This morning, Carol Burris had a post on Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet in which she tried to decipher the New Common Core test scores in New York. The first thing she noticed was that the state did not release the mean scores, which it usually does. So she calculated them herself for several key counties.
English language arts scores were flat, math scores were up. In several of the counties, ELA scores declined by three or four points. The only grade that held steady in ELA was grade 8. No gain.
“The only good news for ELA was that the achievement gap between white and black proficiency rates narrowed a bit. However, a narrower gap, achieved predominantly through lower scores of the higher performing group, is not the strategy of choice. The proficiency rate for white students dropped two points (38 percent), and the proficiency rate for black students went up one point (17 percent).”
Math scores were up, but the black-white gap may have grown.
“The lack of success of the state’s most vulnerable children on tests that are inappropriate measures of learning is breathtaking. The ELA proficiency rate for students with disabilities who are economically disadvantaged is only 4 percent. Seventy-six percent of such students remain in the lowest of the 4 score bands, 1. This is not a small group of students; they comprise 123,233 of New York’s public school children in Grades 3-8. The news was equally bad for the nearly 78,000 English Language learners whose ELA proficiency rate remained stuck at 3 percent.”
Given the inappropriate choice of “proficiency” as a passing mark, the majority of students “failed” both tests, despite increased familiarity with the standards, the curriculum, and the tests. As I have explained before, New York selected the NAEP definition of “proficient,” which is a very high mark, not grade level, and certainly not pass-fail. So long as the state insists on NAEP proficient as its passing mark, a majority of students will fail and students with disabilities and English learners will remain far, far behind. What plans does the state have for the many pupils who will not ever earn a high school diploma?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
My pleasure!
Thank you,
Michael
Michael E. Allison
Principal, Hopewell High School
1215 Longvue Avenue
Aliquippa, PA 15001
724 375 6691 ext 2021
allisonm@hopewellarea.org
2014-15 President-Elect, National Association of Secondary School Principals(NASSP)
It seems to me that measurements of education are being confused for education in the last paragraph of the post. If the state of New York set scoring standards that declared all students with disabilities and English learners proficient, it would not change thier actual level of proficiency. If they are “far, far behind”, they will remain so no matter what the official label.
Not just in the last paragraph of this post. There is little interest in understanding education apart from test scores, or “proficiency” other than by a definition that also sets a cut score on a single test.
TE
If proficiency on a 3rd grade reading test is set at the 6th grade level, your argument falls apart. When 70% of students “fail” a test it is rarely a student problem.
NY Teacher,
Changing proficiency levels has no impact on how well a student actually reads. If a student is, using Dr. Ravitch’s words, “far, far behind”, the student remains far, far behind no matter where the proficiency level is set.
NY Teacher,
I agree with you. If you wrote a test for your students, and 70% failed, the blame would be on you for having asked questions about material you had not taught or having asked questions that were cognitively inappropriate
Dr. Ravitch,
My point is that students being behind other students is a fact of the world that is not changed by changing the cut scores or difficulty of the exam.
TE
Your point is ridiculous – and misses the point completely. This is about producing an artificially false result. This is about labeling 70% of NY students, grades 3 to 8, as failures using overly high cut scores. Every student lies somewhere on the reading or math achievement continuum. Picking an artificially high point on that continuum, unfairly places too many students who read (or do math) at grade level, on the wrong side of the ledger. And using a very poorly designed and developmentally inappropriate assessment, combined with impossibly high cut scores, makes the NYS Common Core test results utterly worthless.
NY Teacher,
I think my point here is very important: do not confuse our measure of a thing with the thing. Changing cut scores does not in fact change the size of the educational gap in any way. Proclaiming 70% failures or proclaiming 100% exceeds expectations does not change the fact that some students remain far far behind other students.
What’s wrong with all you ELA teachers in NY? Still can’t “unpack” those CC standards? All this time, all those CC resources from disEngageNY, all those coaches, all those close reads, all that informational text, all that PD, all that pressure on your reputation and career. All that and the best you could do is flat-line? Come on NY English teachers, what gives?
The sample size (over one million test takers) simply proves that the Common Core standards in ELA are truly “un-packable”; abstract, and subjective skills that are for the most part, un-teachable and un-testable. And they are content free. Imagine a comprehensive 3 to 8 English exam without a single question about grammar or literary devices. So what’s a poor ELA teacher to do? Hope for the best. The best students. The students of affluence. The students of privilege. The students who were read to by two parents every night. Students that went to Disneyworld. Students that had exposure to thousands of new words, before they hit kindergarten. Students who know they’re going to college. Students who’s lifetime of advanced language acquisition had almost nothing to do with their school experience. Hope for the best. Good luck with the rest.
NY Teacher: bazinga! What you said!
😃
I remind viewers of this blog: such tests are no casual affair. There are now many decades of experience, trial-and-error, and some truly exceptional talent [speaking psychometrically, of course] behind such testing artifacts. They are built, to within narrow margins of error, to the specifications of their clients.
The buyers got what they paid for. From my current POV, the only surprise is that people are, well, surprised.
So let me sum up all that complicated standardized testing ‘stuff’ and its uses in this case in a simple phrase: students, parents and teachers got sucker punched.
Or as NYS Education Commissioner John King—whose children, last I read, went to a Montessori school—might say:
[start fictional quote] Common Core and Montessori are practically one and the same. Look, they share the letters “o” and “m” and “n” and “e” and “r”! [end fictional quote]
Although I think it was a bit more honest when Dr. Candace McQueen, Guardian of CCSS in Tennessee, got a private school gig and declared that CCSS wasn’t gonna be in her private school no way no how no never you mind.
Link: https://dianeravitch.net/2014/03/23/common-core-for-commoners-not-my-school/
I must admit, though, that in this case honesty is not refreshing.
Really.
Not Rheeally, even in a Johnsonally sort of way…
😧
P.S. Although in Dr. McQueen’s ‘defense’ I must add Mark Twain’s observation:
“Honesty is the best policy — when there is money in it.”
Can’t say I’m not fair and balanced. No spin zone here.
😏