Reading Scores Mixed

Four years after Mayor Bloomberg's takeover of the city's public schools, roughly half of the city's pupils aren't meeting standards on standardized reading tests.

The scores on state reading tests for the city's students, announced yesterday, did show some improvements versus last year. This year, 42% of eighth-graders met the standard, as opposed to 37% last year. But the fourth-graders who met standards dipped to 56% this year from 59% the year before.

Since state testing began in 1999, younger students have tended to make small but steady gains, while middle schoolers' scores have been stuck. Despite the gains, more than 39,000 third- through eighth-graders who took the test in January read so poorly, at the state's bottom level, that some could go to summer school or be held back.

The unusual reversal in progress between middle and elementary students follows an influx of more than 30,000 beginning English speakers into the city's accountability regime this year. The federal government forced New York to make the expansion in a confrontation this summer. Before, students could avoid testing for up to five years after entering the country; now, the longest they can go without being tested is one year.

"That had an enormous impact," the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, said. Mr. Klein suggested the influx of so-called English-language learners could be behind the fall-off in elementary reading scores. There are roughly 1.1 million students in the city's public schools.

Subtracting out the English-language learners, Mr. Klein uncovered a more promising picture, with gains in almost every grade level. Slice the statistics that way, and 46% of eighth-graders read at or above standard. Those scores had previously been stagnant at around 35%.

Mr. Klein attributed the gains to reforms made beginning with mayoral control in 2002, when those eighth graders were in fourth grade. "Students are coming more prepared to the middle schools," he said. "The system is clearly moving forward."

Asked how proficiency just about 50% across the board could be a good story, Mr. Klein said, "It's a question of whether the glass is half empty or half full." In his opinion, he said, "it's clearly half full and getting fuller by the year."

Looking at the same number, the education historian Diane Ravitch scoffed, questioning how a 50% proficiency rate could be touted after four years of restructuring and $40 billion poured into the city's public schools. "You might say that it's Joel Klein and Michael Bloomberg's report card," she said. "They get 50 percent. Fifty percent is not a passing grade."

Some in that bottom half will face repercussions. The mayor's abolition of social promotion — a change he introduced two years ago—prohibits third, fifth, and seventh graders from moving to the next grade level if their test scores fall below a certain level. More than 9,000 third graders, 5,000 fifth graders, and 6,500 seventh graders are in that group — though some of them, English language learners who have been in the country less than three years, will not be subject to the policy, a city spokesman said.

New York State had protested against the new requirement to include English-language learners in the testing, as had the city's teachers' union, the United Federation of Teachers. The union president, Randi Weingarten, said yesterday's test scores proved her point. "When you unfairly test them too early," she said, "there's an unfair skewering on what should have been a good-news story."

Yet the city's story was better than some others. Among the state's five big cities, New York City had the highest percentage of disabled students meeting standards, 17.5%, up from 15.2% last year. "Apparently the system has grasped what to do to lift children out of that situation," the state education commissioner, Richard Mills, said, announcing the scores at an Albany press conference.

Eighth graders also performed better across the state, with the students meeting standards statewide rising by eight percentage points, to 57% from 49%. That led a Manhattan Institute senior researcher, Sol Stern, to wonder whether the eighth grade boost might reflect an easier test, not smarter kids.

"Apparently there is an upward movement this year," he said, "but until we know more about other districts we can't attribute it to the specific reforms in the Bloomberg Klein administration." State Department of Education officials yesterday could not produce eighth grade breakdowns for New York's other big cities.

The U.S. Department of Education is now reconsidering the length of delay English language learners get before they are tested, Mr. Klein said, adding that he felt "much more comfortable" testing beginning English speakers after two years in the country.

The state English exam tests basic comprehension and language skills, asking students to write short essays, answer questions about passages, and define words from context. Words tested on the 2007 fourth grade exam include "emerging," "limbs," and "flaw." The eighth grade version asked about the words "fitfully" and "commence." Among the options for commence: praise, begin, teach, and witness.