At long last, state offers evidence that test standards are low

testing testing

July 19, 2010

At long last, state offers evidence that test standards are low

by Anna Phillips, at 1:44 pm

A slide in the state's presentation shows that eighth graders who score a level 3 on the math test have a low chance of getting a math Regents score that will lead to success in college.

In recent years, teachers, principals, parents, and much of the city’s press have met the annual unveiling of climbing test scores with increased skepticism, if not outright incredulity.

Today the State Education Department officially caught up to them and said yes, the results were too good to be true.

At a meeting of the Board of Regents this morning, Commissioner David Steiner presented (webcast) an analysis of state tests performed by Harvard University testing expert Daniel Koretz and New York University assistant professor Jennifer Jennings. The analysis shows that even though a greater percentage of students are passing the state’s exams than several years ago, many of these students are not prepared for high school or college.

Much of the criticism has focused on the state’s tests for elementary and middle school students and Steiner emphasized today that high school scores are exaggerated as well. Many students who pass the math Regents exam, even by a margin of 15 points, flounder in college, Steiner said.

Younger students who meet the state’s proficiency standards are moving onto high school with low chances of passing the Regents exams required for graduation. Those who do pass the Regents exams, even by a wide margin, are graduating without the skill level to get into college or, if they get in, to pass their courses.

Using an analogy (tests : educators :: thermometers : doctors), Steiner said New York’s thermometers aren’t very trustworthy.

According to the testing analysis, students who score below an 80 on their math Regents exams — well over the 65 required to pass — stand a good chance of being placed in remedial math courses in college. Many won’t even get to college, as the chance of them scoring at least a 500 on the math SAT is about 28 percent.

“I am saying that that figure of 80 is a fulcrum point,” Steiner said. “That below it you are just not a student who is going to score well on your SATs. And above it you are a student who will score well on your SATs.”

For the state’s English Regents exam, that fulcrum point is a 75.

Students in grades three through eight who sit through the state’s annual math and English exams have also been getting inflated results, Steiner said.

Eighth graders who score a level 3 — meaning proficient — on the math test have less than a one in three chance of getting an 80 on their math Regents. Those who get a level 3 on the ELA tests have a one in two chance of getting a 75 on the ELA Regents.

The Commissioner said he planned to improve the tests by making them more difficult. In the future, he said, they will cover more material and have higher proficiency bars. As soon as next year, they will also be significantly longer.

In New York City, a spokesman for the Department of Education said the analysis does not put the city’s rising test scores in doubt because city students’ scores are improving at a faster rate than students’ scores across the state.

State officials have refused to release Koretz’s full analysis.

anathema

…and people criticize “lazy” and “overpaid” teachers when we speak out about how ridiculously inaccurate these tests are and why we should NOT have our jobs and salaries determined by them. When will the public ever learn to think for themselves?
Winston

How is a test improved by making it more difficult? Instruction needs to be improved. Class size needs to be improved.
richard mangone

Why is it that no matter who reports the obvious that the tests have been unreliable, that the NYC Dept Of Education escapes criticism. Even the DOE response, that the results do not impact NYC test scores because city students out perform the rest of the state shows their arrogance and refusal to be held accountable for the dismal results. If the DOE is correct in their response have them explain the record numbers of city graduates who need remedial course work when attending city and state universities.
But We Already Knew This

8th grade middle school kids cannot read, let alone write, but they are passed into high school. Summer school is a joke. In high school they sink deeper in the hole. Pass a Regents? Not without the raw scores being lowered to elementary levels. How many middle school kids actually get left back? None.
philip nobile

And let’s not let UFT leaders of the hook. Every time Bloomberg and Klein gave press conferences exulting in risen scores, you saw Randi and/or Mulgrew beaming along side them,
sharing the glory of the Potemkin results. Who was more dishonest, more hypocritical? Non-educators like the mayor and the chancellor who might plead ignorance (who’s kidding whom?). Or our guys who knew exactly what was going on but pretended otherwise? You decide.
Akademos

Winston is right. The answer is not that tests must be made more difficult, nor is the entire problem that they are too easy.

Everything has to be changed: Stop the overemphasis on testing for micromanagement (data-driven inquiry teams), school closure, and teacher evaluation, when these tests were NEVER meant for ANY of that, and they’re profoundly flawed to boot. Reinvest in non-test-prep curricula. Focus on and SUPPORT real, collaborative school leadership, reasonable school missions, resources for ALL of the public schools (not just pet innovative ed projects and Charters), etc.
http://www.SpecialEducationMuckraker.com Dee Alpert

“The state’s PowerPoint from today’s meeting included some of the analysis performed by Koretz and Jennings. The State Education Department would not release the full analysis.”

The really bad news – the information NYSED hasn’t figured out how to spin – is probably in the data/analyses NYSED refused to release.” Well, that’s what the Freedom of Information Law is all about, isn’t it.

Our children, our tax dollars, our school systems. Which part of “our” doesn’t NYSED understand?
Ellen

“In New York City, a spokesman for the Department of Education said the analysis does not put the city’s rising test scores in doubt because city students’ scores are improving at a faster rate than students’ scores across the state.”

So, correct me if I am wrong, the scores are rising faster because the bar is set lower? Does anyone else see a similarity to the sub-prime mortgage debacle? People with less credit worthiness got more money so that they could pay higher interest rates. Students with lower grades got higher scores so the pass rate would soar.

If the mayor and the Chancellor are accountable, and if the teachers are going to be measured by test scores, how are we going to justify keeping anyone on the payroll?

If it weren’t so frightening I’d just say “Here’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into Ollie!”
Ellen

“The State Education Department would not release the full analysis.”
……a very scary statement. Did anyone ask why the SED won’t release the full analysis?
http://deborahmeier.com Deborah Meier

Of course, the remedial math tests used to require remediation may not be very accurate either..
Maybe it’s okay to go to college and not have to take any more math?? Maybe we need to even rethink what the purpose of college is? Maybe we need to rethink why we “incarcerate” 5-18 year olds for 6 hours a day doing something that is justified as essential in order to get decent paying job at 19 or 22??? Something is wrong here, and it won’t get better without our exploring more deeply the “whys” not just the wherefores.

Deb
http://incongressional.com Esteban Rodriguez

The thing is that many educators have been saying for years that this testing madness is harming our kids.

Throughout the course of my teaching career, the test prep curriculum steadily grew. It got to the point that, 6 weeks before the ELA and Math tests, teachers were instructed by our new principal to do test prep all day. We were to review mounds of past years tests and other test prep material. We could do nothing else. This is no exaggeration.

I spoke out against this because I knew that my students were losing out on valuable time in which they could actually learn something other than how to pass a test. The principal responded to my concerns by putting me on her $#it list.

The test is our curriculum. Our students are being robbed of the comprehensive education that many of us enjoyed. The worst part is that students who performed well on these tests suddenly realize that their education has not prepared them for the real non-test-prep world.

As long as high stakes test scores are the main gauge of health for K-12 education, our children and our country will continue to fail.
http://incongressional.com Esteban Rodriguez

Deborah,

I’ve been thinking about the answer to your question of why we “incarcerate” kids for 6 hours a day in the context of this testing agenda. The answer that continues to bubble up in my head is that it is really all about control.

We continue to push a curriculum that focuses on basic math and literacy on poor urban students. We set the bar low with these useless high stakes tests and make sit through hours of test prep.

The ones that can actually make it through this drudgery, and don’t drop out, get pregnant or arrested are mostly rewarded with skills that insufficient for most well paying jobs. Instead, they can add and subtract well enough to work as a cashier at Target. They can read well enough to stock the shelves at Pathmark. But the best skill they have learned is how to take orders.

It is a shame and it is threatening our democracy.

I wrote about this more with quotes from your colleague Diane Ravitch on incongressional.com.

http://www.incongressional.com/ravitch-and-rage/

BTW, I’m a big fan and would love if you responded. Thanks.
Michael M.

And in related news, the Emperor’s New Clothes are looking a wee bit threadbare.
Film at 11.

Note re para #1 that such incredulity didn’t keep the city’s editorial pages from expressing nothing but CREDULITY that the Mayor was performing miracles to the degree that “Education Mayor” was under consideration for a dropping of the space, the addition of a hyphen being simply not gushy enough.

Can we have a re-do on the 98% of schools that got A’s or B’s… and propelled Mayor Mike to a third term AND an extension of Mayoral Control?
Chutney

I didn’t read all comments so I don’t know if anyone already pointed this out, but the following quote does not properly identify the literary technique used by Steiner:

“Using an extended metaphor (tests : educators :: thermometers : doctors), Steiner said New York’s thermometers aren’t very trustworthy.”

This is an analogy, not an extended metaphor. An example of an extended metaphor would be Langston Hughes’ poem “Mother to Son.” As a former English teacher, I find this sort of carelessness in writing truly bothersome.
UWSDad

This conclusions drawn from this research are stupid. Making the test harder means the kids will be smarter? Excuse me? I’ve had kids in the school system for 14 years now and New York State has had the same academic standards during that time, except that they’ve changed graduation requirements for high school during this time. Ten years ago when NYC had 35% of kids proficient and Scarsdale had like 90%, no one was saying that the standards were too weak. Now with NYC at 80% and Scarsdale still at 90%, all of a sudden people are falling all over themselves reporting that tests are too easy and the standards weak. I think if NYC was still at 35% these same people wouldn’t be saying anything about weak standards. City educators are doomed because of their own poor expectations of urban kids.
Invictus

UWSDad, this new “discovery” that the standards and their incredible ‘improvements’ are not something not measurable clearly shows you that all the things that are so taunted about the incredible leaps that NYC metro education about by Bloom and Company really mean nothing…especially when you consider how some of these test numbers are reached.

What about schools and entire departments correcting their own student’s test? Would you credibly believe the results as are reported by schools on their own students?

Moreover, believe it or not, the overall criteria in grading these so called exams are simply laughable in that a student can simply repeat large sections of a text, have an intro which is copied word by word from the task section, and then have a very weak conclusion…that will give you a 3 out of 5…These students can hardly write well or to the point but they get a passing grade.

The only true measure of how a school has made a progress is the amount of students who make it to college and then graduate. Now, you cannot expect the DoE to be tracking down those sort of significant stats, as they are unable to even ensure some students who are LTA(Long Term Absentees)are missing due to truancy or because they have moved to a different state or overseas?

BTW, if a school receives a student who is supposed to be in the 9th grade but has a 3rd grade reading level in their native language, would that student be able to pass the Global Studies regents in 2 years time? They are given the option of using the a Spanish test, if they happen to come from a Spanish speaking country…and also an English version but what good is this Spanish test if the student does not even have a primary school reading level in Spanish?

So here is your statement, “City educators are doomed because of their own poor expectations of urban kids” put in a context in order to make some sense.

NYS standards are deceitful and mostly, they have been political. The educators in Albany as well as the politicians there know that the standards are a sham and no one has the galls to tell people the truth to the parents and the children that their ‘achievements’ are a mirage.
http://incongressional.com Esteban Rodriguez

UWSDad,

You could not be more wrong. Teachers enjoy any opportunity to challenge their students.

However, most teachers have little say over the curriculum. Most every major curriculum decision is made at the top, case in point: Everyday Math, Balanced Literacy, Reading First, Dibels, etc.
And much of these choices are based upon how students perform on these faulty high stakes tests.

Rather than blaming teachers, we really should be taking a closer look into the efficacy of these programs. If almost all k-5 students are using Everday Math and a majority of them are unprepared for middle school math, then a large part of the problem may be the curriculum.
Smith

Nobile is right. The UFT leadership knew this was going on and made a calculated political decision not to tell the truth.
Catoctin

Even if you thought changing (rather than dumping) the tests is the way to go, the issue is not about making them harder. It’s more about making them less susceptible to bracket creep. Unfortunately, high-stakes standardized test scores almost ALWAYS go up every year — until you switch to a new test. It’s just a matter of teachers becoming familiar with what’s on them and gearing their instruction to it. So you toughen the tests, and the dance begins again. Uh, did this turn into an argument for dumping them?
Rosheen Hunter

I blame Lucy Calkins…bottom line.

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July 19, 2010

At long last, state offers evidence that test standards are low

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