Rise of Test Scores Is Questioned

The dramatic rise in this year’s scores on standardized tests may not signify an improvement in student performance, academics and others testified yesterday at a City Council hearing.The city Department of Education’s head of testing, Lori Mei, attributed this year’s record rises in test scores to Mayor Bloomberg’s education plan, Children First, which includes summer school for failing students, Saturday test-preparation classes, and an end to “social promotion” of students with low scores. The department reported that on average, the passing rate for the city’s public-school students rose 14.4 percentage points on the standardized exams in English language arts and 7.5 percentage points in math exams.At the hearing, the chairwoman of the council’s Committee on Education, Eva Moskowitz, said: “So far, the department’s only explanation – Children First is working – has been so entangled in election-year rhetoric that an informed judgment is difficult to make.”Many factors other than improved student performance can result in higher test scores, according to a professor at New York University, Robert Tobias, who previously held Ms. Mei’s job. Exempting students not proficient in English from taking the test, focusing excessively on test preparation, and scaling scores more generously can lead to higher test scores that do not reflect lasting educational gains for students.Fourth-grade test scores, for instance, rose this year in every school district in New York State, and in parochial schools and charter schools not run by the Department of Education.“I would guess, given the fact that test scores went up everywhere by similar amounts, that the test was easier,” a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute who has written extensively about education, Sol Stern, said.This year’s third- and fourth-grade tests may have been more “child-friendly” and engaging than in years past, said a Boston College professor, Walter Haney.Ms. Moskowitz pointed out four instances in the past three years in which the state Education Department discarded test data that seemed aberrantly low. This year’s scores seemed aberrantly high but were advertised, not questioned, the council member, who is running for Manhattan borough president, said.The national standardized test that fourth- and eighth-graders took in February will gauge New York against other states, an educational historian, Diane Ravitch, said. That will provide the independent outside measure necessary to validate or invalidate the rise in New York’s test scores, she said. The results of those tests will not be released until November.Commenting on the questioning of city test scores today at a press conference in Brooklyn, Mr. Bloomberg said: “I don’t think the allegations are worth discussing. I think it’s just an outrage.”Speaking of the companies that devised the standardized tests, he said: “These are outside, independent companies that don’t need their reputations besmirched by anybody. They’re the best in the business. The city uses them. They say that they believe the tests … are exactly as difficult as in previous years. There’s not reason to believe that we aren’t making progress.“Sadly,” the mayor continued, “there’s just a handful of people that don’t want to really get the schools fixed. They want to have something they can yell about, and that’s what you see.”

Rise of Test Scores Is Questioned

Rise of Test Scores Is Questioned

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