New York State United Teachers, the statewide union, said the test scores tell almost nothing about students’ progress and are meaningless as measures of teacher effectiveness.
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Student Proficiency in English increased to 30.4 percent in 2015 from 28.4 percent in 2014.
Thirteen percent of the West Seneca students who declined to take the 2015 math exam, for example, had achieved basic scores in the same subject in 2014, while 3 percent had earned superior scores.
The tests have become controversial in recent years after being tied by the state to teacher evaluations and more rigorous Common Core learning standards.
De Blasio and Fariña have repeatedly said they do not think standardized test performance should be the sole indicator of a student’s achievement, or the primary means of assessing academics in city schools overall.
“There is no question that when you have approximately 20 percent of the students not test… the results would have variance based on that”, Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia said on a conference call with reporters, adding that students who sat out of testing had more often than not scored poorly in previous years.
During the latest wave of test opt-outs in April, both federal and state officials suggested that financial penalties could be an option at some point down the road. In math, that number went up from 41 to 44 percent.
While Vandeven said the improvement from the field test results showed a strong performance by Missouri students on MAP tests last spring, an education professor at the University of Missouri-St. “But we have shifted our goals to align more with our local assessments”.
Only one of the Poughkeepsie’s four elementary schools, G.W. Krieger, had a significant percentage of ELA refusals – about 15 percent, or 51 students.
More than 44 percent of Jefferson County fourth graders scored a Level 3 or above on the math assessment, as did 37.6 percent in St. Lawrence County.
The State Board of Education decided to set a score in the middle of the 2 range – just above 2.5 – as the graduation level for the Common Core math and English tests in Washington. If the algebra students were included in the total score, she said it would be 40.8 percent. “These test results are not reliable, valid or accurate indicators of either student learning or teacher effectiveness”.
When the tests were given statewide for the first time this past spring, a large number of high school students skipped them.
Leaders of the Buffalo School District said in a statement today they continue to aim for higher proficiency.
Wappingers mom Tracey Amenta said her 7th-grade son took the ELA test, but refused math.
The district has been offering more training to teachers in how to use the data to target their students’ specific needs.
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“This year’s results show our scores are not yet where they need to be, but we will work to ensure continued improvement”.
