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.”
Lowering the standard does NOT improve literacy.
The trouble is that the lowering has been going on for decades.
We could wish. There is even a facade of education. They are blatantly in our faces destroying education. It’s more like Dresden Education.
Sounds like a good idea. If the students don't learn, then maybe the whole district needs to be taken apart and rebuilt.
“It destabilizes the school,” she said. “The most senior staff tend to leave with their expertise.”
An expertise in failure? An expertise in watching the clock tick until getting a nice state retirement?
Please don’t paint with that broad brush-this about teachers not providing kids with an education in academics and not maintaining real educational standards. Unless someone is retarded/BIF or otherwise intellectually impaired from birth or from a catastrophic head injury, they are capable of learning along with their peers no matter their race/ethnic group...
I’m Hispanic, a college grad, have never been an affirmative action hire nor has anyone in my family. But most of us graduated before the late 1980’s-when teachers still were required to teach real academics. I prefer blue collar work and own my own little home-based business-I have spent years as a case manager-workers comp/job safety-and have seen/dealt with unqualified affirmative action hires in all kinds of jobs and they are a pain in the ass to say the least...
The teachers from NY who want this-and their union leaders-should be tried and put in prison for depriving kids of a real, usable education-it is just wrong...
Since the late 80’s at least-it is why we kept our cub in private school in spite of her begging for the public one-she got over it and now teaches at a private school...
If you ask the Teachers Union how to fix this problem I’m sure they would answer “Raise teacher salaries”.
Maybe they should just ban the number line. Then all numbers are equal.
The real problem is more blacks and Hispanics aren’t speaking out regarding this travesty...They know dems will keep rewarding them,so why bother getting an education......
I don’t know what state you are from-but I’ve never noticed anyone who is Hispanic not speaking out about education-we/they are just as vocal about it as other Caucasians with ancestors from other European countries-of course, this is a rural area where even Black people are conservative-if you are in a large city, I suppose your mileage may vary on that subject...
In Baltimore Maryland it is 62% black and 6% Hispanic...Even if Hispanic parents voice their objections, where are the black parents???? Annnnd who are they all voting for???
If 6 schools in Baltimore have such low standards,that NO CHILD COULD PASS THE STATE TEST,why are they voting dem expecting a different outcome????
For Hispanic parents it would be like spitting in the wind..Nothing will change.....
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