NYC Students Earn Big Increase on State Math Tests, Slight Jump in Reading in Adams’ First Full School Year; Don’t Believe the ‘rise’ in Student Test Scores — They Moved the Goalposts

NYC students earn big increase on state math tests, slight jump in reading in Adams’ first full school year:

New York City students earned a large increase in scores on the state’s standardized math exams last academic year and scored slightly higher on English exams, it was revealed on Wednesday.

Students clearing the proficiency benchmark on the Math exam spiked considerably — from 37.9% in 2022 to 49.9% in 2023 — during the first full school year under Mayor Eric Adams and his hand-picked Schools Chancellor David Banks.

The percentage of students achieving proficiency in English Language Arts rose from 49.0% in 2022 to 51.7% in 2023, a modest increase, the results showed.

“These results are extremely encouraging,” Banks said in a statement.

“Under the first year of this administration, we’re seeing more of our students on grade level and meeting the State’s learning standards, with significant gains in math and increases in ELA as well.”

But even Banks admitted the results, while positive, come with a big caveat.

The new exams were aligned to new standards put in place, so the results aren’t “directly comparable” with the prior year’s tests, according to the city Department of Education.

The chancellor, however, insisted the increase was a positive sign and was especially pleased with results showing a narrowing of the racial achievement gap. —>READ MORE HERE

Don’t believe the ‘rise’ in student test scores — they moved the goalposts:

I smell a rat. And not one of the ones you see on many streets on a lovely New York evening.

I mean the announcement by officials that proficiency rates in math and reading in New York City schools have gone up.

City officials celebrated the news as a sign that students are getting back their educational mojo since the pandemic.

The Chancellor of the New York City Department of Education even welcomed the news as “extremely encouraging.”

There’s just a few problems with this.

The first is that the figures are a crock from the get-go. You can’t test exam rates at this point in the year.

Something that the officials in question know very well.

I would guess that they also know that the data will only be able to be gone over by experts when they are released in December.

That is — after the local elections. Which might strike a cynic as highly convenient.

Of course education officials are rightly embarrassed by last year’s test scores.

Because those results showed a sharp fall-off of students’ overall performance. In 2022 fewer than 38% of 3rd through 8th graders were proficient in math.

That is compared with 46% before the pandemic. Those aren’t the sort of figures that officials like to see. People — especially parents — might notice.

So what did they do? Well they moved the goalposts of course. State education officials actually admitted after last year’s results that they were planning to adopt “new standards” in testing across grades.

And if you think that these “new standards” are better standards and not simply aimed at making the tests easier — and results better — then I might suggest a Nigerian goldmine for you to invest in. —>READ MORE HERE

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