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EFM what does your statement mean, “finally” numbers that confirm my students are as dumb as I think they are? I think these results say more about the adults my kids than the kids themselves really. I continue to be floored at the kinds of adults NYC has placed in classrooms to educate kids. I’ve met some of them, who are barely literate themselves, but who nonetheless possess an “education” degree and tenure, who are armed, locked and loaded to do damage to kids. And if I get another notice from either a teacher or principal that contains spelling and grammatical errors, I think my head is going to explode.

Where can we find the results for each school?

Scores by school and by district:

http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/irts/ela-math/

oops “ARE there any school by school numbers?”

Let’s see how the arrogant, incompetent, unqualified lawyer masquerading as an educator is going to spin this one (you know we did less badly than other places in the state…..but it really just goes to show sucess or failure has nothing to do with the teachers….the teaching staff did not change all that much from one year to the next….it is totally dependent on the test…make the test easy (or the passing score) and teachers, it is claimed, can be made to look good. Make the passing scenario harder, and then you can blame the teachers. We’ll wait to hear Mr. Klein’s words of wisdom.

Not sure what EFM meant either, but I have to say, having seen my school’s results, I think they “make sense” from the view that they are probably more truly reflective of where my kids where. I did a few of my own assesssments at the start of the year, and when I compared them to the scores the kids got on the state exams the year before, the differences in some cases was staggering. There were several students who got 2′s who scored two grade levels below on my assessments. The same was true for kids who had 3′s- they didn’t do grade-level work through the year despite being “on grade level” according to their test scores.

Teacher, I agree with your comments about TC- we booted it a while ago because it was a disaster for our kids. Of course, we had no textbooks to take its place. We used to use a wonderful literature anthology series that seemed to cover all the bases- but of course they had to be entirely scrapped when BloomKlein took over. Ironically, my principal sold the books to a private school- they were practically brand new.

The title of the bar graph says it all. It is painful for me to see that our so called reformers are wasting their time in statistical gimmicks for political purposes while they are destroying public education. Instead of supporting schools and their communities, they made a calculated decision to demonize teachers. You can not destroy teachers moral, disregard their hard work, and expect unrealistic results. Educating a person involves many variables. You can not improve education by choosing the easiest targets for scapegoating.

I think the most tragic aspect of this is that after years of hearing that the achievement gap has been narrowed, we find that it is still firmly, tenaciously in place for African American and Hispanic students, students with disabilities, English language learners, and low-income students. I have seen quite a bit of press this spring about the lack of African American, Hispanic, and low-income students in the G&T programs and the specialized high schools. This seems beside the point to me. Instead of focusing on creaming the few high ability students–or those whose parents are most proactive–into charter schools and gifted and talented programs, I think our educational leaders should be studying what causes the achievement gap and what we need to do, starting on a child’s first day in every neighborhood public school, to eliminate it. I have for many years watched this gap play out in my own child’s schools, and I do not believe there is a civil rights issue that is more important to our own time or to our future.

DOE Swindler’s List

The change in the scores is no surprise to any classroom teacher who knows her students. If any good comes out of this test crazy environment, developing a test that appropriately evlauates grade level proficiency would be a good thing. The problem is when accountability ( a good thing for teachers and equally principals ) becomes blame-ability and results are not used to improve craft by looking at curriculums that work, successful schools and teachers, spreading best practices and providing quality interventions services. Isn’t that what assessment is supposed to be about????

“Our educational leaders should be studying what causes the achievement gap and what we need to do, starting on a child’s first day in every neighborhood public school, to eliminate it.”

Thank you, District 13 Parent, for putting the focus where it belongs.

The greatest outrage is that educational researchers KNOW what causes the achievement gap. It mostly comes from disparities in the home environment in the earliest years of children’s lives. 90% of the gap in eighth grade test scores is present the first day of Kindergarten. We absolutely need to focus in the earliest grades on instructional strategies to improve the basic learning skills of struggling students.

Klein and Bloomberg’s policies distract us from this job.

We also need programs that address the problem in the first years of life. Programs like the Parent-Child Home Program have been shown in longitudinal studies to completely ERASE the gap in graduation rates.

Every time a politician or pundit starts yammering about tests and teachers, parents and educators must holler out, as District 13 Parent has done, “Stop spinning and start addressing the problem at its source.”

The achievement gap numbers are truly astounding. We tried to crunch them a bit here: http://www.gothamgazette.com/blogs/wonkster/2010/07/28/parsing-the-test-scores/

Perhaps equally distressing, though, is the spin. As they did during the debate over mayoral control Bloomberg and Klein present the issue as whether we want to go back to the “bad old days.” Today they repeatedly cited “progress’ in their eight years of control.

Yes scores have improved over those eight years (though other things have been lost with that). But the real issue is whether others with a different idea and approach could have done better. No matter how bad things once were, a system where, by the city and state’s measure, less than 40 percent of eight graders do not meet language arts standards is in o way successful. And that ignores the really appalling numbers for various sections of the student body, such as blacks or special ed students.

Politicians need votes, so they will do whatever’s possible of spinning inaccurate/deceitful information that will suit the voters’ needs to feel that they voted for the so-called right person for the job.

Bloomberg, crafty spinmeister, is an extremely wealthy person with unfettered power who cares very little for the children of NYC except to use them as a means to get re-elected over and over again!

As long as Bloomberg is in office, Klein will be his right-hand puppet to destroy public education and our children will be the casualty of their relentless pursuit to deceive the public in order to seem as though they’re altruistic in their cause.

I truly hope that the public is outraged by this and action is taken by the community at large. Do it for the kids who were exploited by the Bloomberg administration and Klein.

What is really sad about this situation in NYC is the fact that these exams illuminated the deficiencies in grades 3-8, and yet the most punitive actions have been at the high school level, grades 9-12.

How much effort has been made, and how much money has been spent closing, and replacing large comprehensive high schools, when it is apparent the problems are in the primary, and intermediate grades.

Winston (2:55 pm), you are right on the money.

KitchenSink, you’re right about Richard Mills–but the correct answer to who is responsible for the mess is not to be polite or evasive. The correct answer is to sue for recovery for damages done to our kids, resulting from deception and defective test instruments.

And until they come clean about what really went wrong with the testing program, Tisch and Steiner are part of the problem.

My new mantra is: Fool me eight times, shame on you; fool me nine times…..

Kitchen Sink,

To claim that Tisch (among many others) has not been complicit in this fraud is preposterous.

Please don’t insult our intelligence by suggesting that, having now discovered that gambling is taking place at Rick’s Cafe Americain, she is now going to clean the place up.

Or are you worried that, with charter schools having been shown to have done worse than public schools on the vaunted exams, this whole house of cards might be a little wobbly?

Vote NO is spot on.  These tests were flawed.  The kids graduated from junior high school with inflated grades and the high schools were punished.

Large high schools closed down.  ATR’s made of good teachers.  Programs shut down.  High school kids sent off to college to fail and be damaged financially for it.

This is all criminal.  Bloomberg, Klein, Gates, newspaper editorial boards, and anyone else who was spewing “look at our success” hogwash over the past 8 years.

Parents, students, teachers, and college professors have every right to be furious about this educational swindle.

In 2005, I had a 5th grade student with disabilities who was reading at a Kindergarten level. She passed the ELA exam. That experience, and subsequent ones, taught me a lot about the efficacy of these tests. Teachers have been aware all along that the state tests are poor measures of student ability. Now, everyone knows.

We need more intelligent teachers and adminnistrators, surely. I wouldn’t demonize balanced literacy or toss out the Teachers College Reading and Writing Project. Balanced literacy requires intelligent, well-trained and very hard working teachers who are given enough time to teach reading and writing (2 hours a day) and that time is rarely provided.

Why don’t we study the schools that did well and compare them to schools with similar demographics that did not? Let’s sort out why Harlem Success Academy is such a success.

You’re missing the point—which is that charters, which predominately serve African-american and latino kids, continue to outperform the district even in a year when African-american and latino kids experienced the biggest drop in overall proficiency.

As for the comment about taking charter school’s scores – like those of Harlem Success Academy — seriously — ANY school can cheat. NOT simply charter schools but any public school as well, and I imagine that some do, but clearly most do not (or at least not very well!).

Why should one assume (without any proof at all) that a school with high scores must have achieved them by cheating? That level of non-inquiry is exactly what we should not be teaching children. Harlem Success issued a press release about their scores noting that students attend school on Saturdays, students read for 3 hours a day and the school has a lot of parent involvement. These are things one should explore.

Clearly, we can do better with students and one way to start is by looking at the methods of those who actually are doing better.

If good results are achieved by cheating, that will become clear. I, for one, am going to look at this with an open mind and not with an assumption of wrongdoing.

Another Parent, charter schools are allowed to score their own students, unlike district public schools. This presents a powerful temptation to cheat. Not all of them score their own students, some apparently participate in group scoring at the NYC Charter Center, but since no info is available about which do and which don’t, and there is no oversight applied by SED or the city, one should be properly skeptical as to any self-reported, self- scoring from charter schools.

Dear Friends, The success of children in a public education system is an extremely complex issue. Public schools are true microcosms of our society. The problems society faces are mirrored there every day. So there is no single program , person, or solution that will “fix ” it or it would have been done  long ago. Unfortunately, state testing is a very poor measure of true success as well.  Assessment that occurs throughout the year, monitoring ongoing progress from beginning to end is a more accurate measure of student success. Furthermore, in regards to which programs to embrace or discard…it is the quality of the teacher ,NOT the program, that determines how well things work. Research has proven time and time again, the single most important factor impacting student success/progress is an excellent teacher!!