgeries.
Back in the early 60s a New York Board of Regents certification was valuable.
“Dems don’t want blacks and Hispanics to feel bad that they’re stupid.......”
The Democrat Liberal E, DLE’s, elites have programmed these losers to know, who enables them to get a paycheck after their worthless years in public schools!
The losers in school, after school, just need to vote as their TV mediots tell them how to vote.
Also, when and where to protest on cue.
Now, all life’s losers have to do is show up to catch a bus, get a free meal, ride to the protest, be given a preprinted protest sign, Then, to go protest as ordered.
*poof* Everything is fixed. Ta-da!
It sounds racist to me to lower the scores to keep the minorities from looking stupid, dumb and ignorant.
I have had white, Asian, and black physcians treat me and of both sexes. I had no qualms about this as they went to medical school prior to lowering standards of admission. They were good.
Today I do not want a new graduate minority treating me, Asians excepted. These new docs may be very good or subpar. I would not know.
ps
I am not a racist but a realist. I am white my wife is Mexican. She feels the same way.
The dumber the population .... the easier for the government to control.
Idiocracy.
As they did for the covid shot. It is not a vaccine by past definitions of a vaccine. So the FDA simply changed the definition of a vaccine and Voila, the covid shot is now a vaccine with the manufactures (Pfizer, Moderna, Astra) now having no liability from covid shot injuries.
This has been a never ending cycle.
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16751
How many high school grads (not Baltimore HS grads!) can comprehend its lessons?
New York getting as bad as California another 3rd world state.
Maybe someday high school grads in New York State will at least be required to be able to read their diplomas.
Democrats once forbid slaves from knowing how to read and write. And they also forbid others from trying to teach slaves how to read and write.
Then slavery was abolished. Couldnt forbid blacks from learning to read and write. So the next step for democrats was to forbid blacks from attending schools with white kids. Black only schools were created, but they got the short end of the stick when it came to funds and supplies (such as old, torn up textbooks left over from white schools).
Then segregation was outlawed on a federal level and blacks could attend schools alongside white kids. And democrats just can’t have black kids educated, so they turned a blind eye to underperforming black students. Couldn’t or wouldnt pass tests? Chronic absenteeism? Can’t read and write? Pass and graduate them anyways.
Democrats just don’t want black people to be educated. It’s in their history. It remains in their DNA today.
The US will become the India caste system. Stupid on the bottom, of course, and, also on top!
Common Core Math = idiocy. Well, that’s the result of the study.
So what’s 5+5 Johnny? Er 55?
That’s right Johnny. You’re so good.
How about 3+7? Ah 37?
That’s right again Johnny. You’re so smart...
Okay, let’s try something a little different.
I just bought something worth $12 dollars from you?
How much change should I if I gave you $20.00?
Ahhhh, $32.00?
Oh Johnny, I don’t even know why you’re taking this class.
You’ve got this stuff down.
High five buddy!
- - - - -
I just don’t know Mrs. Miller. He was so good in school.
He got straight As from me.
Groomers groom.
Fade to black…
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