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Mayor Michael Bloomberg, flanked by Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, defended the city's test scores at Tweed Courthouse yesterday.

Talking about the definition of academic proficiency yesterday, Mayor Michael Bloomberg struck a relativist note.

“Everybody can have their definition of what it means,” he said. Later, he added: “The last time I checked, Lady Gaga is doing fine with just a year of college.”

He even asked reporters not to refer to students who score above a Level 3 out of 4 as “proficient.”

The request follows new revelations that the bar for “proficiency” on state tests seems to have dropped over time, so that even though more students statewide were meeting it each year, they were not actually learning more. In response, the state this year took steps to tug standards higher.

Yet even as he called the definition of “proficient” into question, Bloomberg vigorously defended the administration’s tough accountability system, which uses the Level 1 to 4 system to determine which students move on to the next grade and as one piece of schools’ report card grades.

Bloomberg has also used rising numbers of students scoring at Level 3 as a referendum on his education policies, arguing over and over again that because the rates are going up, the policies must work. Just last year, announcing that more students were “meeting or exceeding grade-level math standards,” a reference to more students scoring Level 3 or higher, Bloomberg called the results “proof” of New York City schools’ excellence. (more…)