GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Let’s see how this “news” gets spun by the educational reformers and the NYC daily rag newspapers. Bloomie is going to brag that he is doing a great job making changes in the school system and will make demands for more radical changes to further enhance his agenda to privatize public education. The DOE will also claim that effective management is why our students did so much “better” than the rest of the state. However, you will so no praise for the actual NYC teachers who raised these test scores.

As predicted, relatively statistically insignificant but the Emperor needs something to cheer him up and try to throw out the illusion of what a wonderful job he has been doing in turning around the schools (of course in the state report, there’s been not the slightest budge in the achievement gap.  We’ll see if he talks to this.
 
BTWaccording to the NY1 report, the numnber of students achieving top scores of 4 decreased by a far greater amount than the number of students at the bottom who squieezed into the proficient category.  Make of it what you wish.

I have never seen raw scores in a report of this kind. These reports disclose scale scores and proficiency rates.

I want to keep an open mind, but are these improvements(?) statistically significant? Given that the past claims of educational improvement  by Bloomberg were questionable, how can these claims now be believable?

The Mayor has spent millions on improving test scores. School’s have spent countless hour’s on improving test scores,while stagnating the overall learning process. And all the DOE has done was shown a SLIGHT improvement of test scores. What a sham this whole educational process has become.

Oh pshaw, you can’t meet or exceed the charter schools.  That would mean they aren’t the miracles touted by hedge funders and profiteers…oops, that sounds like derivatives. 

This….. is a great country!  take away learning and create a work force accustomed to mediocrity.  The titans of the Industrial Revolution must be grinning from ear to ear….no education, no questions; no questions, no answers; no answers, no problems!

We are The Borg!

Lots of caution here re the city’s (as usual) claims of gains outperforming the rest of state:
1- higher stakes in city schools will tend to lead to higher (but highly unreliable) gains, a la Campbell’s law;
2- the state exams are still highly flawed as shown by the tiny no. of 4′s and fact that the same people are in charge as when test scores were inflated (state will switch vendors next yr; )
3- the city’s gains are so small as to likely be statistically meaningless.

 Is there any psychometrician at the state or city level who even understands statistics and  can be trusted to provide any guidance on these issues? 

DOE says August 17th

Teachers can’t see the scores yet either. The reason is because these tests are not actually, truly meant to help parents or teachers. They aren’t really meant to inform our work with the children. Why else would we not get them until they’re no longer actionable information?

I agree the tests in Grades 3 & 4 weren’t that difficult. It’s the twisted scoring that makes them look like the bar is held so high. To get a performance level 4 on the 2011 Grade 4 ELA test, the lowest scale score you could get was a 722. That’s  @ 22-28 scale score points higher than usual…  The tests this year were even somewhat rigorous in the upper grades (7 & 8)  but the way they built the scores was the same “mad scientist in the padlocked kitchen” technique. They are still “fixing” the combined level 3 & 4 scores to look decent, while making the 4′s paltry to look like the standards really are SO high. (In grades 3 and 4, they were not. Better than the usual slop but not really the destination with which we should be satisfied…)

Parents, teachers and other citizens should not accept these test scores unless the test is different each year and administered by people outside the district. Too many decisions are being made based on test scores that are probably not valid.