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slow and steady
May 7, 2009
State officials herald “moderate” progress on English test
A screenshot (including a caption) from today's online press conference about state test scores, featuring State Education Commissioner Richard Mills and Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch.
More students across New York State scored proficient on the state reading and writing test this year than ever before, and gains by black and Hispanic students drove the improvements. The difference between white and black students’ average scores is now at 18 points, down from 28 in 2006.
More students in New York City scored proficient, too; proficiency rose 18 percentage points to 69 percent from 51 percent in 2006. According to the city Department of Education, the difference between the percentage of black and Hispanic children who scored proficient on the test and the percentage of white students who did now stands at 22 percentage points, down from more than 29 three years ago.
State school leaders described the gains across New York as “moderate” because much of the increases were driven by a greater proportion of children just squeaking past the proficiency cutoff, State Education Commissioner Richard Mills explained during a press conference this morning.
The difference comes from looking at the actual scale scores students received, rather than the percentage of students deemed proficient. Scale scores are considered the most statistically useful way to evaluate test score gains. (Aaron Pallas has written about this on GothamSchools.)
Mills explained the distinction by providing three ways to look at this year’s sixth-grade scores. The first is by looking purely at what proportion of students in the grade tested at basic proficiency. According to that metric, 81 percent of this year’s sixth-graders met proficiency, compared to 60.4 percent of sixth-graders in 2006, the first year of a new statewide curriculum and testing program.
Looking at proficiency over time, 69 percent of children in 3rd grade in 2006 met standards; those are the same children who posted an 81 percent proficiency rating as sixth-graders this year. But the scale scores of that same cohort of children actually dropped slightly over the same period, from 669 to 667. The scale score cutoff for proficiency is 650.
One place where the scale scores did show a big jump was in the scores for black and Hispanic students. ”Black students have increased their performance faster than white students,” Mills said, pointing to an 16-point gain in the scale scores for black students since 2006 (from 641 to 657), compared to just a 6-point gain for white students, whose scores remain 18 points higher on average. The scale score gains for black students show that the average black student is now considered proficient in reading, which was not true three years ago.
Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein touted the scores as signs they are making progress in the public schools. “I’m especially pleased that we are closing the shameful achievement gap between black and Hispanic students and their white peers faster than ever,” Klein said in a statement released today while he and Mayor Bloomberg were in Washington, D.C., for a conversation with President Obama and others about how to close the achievement gap.
Data the state presented today showed that scale scores in the city have been on the rise over time, but that almost every individual cohort of students has posted nearly identical scale scores each year since 2006.
At the press conference today, Mills and Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch, participating in a score release for the first time since she was appointed earlier this spring, emphasized that gains have been “steady” and “incremental” across the state. Of the “Big 5″ cities in New York State, which are typically used to benchmark each other, all showed significant gains, Tisch said. New York’s City’s 18-percentage-point improvement in average reading proficiency level put the city at the middle of that group, with Buffalo’s 24-percentage-point gain leading the pack.
Answering a reporter’s question about whether Bloomberg’s school control could have contributed to the gains, Tisch said, “Mayoral control is not part of the conversation about the gains across the state, but it certainly didn’t hurt New York City.” She added that mayoral control probably benefited the city schools by bringing extra resources into the system.
During her introductory remarks, Tisch hinted at her priorities as chancellor. She reiterated a promise, first outlined in a New York Post op/ed last month, to push for a national standard of proficiency, noting that she joined Mills in Chicago in April for a conference of governors intended to start the process to create one. She also said she would focus on changes in scale scores so that schools realize they must help all children ”instead of focusing all of our efforts on getting those just below the cut line to a point of mere proficiency.” And she said that the state must further enhance its test score analysis by looking on a “value-added” at how individual students perform over time.
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May 7th, 2009 10:08 pm
[First, a disclaimer: I don't know that this is what is happening in New York.]
Closing achievement gaps can be done without with closing real learning gaps. All you need is an easy enough test.
There is something called the “ceiling effect.” The idea is that when enough members of a group start to top out on a test, the average of that group stops increasing — or at least slows down. Then, lagging groups can catch up some. I believe that Texas is infamous for having done this. That is, an easy state test had a strong ceiling effect, and minority groups average scores narrowed the gap with white scores.
Any time I hear that achievement gaps are narrowed, I wonder if that is part of what is going on. That is, I wonder if it is an artifact of the test rather than improved teaching and learning.
My second guess is a greater increase in emphasis put on test preperation with the lagging group than the leading group. This could happen if the leading group already did a lot of test prep, or if the lagging group gave up more other things to focus on test prep.
Yes, I am cynical about about reports of narrowing gaps. Until changes in teaching and/or conditions have been shown, I think that campbell’s law is probably disproportionately at work.
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May 7th, 2009 10:54 pm
[...] only “moderate” because so many students who achieved proficiency did so just barely, according to Philissa Cramer of GothamSchools [...]
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May 8th, 2009 8:16 am
The two posts above are absolute idiocy. What, do you want students to fail? I think it says a lot about the state of New York City when people can’t even celebrate when test scores go up. New York City schools are now within striking distance of the same kind of achievement results that most of the school districts in Long Island and Westchester are accustomed to yearly. This kind of result was near to *impossible* ten years ago under the old Board of Education, when adults, not students, were the focus of the school system. All students, Black, Hispanic, Asian, and White, have made lots of progress. And what is the response to his by New Yorkers? Well, maybe the tests are too easy. I am astonished at the abject negativity of folks here.
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May 8th, 2009 11:13 am
ceolaf,
Spot on re “ceiling effect.”
In NYC and NYS, and perhaps elsewhere, the “Performance Index (PI)” formula treats 3’s the same as 4’s.
Bragging about raising 1’s to 2’s, or 2’s to 3’s, and declaring victory is nonsense.
As long as it is possible that hordes of 3’s made it to 4 and the TRUE gap may have actually gotten wider, that’s simply cooking the books.
Campbell would say the PI is nothing but soup.
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May 8th, 2009 11:27 am
crusader,
When scores (pardon the pun) of school district superintendents throughout New York State can boast of comparable — or greater — increases in their students’ test scores as can NYC’s Chancellor Klein, it should call into question whether or not his policies are the cause of the test increase. (Or perhaps even holding back NYC results from reaching Buffalo-level results.)
Does not a rooster take credit for the sunrise?
As to the comment in the main post re “gains by black and Hispanic students drove the improvements,” note that these two groups (along with Spec Ed and ELL though in smaller quantities) are disproportionally represented in the overall group struggling to achieve proficiency. So OF COURSE, any closure of that gap would have to be led by those groups. If they weren’t improving, the average wouldn’t either. I’m glad that they are, but we need to see through some of the circular logic.
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May 8th, 2009 11:31 am
Crusader,
I only care about test results insofar as they are truly reflective of increased student learning. If students fail bad tests but are learning, I am happy. If students do better on tests, but are not learning, I am not.
Do I want students to fail? I want the tests to accurately reflect student learning. If that means they fail the tests, then they should fail the tests. If these tests have any education value, it would be to draw attention to differences in learning and the levels to which students are learning. If tests hide or obfuscate those things — by design, by happenstance or by inappropriate test preparation — they actually can be net-detrimental to education.
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Let me give a (rather simplified) analogy:
Nine of the top ten on the career “assist” list in the NBA played in the last 20 years, out a 50+ year league history. There have been rule changes that have made it easier to get an “assist.”
Does this mean that nine of the ten the best passers played in the last 20 years? Should we celebrate the improved passing in today’s game compared to the 1960’s?
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When the rules for measuring change (e.g. rule changes or different tests), we shouldn’t celebrate higher measurements as necessarily indicating improved underlying performance. If that was appropriate, we could virtually eliminate achievement gaps by making all the tests ridiculously easy. But that would be too obvious and no one would believe that it was significant, right?
Well, what if a test is a little bit easier (due to design, happenstance or inappropriate test preparation)? That wouldn’t be quite so obvious, right?
I generally question the meaning any quantitative result that is not accompanied by a researched explanation of the mechanism(s) that produced that result. And as improved test performance is not what I consider the real goal of education/schooling, I do not celebrate it for its own sake.
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June 5th, 2009 2:40 pm
[...] with this year’s reading test scores, the math test scores showed similar increases in the percentage of students testing as proficient [...]
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