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.
