A Wide Range of Reactions to New York State Test Scores
Following yesterday's release of state test scores for New York, education advocates, mayoral candidates, and more began to weigh in. While test scores dropped, including in New York City, most agreed the higher standards will help students succeed in the long run.
GothamSchools compiled a summary of the reactions, including one from Nathalie Elivert, StudentsFirstNY’s director of educator outreach:
If we aspire to provide children with a meaningful public education that will expand their range of opportunities, we must invest our energy in an honest dialogue about what these results mean, one that is not about scoring political points. The possibility presented, in this moment, will be squandered if we approach the assessment of standards based learning with fear and accusation.
Common Core Will Help Students Become More Ready for College
The Common Core test results are a painful pill to swallow for many students. David Milton Steiner, the dean of the School of Education at Hunter College, writes in the New York Post to say that the new standard will better determine college readiness. The short-term will be tough, but the test is a necessary undertaking for long-term student growth:
"The hope is that this will truly mark a new start — the kind of start that Massachusetts undertook when it made teaching a much tougher profession to enter and dramatically raised the quality of its academic standards and assessments.
"Ideally, we would have more prep time, more Common Core-aligned materials available sooner, more professional support for teachers. But New York rightly makes the same decision that John Silber and his team made for Massachusetts: that only by moving the stake in the ground, right now can we ensure that we all get serious about reform."
NYC Students Lead the Way With Better Test Scores
Across New York State, students largely failed to meet the new standards set out by the Common Core. New York City students fared no better overall - 30 percent of students were deemed proficient in math and 26 percent were proficient at English. The numbers are worse for minorities.
But by and large, New York City students are performing better than their peer school districts. According to the New York Daily News, New York City performed much better than students from all the other large school districts in the state:
"The city's schools made marked gains on both the old tests and on a much tougher national assessment. The fact that the results falsely assured students that they were on track does not negate that improvement.
"The math passage rate throughout the five boroughs was three times Buffalo's; our English passage rate, more than double. Rochester and Syracuse lagged still further behind.
"Finally, high-performing district and charter schools prove city kids, even low-income, minority city kids, can excel."
Low Test Scores Present Opportunity for Honest Assessment
Last spring, all third through eighth graders in New York State took a new test called the Common Core. On Wednesday, the state released the sobering data. According to the New York Post, 7 in 10 students statewide failed to pass the new testing standard, and 8 in 10 minority students failing to pass.
The Common Core set a higher learning standard for students. For months, state officials had said fewer students would pass the exam, and that is exactly what happened.
In an editorial, the New York Post argues that these new test scores are not a setback. The real problem was allowing New York State students to be held at such a low standard before today:
"Now there's no hiding the failures. And that's a good thing. Because there's no way we can raise standards until we have an accurate measure in place.
"It's a good thing we're no longer letting our students get by with tests that show they are learning when they aren't. But it won't get better until we start insisting on the same for our political class — by not letting them get away with pretend solutions that leave the rotten status quo intact."
NYC Mayoral Candidates Should Not Blame Bloomberg for Test Score Drop
For education reform advocates, the release of the Common Core test scores could not come at a worse time. The primary election is a month away, and the majority of candidates have been critical of Mayor Bloomberg's education policies.
The sharp drop in test scores on the Common Core are giving NYC's mayoral candidates new ways to criticize the efforts that Mayor Bloomberg has made to reform the City's schools. According to The New York Times, such criticism is misguided for several reasons:
The new scores were bound to be controversial in New York City thanks to the mayoral race. Some candidates are trying to curry favor with the teachers' union, which is taking a scorched-earth approach to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's educational policies.
Some candidates are looking for ways to blame Mr. Bloomberg for the drop in scores, even though the tests are overseen and managed by the state, and even though the city experienced less of a decline in scores than the state as a whole.
U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan Says to Keep Test Scores in Perspective
While student scores on New York state tests are dropping, officials are urging parents and educators to keep them in perspective.
SchoolBook reports on the comments of U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan:
In a conference call with New York State Education Commissioner John King, Duncan said New York is leading the country by adopting more challenging math and reading standards known as the Common Core. He said many states had fooled people into believing students were doing better than they really were by using tests that were too easy.
"What's the goal here? Is the goal to look good on paper or to help students be successful?" he asked. "I think the only way you improve is to tell the truth, and sometimes that's a brutal truth, but to have a very honest conversation and then to move from there."
Common Core is Necessary to Improve American Education
The Common Core curriculum has been adopted in New York State and in other states across the country. As the first New York State test scores using the Common Core curriculum are released this week, there will be a drop in reading and math proficieny standards.
According to a guest opinion writer for the New York Daily News, everyone shares the blame for allowing New York students to be held to inadequate educational standards prior to the adoption of the Common Core:
"With the harsh reality of test results, there is a tendency to blame educational failures on teachers (or their unions), administrators, elected officials, economic deprivation or even the tests themselves. In fact, we all share responsibility for the failures of public education and it is time to face up to how far our country has fallen behind those societies around the world where education is the top priority. Our state was right to adopt the higher standards of the Common Core as the first step in restoring American education to its former greatness."
Even with the impending poor scores, NYC's next mayor must not dismiss the Common Core curriculum for the sake of winning votes:
"The timing of the Common Core test results becoming public could not be worse. There is no doubt that candidates competing in the city's primary and general elections will be tempted to use this as a reason to advance the interests of groups that have been critical of mayoral control and other reforms that have positioned the schools system to make real progress."
Common Core Results Should Be Viewed as a Starting Point
New York State will be releasing the test scores from the first-ever national Common Core curriculum testing standards this week. The New York Daily News reported that educators across the state have braced for a sharp drop in the percentage of students who are deemed proficient in math and reading. According to a sixth-grade teacher at P.S. 241 in the Bronx, the Common Core is a necessary step toward readjusting attitudes and setting a higher bar for students:
"The fact that so many families have been misled into a false sense of accomplishment in past years is the real tragedy, and why it's so important that our state, city and union leaders are now trying to reverse course — however hard that may be."
"Raising the bar is scary and will require all of us invested in improving education to work harder, and even relearn parts of our craft. But I’d rather take that leap now than spend another decade or more being lulled into a false sense of security, only to find my students still aren’t ready to be productive citizens."
Joel Klein Discusses the Release of Common Core Standards Results
The following op-ed appeared in the New York Post on August 7, 2013.
This week is a watershed moment in the history of public schools in New York City and state. This morning, the state will release the results of the math and English exams administered to students this past spring. While end-of-year testing isn’t new, the knowledge that was tested last spring is. For the first time, students across the state were assessed based on the new, more rigorous Common Core standards.
For years, states around the country dummied-down standards to make it look as if students were more prepared for success after graduation than they actually were. This may have made some politicians look good, but it has been a terrible disservice to our kids.
Raising standards will mean we now have a more true measure of how well our students are learning. In the near term, it will also mean that previously inflated test scores will drop.
While some may confuse lower scores as a negative development, the fact that we’re finally being honest about academic achievement is a very positive sign.
For decades, states and local school districts have been responsible for their own education standards; the quality varied widely. A student deemed highly successful in one state could fail in another. The lack of uniform expectations didn’t do our students any favors. In fact, it doomed many to mediocrity.
Anyone who cares about giving all students a fair chance to succeed must be troubled by a terrible truth: The majority of America’s high school students aren’t graduating with the knowledge and skills they need to compete in the global economy. Only 30 percent are prepared for college and careers, according to the US Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — also known as the nation’s report card.
Worse yet, American students have fallen well behind their peers around the world, an alarming shortfall in a time of global competition.
The Common Core Standards, adopted by New York State in 2009, represent the first meaningful grade-by-grade road map to college and career readiness. Forty-five states and the District of Columbia have chosen to adopt the standards, and for good reason. The Common Core’s focus is on academic rigor.
The lessons require students to read complex texts and master demanding mathematical concepts, while also emphasizing critical thinking and analytical writing. The tests that complement them are a lot harder than the old basic proficiency tests. That is by design.
Common Core has the power and potential to move American education into the 21st-century. New York State and New York City have been leading the nation in implementing these standards, and haven’t let critical headlines stop them from forging ahead. I expect the point to be driven home by today’s test-score release. The scores to tell us what we already know, and what NAEP has told us for decades: that only about 30 percent of our students are ready for college and careers.
Kentucky has already taken new, Common Core-aligned state assessments and has seen its scores drop as much as 33 points or 50 percent. New York leaders have said repeatedly that they expect similar results here.
This may be hard to stomach at first, but we must see it for what it is: a necessary hardship on the path to academic excellence. As a parent, I’d much rather find out that my child has fallen behind in third or fifth grade, when there’s still time to intervene, than when she gets to college and can’t do the work.
I encourage the public, and especially candidates for political office, to keep the test results in perspective. As teachers continue to strengthen their instruction and shift to the Common Core, we’ll experience short-term pain that can pave the way to long-term gains, and unprecedented opportunities for our children.
People may not like what they hear, but it’s not news any of us can afford to ignore.
While some may use lower test results to score political points and argue that we should abandon higher standards, this would do our kids a grave injustice. Preparing our students for success in the global economy will take a commitment from all of us — teachers, parents, students and elected officials — to hold our education system and ourselves to a higher standard. Thanks to the Common Core, we can finally start doing that.
Joel Klein, the former city schools chancellor, oversees the News Corp venture Amplify, which creates digital products and services for teachers, students, and parents. News Corp is the parent company of The Post.
NY Daily News Op-Ed: Lower Scores on State Exams Are the Price of Higher Standards
State test results for New York students released Wednesday show a drop in scores.
This reflects New York’s shift to the Common Core, which holds students to a higher standard of learning.
In an Op-Ed piece, the New York Daily News argues that raising the bar for New York students is a big step in the right direction:
On Wednesday, a fresh round of state exam results — from the new, far tougher math and English tests kids took last spring — will make it look, to the untrained eye or politically expedient critic, like city students are suddenly learning far less.
Wrong. The precipitous drop will simply be a sign that the nation’s largest public school system is making an overdue and necessary shift to the far more challenging Common Core standards.
Standards that are higher in math and English, and consistent across most American states.
Standards that demand deeper understanding and critical thinking skills, not shallow learning.
The Daily News concludes that how NYC’s current mayoral candidates react to these results will be a pass/fail test:
The right answer is to welcome the reality check — and say students can, must and will do better with the help of teachers who are prepared to teach a challenging new curriculum and are held, like pupils, to proper standards.
The wrong answer is to beat a retreat, blame tests and opportunistically attack King and Mayor Bloomberg - who, here, are courageous messengers of troubling but necessary news.
