Testing Turmoil
June 20th, 2006
When tests scores for fourth graders rose sharply last year, the Department of Education ballyhooed the results, and city editorial writers rushed to praise Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s education reforms. This spring, the news is not as good – and theres a lot less noise.
Preliminary scores for state standardized tests found that about 10 percent of New York City third, fifth and seventh graders will have to go to summer school or repeat the grade. While there were gains among third and seventh graders, 15.2 percent of fifth graders face being left back. This is the very same group of kids who, as fourth graders, showed sharp gains last year.
The education department clearly hoped no one would notice. Instead of holding a triumphant news conference, they e-mailed the scores to some reporters Friday afternoon. Theres no announcement of the scores readily apparent on the departments web site.
But education experts who did respond said the scores cast further doubts about last springs rise. Calling last year’s rise the meteoric and suspicious looking Robert Tobias, former director of testing for the city schools and now a professor at New York University, told the Times, ”This is exactly what I would expect to see if there were problems with the fourth-grade test last year.”
Schools Matter faults the whole idea of testing: 8,900 fifth graders are about to be branded failures because of the stupidity and hubris of know-nothing politicians who refuse to recognize the sham of high stakes testing. As the adults argue over explanations for the poor test results, these kids will be scarred forever by a system that continues to leave them behind.
The scores themselves are not the only problem. While students took the tests in January and March, they still do not have complete results — and wont for months. The New York Sun found that New York State has the worst record in the nation in terms of the length of the gap between the time that children take the tests and the point at which the scores become available. According to Mark Alter, also a professor at NYU, such late results are “pedagogically useless…. How can teachers pick the correct remediation programs for at-risk students when the results come to the school after the child has moved on to the next grade or even left the school?”
The controversy over this years tests comes as the Department of Education plans to institute more student testing — or assessments — next year. Tonight, opponents of the plan will hold a meeting to discuss how to fight it.
By Gail Robinson on June 20, 2006, 8:23 amIn category: Education, Gotham City | 1 Comment »



