Math Scores in New York Surge Upward

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The New York Sun

New York City elementary and middle school students outdid themselves in mathematics last year, achieving substantial gains beyond last year’s higher-than-normal scores on statewide math exams.


Despite the improvements announced yesterday by the state education department, New York City schoolchildren on average are still scoring lower than students in other parts of the state, and a majority of city eighth graders are still failing the exam.


“I don’t want to kid anybody and say that … I find 42.4% passing rate in the eighth grade to in any way reflect where we need to be,” the city schools chancellor, Joel Klein, said. “What I do find is our system, working under the leadership we have, with the dedication of our people, our system is going to continue make the progress I think we are capable of. We’re going to build on it.”


When the eighth-graders took the exam last spring, barely two in five scored on Level 3 or Level 4, meaning they met or exceeded standards. But the 42.4% represented a gain of eight percentage points over the previous spring, and a gain of 20 percentage points since 1999, the first year New York State administered the standards based exam.


The proportion of eighth-graders who scored at Level 1, the lowest of four levels, also dwindled, to 22.5% from 28.2% the year before. On the 1999 test, 47.8% of eighth-graders scored on Level 1.


The gains of New York City’s eighth graders mirrored a statewide gain of 6.7 percentage points, to 57.7% passing from 51% passing.


Fourth-grade scores also improved, with 68.1% meeting or exceeding standards. That passing rate was up 1.4 percentage points from the year before, when 66.7% of students passed the test. In 1999, the percentage of New York City fourth-graders meeting or exceeding standards was just 49.6%.


The proportion of fourth-graders who scored on Level 1 dropped to 7.1% from 8.7%. Back in 1999, one in five fourth-graders in the city scored on Level 1 on the test.


The fourth-grade gains also mirrored statewide trends. In New York State public schools there was a one percentage-point increase, to 79.1% from 78.1%, among fourth-graders.


“Over the last five years, performance has gone up. It’s gone up in all categories of school districts. It’s gone up in all levels,” the state’s education commissioner, Richard Mills, said. “Minority and high-needs school results have also made big gains. The bottom line in all of this is performance is up. The gap is closing … and what the Regents have put in place is working.”


Mr. Mills wouldn’t say whether he thought there was a link between Mayor Bloomberg’s newly won control of the school system and the math progress, but he said the new system was “producing good results.”


Mr. Klein was more enthusiastic about his administration’s record.


“When it comes to math, if you’ll forgive the expression, things are really starting to add up,” he said yesterday afternoon, standing in front of an array of colorful charts. “Today’s scores in the fourth and eighth grade confirm what I said at the end of last year about our city tests. We’re getting consistent, sustained results. We told our kids do the math, and the results show they’re doing the math.”


He acknowledged the success of his predecessor as chancellor, Harold Levy, in boosting math achievement, but Mr. Klein said his administration has taken specific steps to make further advances. He said the key tools to the city’s success were spending more time on math instruction, bringing more math coaches into schools, and using a consistent curriculum. The tests were administered in the spring, toward the end of the first year of the new curriculums that the Bloomberg administration introduced in both math and reading.


The chancellor also highlighted gains the administration has made in closing the gap between white children and black and Latino children. Three years ago in the city, 75% of white fourth-graders and 45% of black fourth-graders were passing the fourth-grade exam. That gap has narrowed by eight percentage points. This year, 85% of white students and 63% of black students passed the test. He said the picture was similar at all grade levels.


The deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, Carmen Farina, said classroom teachers would use the new test results to figure out which types of questions are toughest for individual students and then try to help them. She said new professional development encourages educators to use testing data to diagnose problem areas and do targeted interventions based on that information.


Educators, advocates, and legislators said the gains were positive, but most said the still-low scores were no cause for celebration.


“I think the news is good in the sense that we are on a steady line of improvement,” the executive director of Advocates for Children, Jill Chaifetz, said. “But the fact that only 42% of eighth-graders are meeting standards shows how far we still need to go. The fact that we don’t even have the majority of kids meeting the minimum standard shows there’s a lot more work to do.”


The director of New York University’s Center for Teaching and Learning, Robert Tobias, said, “It’s better in this direction than the opposite direction.” He said the math scores are particularly positive when assessed in the context of other 2004 scores. Students showed gains on city tests last year in grades three, four, six, seven, and eight.


“I look for converging validity,” Mr. Tobias, who was the top official in charge of testing for the old Board of Education, said. “I like to see gains replicated over more than one test.”


The president of the teachers union, Randi Weingarten, called the scores “good news.” She attributed the progress to teachers, who she said “were basically allowed to use the curriculum material they had been using for the last several years, material that they feel competent using and that they feel works for kids.”


She echoed Mr. Klein when she said, “This may be a better approach than consistently changing the curriculum depending on the newest educational fad.”


The chairwoman of the City Council’s Committee on Education called the gains “terrific.”


“The jump in the eighth-grade scores was particularly needed and difficult to achieve,” Council Member Eva Moskowitz said. “The installation of state accountability measures was instrumental in this achievement.”


The New York Sun

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