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A push to get more students to take the city’s gifted and talented test this year paid off: over a thousand more students took the citywide admissions tests this year, with the overall number rising to 39,160 from 38,015 last year.

But the outreach efforts did not increase the number of students admitted to the program’s most selective citywide programs. In fact, the number of students who qualified for the citywide programs declined. The number of students who qualified for the less selective district-based gifted and talented programs, which require slightly lower test scores for admission, did increase, growing by 319 students from last year.

The racial and family income backgrounds of the students whose test scores made them eligible for gifted and talented were not immediately available.

The city sent letters to qualifying students this morning, whose families now get to list the programs they prefer and hope for a spot in the program of their choice.

A place in the citywide programs is not guaranteed. Last year, 1,788 kindergartners qualified for about 300 seats. This year, the number of kindergartners making the cutoff is slightly larger, though the overall number of students who qualified for the citywide programs dropped by 149 students. (more…)

The difference between being anti-testing and being anti-today’s testing regime can sometimes get glossed over. But the wide space between the two positions was demonstrated damningly in a paper published this spring.

Written by two vehement advocates for the national tests now under construction, the paper is mainly a blueprint for what a re-imagined national testing system could look like. But it begins with a succinct, damning description of what its authors call our current “testing bind”:

Though no one intended to do so, we have created a testing bind that, as it tightens, drives attention away from the intended standards. The effects are greatest in the poorest schools. The nation’s current approach to raising achievement and increasing equity in the education system is having an effect opposite from the intended one. It is trapping poor children in a basic‐skills teaching program that gives them little chance to acquire the deeper knowledge and abilities we seek for everyone. And it may be lowering the learning opportunities even for many more privileged children as schools turn their energies to the test‐based basic skills program.

The paper, “An American Examination System,” is written by two people who may very well have a hand in shaping the new testing regime: University of Pittsburgh professor Lauren B. Resnick, who helped draft the “common core” standards endorsed by President Obama and many states, and Wireless Generation CEO Larry Berger, whose company is likely to make a bid to build the technological pieces of the national tests that will be tied to those standards. (more…)

McGraw-Hill CEO Terry McGraw III, appearing on CNBC. The full interview can be seen here.

What goes on at McGraw-Hill, the mysterious Midtown company that makes New York’s state tests? One answer: The company is not-so-quietly producing a slew of ratings lambasted for being inflated, corrupt, and totally bankrupt.

I don’t mean more state test scores. I mean credit ratings churned out by Standard and Poor’s, the ratings agency that makes up nearly half of the company’s business, according to CNBC.

Yes, that’s the same ratings agency that has been criticized for inflating the value of companies from Enron to Bear Stearns.

One of the biggest criticisms of S&P and agencies like it is that their customers have an inherent interest in being rated highly. (more…)

Public school principals were told this morning how many of their students passed the state’s annual math and English exams and from what we’re hearing, the numbers aren’t pretty.

One principal wrote in to say that the percentage of his students who scored so low they didn’t meet promotion criteria has quadrupled since last year. On the English exam, his percentage of low-scoring students is more than ten times higher. Almost all of his special education students and most of his students who are recent immigrants didn’t pass the exams.

“It’s not like the kids have gotten dumber or the teachers worse, it’s just the tests are being looked at differently,” the principal said.

A Department of Education official confirmed that because the city and state set higher score cutoffs this year, fewer students will meet the standards for promotion to the next grade. As a result, the city expects that more students will be required to attend summer school  this year.

“We are committed to raising the bar for our students, so we’re using preliminary results on this year’s tests to set higher promotional cut scores than last year,” said DOE spokesman Matt Mittenthal. “We will guarantee a seat to every student who requires summer school.”

“We’re going to have a huge summer school program now,” the principal said. “No question about that.”

Schools haven’t received their students’ raw scores — they only know whether a student met the promotion criteria or didn’t. See below for the DOE’s cutoff scores.

Where can you find the most bored children in New York?

Last week I visited P.S. 13 in the East New York neighborhood of Brooklyn, a school where you would expect to see some anxiety before the high-stakes English exam that will be given next Monday. Instead, I met a cast of bright and precocious students plodding through test prep worksheets with little supervision.

P.S. 13 has been a troubled school for years though its last city-issued progress report calls it a “B” school. In 2004, it managed to remove itself from the state’s list of schools at risk of being closed, but it’s now in danger of landing back on that list. Students know a lot is riding on their test scores. During my visit, many could rattle off the dates of the upcoming tests from memory.

Morning announcements over the loud speaker included test tips like encouraging students to get a good night’s rest and eat a full breakfast (84 percent of P.S. 13 students qualify for free or reduced lunch). In advance of the test, the regular schedule had been altered so that on Thursdays students only focused on reading and writing and Fridays were math-only days. (more…)

Here’s one more reason state tests might be getting easier to pass: a longstanding State Education Department practice of publicly releasing every question on each year’s exam.

The unusual practice makes it harder for test-makers to gauge how difficult a test is, said Howard Everson, chair of the state’s Technical Advisory Group, an oversight committee that monitors state testing.

Many states release some test questions but keep others private so they can be used again to compare one year’s test to another’s, said Daniel Koretz, a Harvard University education professor who studies testing. But New York has long had a practice of releasing every single test question to the public soon after students sit for the exams. (more…)

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein’s emphasis on standardized test scores appears to be working: an analysis of state test scores before and after mayoral control reveals “a broad and steady march upward,” the Times’ Elissa Gootman and Robert Gebeloff report.

The rates of New York City students passing standardized English and math tests have risen at a faster pace than statewide passing rates overall, and Queens and Staten Island have gone from among the lowest-scoring counties in the state to among the best, according to the Times’ report.

The story mentions in passing that the results of the 2007 federal National Association of Educational Progress showed no significant progress among New York City’s eighth-grade students during Mayor Bloomberg’s tenure. Some experts claim that NAEP scores may be a better measure of overall student performance because it’s more difficult to engage in direct test preparation and thus less vulnerable to score inflation.

But Klein dismissed those concerns, telling the Times that the state tests are a valid measure of learning: (more…)

(via the Heath Department and DOE report)

In a report released today, city health and education researchers conclude that students’ academic performance is linked to their fitness level, but note that there’s no evidence for why that might be.

Issued jointly by the Health Department and Department of Education, the report focuses on public school students in grades K-8 and compares their standardized test scores to the data taken from NYC FitnessGram, a program that tests students’ fitness in gym class.

According to the report, students whose fitness scores rank in the top five percent, score 36 percentage points higher than students whose fitness level is in the bottom five percent.

The report’s authors take care to side step any question of causation. They write: (more…)

President Obama’s Department of Education has vowed to invest federal money in building better tests, but the dollars may be held up until the country can hash out some “common standards.” The new Board of Regents chancellor, Merryl Tisch, is also zeroing in on state tests, but it’s not yet clear exactly how that will happen.

Meanwhile, in England, they’re off and running. Computerized assessments staggered throughout the year will replace written end-of-course exams within the next 15 years, a senior testing official, Simon Lebus, told The Guardian over the weekend:

Exam boards are investing millions of pounds in developing the technology – and, Lebus claimed, it’s not “science fiction”.

He said: “The likelihood is that in the next 10 to 15 years it will change almost out of recognition in that by the end of that period of time you’ll be able to do exams more or less on demand, on screen.

“You can make the learning more valid and the technology can enhance the way people engage in the subject. It’s very expensive, complex stuff to do. But it is achievable. It’s not a vision based on a sort of science-fiction type fantasy.”

This Education Sector report, “Beyond the Bubble,” explains how technology can innovate testing.

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…)