Worth Noting: The NYS Board of Regents approved raising the bar on what constitutes proficiency on the Grades 3-8 Mathematics Tests and the ELA (English Language Arts) tests. This is something that will surely be noted by parents. Whereas, in the past, many students were assessed as proficient on these tests, many students will now be deemed deficient.
Why did the Regents raise the cut scores? In a 7.19.10 NYSED press release (http://www.oms.nysed.gov/press/Regents_Approve_Scoring_Changes.html), it was reported that that the Regents believed that it was too easy to achieve proficiency on these tests. The Chancellor of the Regents, Merryl Tisch said, "For the past several years, we have seen more and more student scoring 'proficient' or better on our state tests. At the same time, their performance on the NAEP exam - the gold standard - has remained essentially flat. We haven't been testing the right things in the right ways. 'Proficiency on our exam has to mean something real; no good purpose is served when we say that a child is proficient when that child is not.'" The Chancellor also noted that the Board of Regents, in addition to making the 3 - 8 tests more rigorous, wants to see "more challenging curriculum, better training for teachers/principals, and a world-class data system."
Among other facts included in the release:
- Nearly a quarter of student in all NYS two and four-year institutions of high education take remedial coursework;
- Students at the current Level 3 proficiency standard in their 8th grade math exam have less than a 1 in 3 chance of earning an 80 on their math Regents.
In a NY Times article (7.29.10) "Standards Raised, More Students Fail Tests, it was written that past scores on the 3-8 tests, which were impressive, were "misleading because those scores were inflated by tests that had become easier to pass." The Regents are looking for a more accurate measure to students' abilities.
"This year, 61% of state students were deemed passing, or at grade level, in math, compared with with 86% last year." In English, 53% were deemed passing compared to 77% from last year.
Because we are now being told that the information we have received in the past about our children's proficiency (or lack thereof) on NYS Tests is not valid, it begs the question of whether or not we can believe the new results. Are the tests valid?
The raising of the bar on these state tests has implications for many: Board of Education, Superintendents, principals, teachers, students, and parents. Teaching strategies may have to change to help student achieve proficiency on more rigorous tests, more remediation will have to be done, parents will be concerned about the performance of their children, schools may not meet AYP (annual yearly progress), etc. All in all, we are facing a changing attitude in Albany about the needed rigor in the state's schools.