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Beginning next year, state math and reading tests will be given in May, rather than two months apart in January and March, the state decided earlier this week. But beyond the barest outline of the schedule, details about the change are still unclear.

Details up in the air include when exactly the tests will be given and how results will be tabulated in time for the start of the next school year. “Work is now underway to revise current examination calendars and scoring timelines,” State Education Department deputy commissioner Johanna Duncan-Poitier said in materials released this week.

The schedule change is throwing schools’ plans for next year into question just as teachers are leaving for the summer. Steven Evangelista, the principal of Harlem Link Charter School, said his teachers have already planned their lessons for all of next year, and finding out that the state tests are moving is forcing them to revise the plans.

“At this late date, when we have already mapped out our entire curriculum and assessment calendar for 2009-10, changing the date of high-stakes tests throws a monkey wrench in our plans,” Evangelista said, adding that he wondered whether getting results over the summer would give teachers enough time to use the data to inform their instruction. He said he hadn’t heard about the Regents’ debate before this week.

In the past, some schools have focused more heavily on reading before the state test in January, then shifted their focus to math in the months before the March math test. Some schools also plan different kinds of lessons for after the state tests, when the pressure to prepare students for the exams has lifted.

Even schools that shun explicit test prep, including Evangelista’s, say the schedule change could pose problems for them. (more…)

Some high schools allow students who fail a class to get credit for it anyway by completing a short course or special project in a controversial practice known as “credit recovery.” But despite the practice’s widespread use, credit recovery has actually never been permitted under state regulations, which require a certain amount of “seat time” for students to earn course credit.

Now, the practice could soon get a green light from the State Education Department, which last year said it would review whether credit recovery met its standards for course completion. At its meeting this week, the Board of Regents reviewed a proposal from SED for a formal policy on what the department called “‘making-up’ course credit.” 

The proposed policy, which SED developed in collaboration with the city Department of Education, does away with seat time as a basic standard for whether students earn high school course credit. The proposal would require schools to establish committees of teachers and administrators to determine whether a student’s make-up work should receive credit. It would not require that students spend a specific amount of time making up the credit, but it would mandate that replacement instruction be given by a teacher certified in the subject. (The full proposal is at the end of this post.)

SED Deputy Commissioner Johanna Duncan-Poitier told the committee that a policy is needed because credit recovery programs are becoming more prevalent. (more…)