“The transition to new learning standards is not easy, and success isn’t instantaneous”, said MaryEllen Elia, state education commissioner.
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Not only were the tests based on new content in English and math this year, but students also took them online, rather than the traditional pencil-and-paper test.
The New York State’s Teachers’ Union was vocally supportive of the opt out movement, and did not waste time suggesting that the test results prove the invalidity of the data.
Overall, students performed better on math tests than they did on language exams.
In science, 56.7 percent hit the proficient or advanced level, and 63.4 percent of the students achieved proficient or advanced in social studies. In 2014, less than 1,100 students in the county refused ELA tests.
On the tough Common Core-aligned exams that debuted in 2013, only 30% of the city’s third- through eighth-graders passed the English test, which was up two points from the previous year, continuing a trend of slight gains and closing the gap with peers in the rest of the state to the lowest level ever. While the scores do not count towards the students’ grades, they are factored into teacher evaluations.
Black students in the city scored slightly higher in English compared to the statewide average for black students of 18.5 percent. Under a new plan pressed by Governor Cuomo and adopted by the state legislature as part of the budget, half of a teacher’s performance review could be based on how well the students do on the exams.
The percentage of students at proficiency in 2015 was 38.1 percent compared to 36.2 in 2014 and 31.1 in 2013.
About 200,000 students opted out of standardized tests last April in grades three through eight amid growing criticism of reliance on the exams to gauge the performance of students and teachers.
“It’s just very early to be having any specific discussions about those districts, or districts statewide, until we arrive at a method to compare the data”, says Chris Neale who is assistant commissioner in DESE’s Office of Quality Schools.
Mike Fulton, superintendent of the Pattonville School District, said that the state numbers can be useful, even if there is only one year’s worth of data, but they will have to be viewed in a different way.
“Students in the lower grades who have been using the standards throughout their school years, show higher levels of proficiency than students in upper grades, who experienced changes during their school careers”.
Hickman Mills school district in south Kansas City is one of the districts eagerly awaiting accreditation news from the state. In math, that number came down from 15 percent to 13 percent.
She added, “The message to parents is without assessments, we don’t know how to help and target kids who need support”. “Annual assessments provide important information about individual students for parents and classroom teachers and allow us to keep track of how all student groups are doing. This year’s results show our scores are not yet where they need to be, but we will work to ensure continued improvement”.
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The results showed that the percentage of students who scored at the proficient level in English remained about the same, from 31.3 percent in 2015 compared to 30.6 percent in 2014.
