GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

“Charter schools have their scores and can decide individually how to share them.”

Well, so much for transparency. What was that again about charters being “public schools?”

Maybe it’s because I prepared myself ahead of time by looking at my school’s scores when NYSED released the district and school breakdowns, but I wasn’t particularly shocked or disappointed when I logged into ARIS today.  Most of the scores were fairly consistent with the predictive assessments and where I thought my students were, scoring changes notwithstanding.  If the past two years’ scores tell me anything about next year, it’s that I need to ignore the test madness even more than I usually do and simply try to give my students a really high-quality and deep experience with reading and writing.

It also makes me sad to see so many teachers castigating themselves for how “badly” their students did on these tests when quite a few schools actively discourage quality teaching of literature and writing.

Queens Parent, where do you think your child is as an English student?  Does he like to read and write?  Do you read his writing and find it to be coherent and thoughtful?  Does he read a wide variety of texts and, after doing so, is he able to discuss and question what he read?  Is he able to read texts across subjects in school with comfort and confidence?  Is he a good researcher, able to find information he needs for reports or for his own interest, and sort out reliable information from unreliable?

If you think the answers to those questions are all “yes,” then I wouldn’t lose any sleep over the ELA exam.  I know it’s hard if you’re thinking about high school, because some of the selective non-specialized schools want 4s on ELA, math, or both.  Your child’s teacher should at least be familiar with the strands of the exam that students in his/her class struggle with, and will probably, in the coming year, be drilling down with individual students to the individual strand with which they struggle.  My guess is that your usually very able son simply gets tripped up on the weaker questions on the exam (there are always a couple of ambiguous, poorly written questions) to which two or three answers look very likely to be right.  But if you and your child’s teachers find your son to be inquisitive, eloquent, curious, and confident as a reader and writer, then I suspect your son will be just fine in the very long run.

And if the answers are “no” to some of those questions, well, you may have something of an answer.  If he doesn’t like to read or write, the test may just put him in a bad mood.  If he struggles to articulate thoughts on paper even if he is a good thinker and speaker, he may trip up on the constructed response or the extended response questions.  If he only reads one kind of text regularly–maybe he loves the sports section in the paper but hates novels and poetry, say–he may not feel comfortable enough with the multiple kinds of texts the ELA exam brings up.  If he does poorly in a subject like social studies that requires a lot of critical nonfiction reading, he may be struggling with the nonfiction texts.  If he seems overwhelmed by trying to find the answer to a question on his own, he may need some support with research and with discerning irrelevant from relevant and unreliable from reliable information.

Without knowing your son, it’s hard to say.  But talk to him.  Ask him and yourself some of the questions I mentioned.  Ask your son’s teacher, in the fall, to see the breakdown of his test score along the content strands (he/she will have that information) so you can see if there’s a pattern.  In fact, you might have that available now on ARIS ParentLink.  

Hope that helps.  And again, if your son’s grades are good and he seems like a confident reader and writer most of the time, it may just be bad luck.  

Eyre is on target. The tests are far from ideal, even if the skills they’re testing for are vital and important to teach well and learn fully. For many students, especially kids who are consistently two or three grades below reading level each year, the 3-8 ELA tests in their current form will always pose a problem. So much of the test is multiple choice, and many of the kids will invariably guess (or at least quasi-guess, meaning they won’t guess the one or two most obvious distractors) at many of the answers, thinking that they are “probably” right and have therefore done a sufficient job. Of course most of them will only get a quarter of the answers correct. And so they will, properly, receive 1′s, or low 2′s.

The most interesting test to watch middle school kids take is the 8th grade social studies test, in which students must respond to the document-based questions and answer in sentences (alas, 2010 was probably the last year the test will be administered). Many of them throw their hands up when confronted with this part of the test, since they can’t haggle their way out of it with some prewritten option that’s been presented to them. This is the kind of test that the 3-8 ELA exam should really be, from start to finish. Obviously it would be entail many challenges.

And now we’re here, August 2010. In middle schools that are filled with high-risk kids, students’ performance was about the same as it’s been for many years. Which is of course to say not nearly good enough. The job of a parent in New York is to steer your child to as great a degree as possible into classrooms led by teachers who put their heart into developing and teaching their units and lessons, who choose their books carefully, and who make significant intellectual demands of their students. Working as if all his parents were looking over his shoulder, shaking their head at this or nodding at that. 

Until then, the test scores will be what they are. Until there is a new kind of test. And then we will all adjust to that. In the meantime, it’s all about grammar, great literature, asking good questions, having discussions, and learning to write like your life depends on it. 

These scores are very unpredictable.I worked very hard with my daughter last year,who was in 3rd grade, prepairing for her tests.She practiced on line, and took every math and ela test from 2005-2009.She consistently performed exceedingly well on both.However she never got anything wrong on her math.In school she was an excellent reader,writer and also very good at math.I was expecting a very high 4 on math and hoping for at least a low 4 on ela.Being that it’s very diddficult to achieve a 4 on the ela,I was hoping she would get one.What she ended up getting was a 707(low 4)on her math, and 780(perfect or highest score) on her ela.I was very happy but confused.I thought it would be the reverse.Anyway,my goal for next year is to maintain the very high ela score while bringing the math up to 750 or higher.She’ll be in 4th grade and those scores will be used to determine her middle school.Even if your child scores perfect on both exams,they have to maintain it and that’s incredibly difficult.My son took the Hunter tests last year.He qualified with a 780 on math and 712 on ela for 5th grade.This past year in 6th, he only got 711 on math and 669 on ela.I worked very hard with him also. He must have had a bad day