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After some back and forth between bloggers and the DOE press office, NYC has released scale scores and standard deviations broken down by race for the past seven years of English Language Arts and Math tests. In Eduwonkette’s analysis, they show that the racial achievement gap in the city has increased during the Bloomberg administration, and in 8th grade ELA, the one area where the gap has decreased, it’s because white and Asian scores have declined.

This note on the spreadsheet, coupled with concerns that the tests may have gotten easier, makes you realize just how tricky it is to get a clear picture of how the kids are doing:

As of 2006 the New York State Education Department expanded the ELA and mathematics testing programs to Grades 3-8. Previously, state tests were administered in Grades 4 and 8 and citywide tests were administered in Grades 3,5, 6, and 7. State tests at Grades 3-8 include both multiple-choice and extended response questions. Citywide tests were composed of multiple-choice questions only. As a result of the changes in the testing program, scale score results from 1999 to 2005 cannot be compared with scale scores from 2006 to 2008 because the state changed the scale scores and its corresponding ranges with the introduction of state tests in ELA and math in grades 3-8.

Personally, I’m hoping for some visuals to help bring the numbers to life… (hint, hint).

Yesterday, I took an initial look at the Manhattan Institute’s study, “Building on the Basics.” Today, I want to look at Florida’s state science exam, the focus of the study. A common criticism of standardized tests is that they all, to some degree, test reading ability. What does the Science FCAT look like? What skills would you need to perform well on it? I’ve only seen the NYS Science exams, so I decided to download a Florida sample test and take a look. The first thing that surprised me about this test was the reading level, which seemed high. Many of New York City’s fifth graders would (for better or for worse) stumble over sentences like, “Florida has many limestone caves containing formations called stalactites.” I tracked down a site of readability analyzers and entered text from test items.

Question 1: Melissa’s school rings a bell to alert students that it is time to start class. When the bell rings, it vibrates. The use of vibrations to send messages is an example
of which type of energy?

This one ranged from 4.72 to 10.07 in estimated US grade level required to understand it, which certainly calls into question the reliability of the readability analyzers, but also the ability of average 5th graders to understand this question.

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