GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

and this isn’t an indictment of the current system’s failure? where is leadership now?

You’d have to be living under a rock to be surprised by this. To pass the Integrated Algebra Regents with a score of 65, students need to earn 30 out of 87 points, or 34.48%. This is the one math exam required for a “Regents Diploma”, which USED (not anymore) to be an indication that students completed a rigorous college prep academic program.

The scoring for Geometry is slightly more strict, with 41 out of 86 points or 47.67% correct required to receive a 65. Algebra 2 and Trigonometry is the most math rigorous exam, and the only one that requires more than 50% correct to pass. Students must earn 46 or 88 points or 52.27% correct to receive a 65. Since Geometry and Algebra 2/Trig are only required for the new “Advanced Regents Diploma”, many students don’t take these challenging courses.

Having worked in both high school and colleges, you would be shocked to see how poor many students’ math skills are. Remedial math (and English) classes are a shockingly high percentage of department offerings. How sad for students in enroll in “college” and be required to enroll in Elementary Algebra or Pre-Algebra even. This is another example of how watered down the educational standards have become.

The Post had an editorial on this today….this is what I wrote in the comment section:

•What a bunch of hypocrites you are. When the arrogant, incompetent, unqualified lawyer masquerading as an educator running the NYC school system beats his chest and tells us how he has improved education because graduation rates are up, you applaud him. You don’t want to hear what teachers have been trying to tell you that these stats are as phony as a $3 bill.

But making an exam more difficult will do nothing if they don’t rid of the scaled score thing. Oh you don’t know what that means….on the June algebra regents, it took 30 credits out of 87 to be considered to have passed the exam. That’s less than 35%. And the exam starts off with 30 multiple choice questions worth 2 credits each. So let’s say, for argument’s sake, a kid knows how to answer 10 of them and just guesses at the remaining 20. Probbility says that since there are 4 choices for each question, on the 20 questions the kid guessed at he’ll get 5 right. That’s 15 right answers which is 30 credits which is enough to pass the Algebra regents.

Then we have the advocates of merit pay for teachers and Principals. You don’t think, since they grade their own exams, there aren’t shenanigans going on to protect their interests, to see the meaningless the ignorant Chancellor gives to school isn’t a D or F (such grades being based on these flawed exams and grading?)

Yet you go on applauding the Chancellor. Keep it up you hypocrites.

But we’ll see Klein and Bloomberg never questioned about this when they go on NY1 or Bloomberg goes on WOR or throw out garbage like well we know the tests are not what they should be but our graduation rates are improving faster than those in other parts of the state.

Iat is a farce and we all know it.

Really why is this news?  What does everyone think’s been going on here the last 10 years.  The kids I teach are woefully behind.  Last year I brought home a bunch of papers I had kids write.  I wanted to type them because of course we have no proper computer lab.  My husband helped me with the typing.  He was shocked and appalled at the writing.  He couldn’t believe it.  He kept repeating: “These are 9th graders”?  Yep, they are nominally.  In real terms they are more like 2nd and 3rd graders with the higher end of the class more like 6th graders.  Why?  In my opinion, their behavior has a lot to do with it.  They have poor impulse control, cannot stop talking, have a hard time focusing.  So I spend the first half of the year, training them on how to be students.  How to listen, how to stop talking for more than 30 seconds, how to have a class discussion.  Some children are so poorly behaved and they just take all the attention and focus of the class.  Class size is too big.  The kids who would benefit the most by a smaller class size are in classes of 30 kids, all far behind, all at risk, all with huge behavioral issues.  I’m sure all of this will just be attributed to another whiny teacher, but in the end, as I’ve been saying for the last 10 years, the losers are the kids.  

Roma, you got nothing to justify, you are telling as it is and what you have experienced has happened in many different classrooms in NYC Public Schools, some of them rated A and Bs by the liers in suit who are up to some political gains.  

Bovine, the reason why teachers are not growing “pairs” as you implied have to do with the fact that the great majority of teachers in the schools in the front lines of the this justification of our jobs/our professional lives, are stuck between the veritable chasm of upper management harassment and the intense pressure to conform, as their jobs they once thought were inalienable and their job protections rock solid are slowly and steadily chipped away by Billionaires in suit, as well as a  Corporate Lawyer that took down evil Soft and are forefront of dismantling Public Education in the US, pandering their propaganda and their lies to the Middle Classes that haven’t gotten a clue about what is right and wrong because they have a “bovine” mentality about what is ailing the US Public Schools.  

It’s not the scale – although the scale is lousy.

The exams are poorly designed, poorly written. They contain only a smattering of algebra, and a grab bag of assorted topics.

The Integrated Algebra Regents measures how well a kid does on the Integrated Algebra Regents, and nothing else. It does not correlate to mathematical skill or mathematical knowledge, and no tinkering can fix it.

New York State is throwing away money, creating exams that an experienced teacher would reject for their own classroom.

Mike Bloomberg is a pretty intelligent man. After all, he has enjoyed great success in the business information field from which he has earned billions of dollars. I’m equally certain that Mike likes to hire only the best and brightest graduates to fill the ranks of his company. I wonder, then, if Mike would hire any of the NYC HS “graduates” who, according to the mayor, are performing at academic levels beyond all imagination. My guess is that he wouldn’t dream of placing even one of these “graduates”, of whom he is so proud, into the mailroom.

Last post should read…”when a smart lawyer recruits NYC HS graduates as plaintiffs for a class action lawsuit against NYC who have…”

Dee Alpert,

I’ve got no disagreement with references to dysfunction and malpractice at the SED. But is this torpid (if not zombie-like) bureaucracy really the driving force behind test mania, and the deformations and corruption that result?

Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that, by being complicit with the political and economic actors who are pushing this inherently dishonest model, the SED helped enable it?

It’s wrong, there’s no question. But I would guess that back in 1990, it was done, as you say, on marginally failing paper (63% or something like that) for graduating seniors for reasons that might be understandable…..should a kid fail to graduate from high school because he or she missed a cut off by 1 question. Mind you, I’m not defending it, I’m just saying I understand it. I spent many years as an AP math, and we always looked very carefully at marginally failing papers and while I would absolutely never change an answer, I always asked teachers to re-read these papers and ask one question, is there any way we can justify giving the student the benefit of the doubt…did we stretch a tad, probably. But we never did it because we were worried about our passing percentage. The difference between a 63 and a 65 is totally artificial and to keep a kid from graduating on that basis is almost criminal quite frankly. Again, I’m not condoning it. I looked at every paper and almost always could come up with some justification why an additional credit or two could be awarded. Were there hundreds of changes? No, absolutely not. To this day, I believe it was the right thing to do.

However, we would never bring a paper up 5 or 6 credits unless there was a gross error of course. For those who don’t understand and say math is an exact science, yes it is but long responses in those days were worth 10 credits and guidelines simply said a careless or mechanical error should receive a 10% deduction and substantial error a 30 to 50% deduction.

However, what is going on today is a product, at east in math, on the idiocy of the Math A and now the Integrated Algebra Regents exams with their arbitrary cut offs, with the idea there are no longer 10 credit free responses but rather 2 or 3 or at most 4 credit free responses but most importantly because of the fact that people like the current incompetent, arrogant, unqualified lawyer masquerading as an educator running the NYC schools, now issues report cards based on this stuff to schools, closes “failing” schools and wants tenure decisions on teachers based on stuff like this. It is now in the best interest of the teachers (and ore importantly) the Principals to get as high a passing grade as possible so they are forced to do wholesale changes. And Klein doesn’t cdare; all he wants to do is go on radio and tell the world how his “accountability” and policies has improved graduation rates. I’m not condoning it and I’ve long since retired, thank goodness, and don’t have to deal with this. I would like to believe I would never be a party to this, but then again I never had to fear for my job on the basis of these results nor did I work for a Principal who worried about the same thing. We knew our teachers had done the best they could. And now, it can only get worse once we start paying people based on the results of these exams (merit pay and executive Principals and master teachers and the rest of this new garbage). And trust me on this and we saw it in 2003. In 2003, it was the first year that there was no longer a Sequential Math regents exam. Kids throughout the state were forced to take the Math A Regents exam. The exam, like almost all Math A exams, was a disaster leaving out large portions of the course of study (there was none, the new jargon of standards was in force) and lots of kids, even in the rich suburban districts failed or didn’t do as well as usual. This too occrred on the Physics regents. Well the outcry went up. You see as long as the failures occurred in the big 5 cities among the disadvantaged kids, the failures could be written off and the teachers blamed. But as soon as it spred to suburbia, there were all sorts of calls for investigations and the like. Of course the first reaction of SED was to blame the teachers for not teaching to the new standards but as the outcry grew, they had to react. And the reaction was, and it has continued at least on the Math A and now the Integrated Algebra, to lower the cut off point on these conversion tables. Of course they have no validity, we might as well have a ouija board doing it (they probably do), although I will say this. The cut off on the math used to be 28…now it’s risen to 30.

Oh for the days of real Regents exams when kids needed 65 to pass but then a whole bunch of psychometricials would be out of work!

This has been a political game since the Math A was re-scaled in 2004. The State refuses to acknowledge the fact that the exams are poorly written. They also contain too much content that does not flow together, thus preventing ensure effective teaching/learning. NYS Math teachers were so hopeful when the decision was made to junk the Math A exam, yet once the Integrated Algebra sample test was published, it was clear that the State was not moving in the right direction. It is shameful how NYSED has completely lost control of the situation and will not take necessary measures to right the ship. What a joke!