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Told they passed, thousands of students failed state exams

Thousands of students are moving up to the next grade this fall even though they failed last year’s state reading and math tests.

Caught between two sets of conflicting test standards — one produced by the city, one by the state — over 10,000 students were wrongly labeled as passing or failing.

Some of them, about 1,807, will get to skip the last week of the summer session, which they had attended unnecessarily. The new state standards show that these students passed their exams.

But the vast majority of them, about 8,500, were initially told they passed and will shortly learn that they actually failed. City education officials have decided to promote these students to the next grade level, though in a typical year they might have been held back.

A teacher emailed to say that a few eighth graders at his school were told they passed the test, but the state’s cutoff scores now show that they failed. Still, they will begin high school in the fall.

On the flip side, the school sent a fourth grader to summer school for initially failing the test, meaning the boy could not spend the summer with his father. Now, the new standards show the student didn’t need to attend.

The problem began when a new exam schedule and the state’s decision to adjust test standards meant the exam results wouldn’t be released until late July. With summer school beginning in June, schools had to know which students to require to attend, so the city set its own preliminary cutoff scores.

The state’s cutoff scores came out yesterday and they don’t quite match up.

“I think it’s fair to say we were surprised at how many kids we under-identified,” said Department of Education spokesman Matt Mittenthal.

For the reading test, in particular, the state set higher cutoff scores than the city’s own estimates for grades three through eight. Of the students who were wrongly identified as passing, 7,000 of them met the city’s standards in reading, but not the state’s.

The city also lowballed the math test for third and eighth graders, but overshot for grades four, five, and seven. About 1,000 students in grades three and eight will be told in a few weeks that they failed the math test, though the city initially passed them. And about 1,807 students in grades four, five, and seven, will get letters today telling them they can leave summer school early, as the new standards show that they are proficient.

Mittenthal said that students who failed the test according to the state’s standards, but passed the city’s bar, would be promoted and given additional help next year.

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  • Michael Fiorillo

    Here’s a headline: “Falsely Claiming Schools Improved, Bloomberg and Klein Failed”

  • http://nyceducator.com NYC Educator

    Boy, it’s a good thing absolutely nothing is ever the fault of Mayor Bloomberg or Chancellor Klein. Otherwise they would look pretty ridiculous.

  • Mustafa

    Class action lawsuit against BloomKlein? SCI investigation?

  • HM

    Klein on fox news stated that it’s a bunch of boloney that poverty can be a contributing factor in student performance. WOW. I done got it all backwards.

  • bronxmathteach

    since i am an 8th grade math teacher, i checked out how this would’ve affected students for 8th grade math from 2009 to 2010:

    Level 2 cut score was 23 scale points higher. 2009’s raw score of 15 marked a Level 2, but in 2010 the raw score needed was 23, a gain of 8 raw points. In 2009, a Level 2 was a student who answered just 22% of the test correctly, but to be a Level 2 in 2010, students needed to answer 33% of the test correctly.

    Level 3 cut score was 23 scale points higher. 2009’s raw score of 35 marked a Level 3, but in 2010 the raw score needed was 50, a gain of 15 raw points. In 2009, a Level 3 was a student who answered at least 51% of the test correctly, but in 2010, a Level 3 is a student who answered at least 72% of the test correctly.

    Level 4 represents the same achievement in both years, with a raw score of 65 out of a possible 69 points. Level 4’s correctly answered at least 93% of the exam.

  • Lisa Donlan

    This proves that the whole BloomKlein cabal has been perpetrating SOCIAL PROMOTION all these years!
    Let’s fire the whole PEP (except for Patrick, of course)!

  • I noticed that…

    Lisa,

    I agree with you. Fire their sorry buttocks of an excuse! Except Patrick!

    In fact, let’s line them up, like a firing squad, and allow u-rated/terminated teachers to throw erasers and chalk at them.

  • EFM

    “…to be a Level 2 in 2010, students needed to answer 33% of the test correctly.” -bronxmathte

    Kids are being told they can end summer school early because they managed to get a 33 on the state test? Pretending for a moment that these tests actually show what they’re supposed to, how does earning a 33 make you ready for the next grade?

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  • Kalisa

    If the kids that were told that the passed and really failed will automatically go on the next grade, why not let everyone go on. If they are moving on because of the city’s errors, why should any of the kids be stressed to take the test over.

  • bunzi

    In my opinion, the reason that so many students are below standard is because the range of a level 2 is ridiculous. How can a student that received 28 out off 33 correct on the reading test be considered a level 2? Also, how can a student that received 33 out of 39 correct on the math receive a level 2? This isn’t fair to the sstudents. Parents should demand answers when they get their children’s scores on August 16th.

  • http://www.classsizematters.org Leonie Haimson

    What these results indicate is not just that the cut scores have been set wrong; but the questions and/or scoring for the written portions in the ELA have become so ridiculously easy that you have to get a near perfect score to be a level four; with no more than one question wrong in grades 3,5-8; and only 2 questions wrong in 4th grade.

    This reveals a badly designed and constructed exam, with too narrow a range of difficulty. The same goes for the 3rd grade math exam.

    When looking at the 4th grade ELA results by schools, there are other evident problems in that a smaller proportion of students got a 4 in this exam than in either 3rd or 5th-8th grade consistently across schools; which appears to reveal other problems in test construction or design.

  • Kalisa

    No one should have to take the test. I think that only certain children are being singled out to take the test. This is unfair to the children that went to summer school. If the chancellor can pass some, why can’t he pass ALL? It seems to me that the chancellor wants CERTAIN children to move on and CERTAIN ones to remain behind.

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