Post by lilly on Oct 30, 2009 7:30:50 GMT -5
Two long reads, but....
States have inconsistent NCLB standards with most falling below federal definitions of proficiency.
Couldn't find anything on reading for NY, but federal math tests are showing no gains for NY kids which contradicts NY State Ed's reports of improvement.
Catch 22: States and districts need to demonstrate annual progress for NCLB funding, therefore NCLB tests are dumbed down by states.
____________________
www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/29/us/politics/AP-US-Schools-Low-Standards.html
Report: States Set Low Bar for Student Achievement
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 29, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Many states declare students to have grade-level mastery of reading and math when they do not, the Education Department reported Thursday.
The agency compared state achievement standards to the more challenging standards behind the federally funded National Assessment of Educational Progress.
State standards were lower, and there were big differences in where each state set the bar.
The Obama administration said the report bolsters its effort to persuade all states to adopt the same set of tougher standards for what students should know.
''States are setting the bar too low,'' Education Secretary Arne Duncan said. ''We're lying to our children when we tell them they're proficient, but they're not achieving at a level that will prepare them for success once they graduate.''
The federal government can't impose a set of standards, because education is largely up to states.
But Duncan noted he is offering millions of dollars in grants to encourage states to accept a set of standards being developed by the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers. The grants come from the federal stimulus law, which set aside $5 billion to push Obama's vision of educational reform.
While the standards are not yet final, every state but Texas and Alaska already has committed to work toward adopting them.
The head of the department's Institute of Education Sciences said the biggest concern should be the wide disparity in standards among the states. A student who is proficient in one state might not be proficient in another, the report said.
''Why are these performance standards so far apart, and why are expectations set so widely from one place to another?'' IES director John Easton said.
House Education Committee chairman George Miller said a child's education should not be determined by zip code.
''If we are serious about rebuilding our economy and restoring our competitiveness,'' Miller, D-Calif., said, ''then it's time for states to adopt a common core of internationally benchmarked standards that can prepare all children in this country to achieve and succeed in this global economy.''
The report by the department's statistics arm compared state achievement levels to achievement levels on NAEP. It found that many states deemed children to be proficient or on grade level when they would rate ''below basic,'' or lacking even partial mastery, in reading and math under the NAEP standards.
Among the findings:
-- Thirty-one states deemed fourth-graders proficient in reading when they would have rated below basic on NAEP. Mississippi's standards were lowest, and Massachusetts' were highest.
-- Seventeen states deemed eighth-graders proficient at reading when they would have rated below basic on NAEP. Tennessee's standards were lowest, and South Carolina's were highest.
-- Ten states deemed fourth- and eighth-graders proficient at math when they would have rated below basic on NAEP. Tennessee's standards were lowest; Massachusetts had the highest fourth-grade math standards, and South Carolina had the highest eighth-grade standards.
In addition, the report said more states lowered standards than raised them from 2005 to 2007.
North Carolina state education official Lou Fabrizio said states face a dilemma because of No Child Left Behind, the 2002 federal law that prods schools to boost test scores to meet annual improvement goals.
States can set easier standards that ensure schools will meet the federally mandated goals, or they can set more challenging standards that help kids improve.
His state chose the latter, but Fabrizio said it was tough to explain that higher standards meant lower scores.
''That was a really difficult job for us to do and communicate to the public that students did not all of a sudden become very ignorant,'' he said.
North Carolina still has below-basic achievement standards for fourth- and eighth-grade reading.
___________________________________
www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/education/15scores.html
U.S. Math Tests Find Scant Gains Across New York
By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: October 14, 2009
New York State’s fourth and eighth graders made no notable progress on federal math exams this year, according to test scores released on Wednesday, sharply contradicting the results of state-administered tests that showed record gains.
In state exams, 80 percent of eighth graders met learning standards in math this year, a jump from 59 percent two years ago. But judged by federal standards, only 34 percent were considered proficient, up from 30 percent in 2007. Fourth-grade students actually performed worse than in 2007.
Across the country, many states posted disappointing results, with fourth-grade students stagnant nationally for the first time in nearly two decades.
The results of the federal exam renewed criticism that the state exams have become too easy. The gulf between the state and federal exams also put Joel I. Klein, the New York City schools chancellor, in a difficult position, because he has staked much on the state exams, tying them to consequences like student, teacher and principal bonuses and the city’s A through F grading system for schools. And the results come at a politically potent time for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who is trying to ride his record on education, and test scores in particular, to a third term.
While the results of New York City’s performance on the federal exams will not be available for several weeks, in previous years they have tracked closely to New York State’s federal results.
There has long been a chasm between what the state tests and the federal tests, called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, deem proficient. But perhaps the most embarrassing aspect of the latest federal results for New York education officials was that they showed little or no improvement during two years in which the state was claiming huge jumps in student achievement.
The state’s Education Department renewed its promise to raise standards and ensure that the state tests include less predictable questions next year.
“It is clear to us that this gap cannot stay,” said Merryl H. Tisch, the chairwoman of the state’s Board of Regents, who added that she considered the national exam the “gold standard” that did a better job of measuring overall student achievement. “We are going to start to address that this year and we are going to make the state tests more transparent and more truthful.”
David Steiner, the state education commissioner, said he was “particularly concerned by the tragically stubborn gaps” between black and Hispanic students and their white and Asian counterparts. According to the federal exam, 50 percent of white fourth graders are proficient in math, compared with 25 percent of Hispanics and 19 percent of blacks, contradicting results from state tests showing a significantly smaller gap.
“What this amounts to is a fraud,” said Diane Ravitch, an education historian who has been one of the most vocal critics of both the state exams and Mr. Klein. “This is a documentation of persistent dumbing down by the State Education Department and lying to the public.”
Christopher Cerf, a former deputy chancellor at the Department of Education, who is now advising the mayor’s campaign and spoke on its behalf, said that when the New York City numbers become public, they could show that city students outperformed their peers in the rest of the state.
“It would be impossible to draw any conclusions about New York City’s progress at this point,” Mr. Cerf said.
The federal exam, which is given every two years, uses what it calls a representative sampling of students. In New York, roughly 4,050 of the state’s fourth graders were tested, while nearly 198,000 students took the state test, which is given every year. In the eighth grade, about 3,800 students were tested on the national test, compared with 209,000 on the state exam. The state also tests grades three, five, six and seven every year.
The federal results for English tests are not expected to be released until the spring.
Critics of the state tests have said that they measure a narrow slice of the curriculum. And under state law, tests from previous years are publicly available, allowing teachers to give students many practice tests and predict what kinds of questions will be asked. The federal exam, on the other hand, does not encourage such preparation, in part because there are no consequences for teachers or schools if students do not perform well.
Mr. Klein said that the city has no choice other than to use the state exam to reward and penalize schools, because it is the only test that measures all city students. And he said that eighth-grade scores on the tests are reliable predictors of whether a student will graduate from high school. “This doesn’t in any way undermine what we’ve accomplished here,” he said.
In 2007, only 34 percent of New York City’s fourth graders and 22 percent of eighth graders were considered proficient on the federal math exam. On the state exam that year, those numbers were 74 percent and 46 percent, respectively.
The city made huge gains on the state math exams in 2009, with 85 percent of fourth graders and 71 percent of eighth graders passing.
“I have said many, many times that we should raise the bar,” Mr. Klein said. “The state’s definition of proficiency needs to be tethered to a more demanding standard.”
But in a show of the politics involving test scores, a spokeswoman for William C. Thompson Jr., the Democratic candidate for mayor, called the Bloomberg administration the “Madoff of the American education system” and a “national disgrace.”
“Bloomberg’s D.O.E. has systemically lied about test scores, graduation rates and dropout rates,” the spokeswoman, Anne Fenton, said in a statement. “Our children deserve a quality education; instead, they have become pawns in Mike Bloomberg’s 200-plus million-dollar public relations campaign to rewrite history.”
Defending the mayor and the city’s school system, Mr. Cerf, the Bloomberg campaign adviser, said that there were important differences in scope and content between the state and federal tests. And he and Mr. Klein noted that the even the federal No Child Left Behind law uses state tests to measure schools’ performance.
Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, the city teachers’ union, said the federal results showed that the state tests were not reliable yardsticks.
“We’ve designed a school system that is just test-taking prep, and we have teachers saying, ‘I know I am not teaching children what they need to learn,’ ” he said.
Michael Barbaro and Robert Gebeloff contributed reporting.
______________________________________
States have inconsistent NCLB standards with most falling below federal definitions of proficiency.
Couldn't find anything on reading for NY, but federal math tests are showing no gains for NY kids which contradicts NY State Ed's reports of improvement.
Catch 22: States and districts need to demonstrate annual progress for NCLB funding, therefore NCLB tests are dumbed down by states.
____________________
www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/10/29/us/politics/AP-US-Schools-Low-Standards.html
Report: States Set Low Bar for Student Achievement
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: October 29, 2009
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Many states declare students to have grade-level mastery of reading and math when they do not, the Education Department reported Thursday.
The agency compared state achievement standards to the more challenging standards behind the federally funded National Assessment of Educational Progress.
State standards were lower, and there were big differences in where each state set the bar.
The Obama administration said the report bolsters its effort to persuade all states to adopt the same set of tougher standards for what students should know.
''States are setting the bar too low,'' Education Secretary Arne Duncan said. ''We're lying to our children when we tell them they're proficient, but they're not achieving at a level that will prepare them for success once they graduate.''
The federal government can't impose a set of standards, because education is largely up to states.
But Duncan noted he is offering millions of dollars in grants to encourage states to accept a set of standards being developed by the National Governors Association and Council of Chief State School Officers. The grants come from the federal stimulus law, which set aside $5 billion to push Obama's vision of educational reform.
While the standards are not yet final, every state but Texas and Alaska already has committed to work toward adopting them.
The head of the department's Institute of Education Sciences said the biggest concern should be the wide disparity in standards among the states. A student who is proficient in one state might not be proficient in another, the report said.
''Why are these performance standards so far apart, and why are expectations set so widely from one place to another?'' IES director John Easton said.
House Education Committee chairman George Miller said a child's education should not be determined by zip code.
''If we are serious about rebuilding our economy and restoring our competitiveness,'' Miller, D-Calif., said, ''then it's time for states to adopt a common core of internationally benchmarked standards that can prepare all children in this country to achieve and succeed in this global economy.''
The report by the department's statistics arm compared state achievement levels to achievement levels on NAEP. It found that many states deemed children to be proficient or on grade level when they would rate ''below basic,'' or lacking even partial mastery, in reading and math under the NAEP standards.
Among the findings:
-- Thirty-one states deemed fourth-graders proficient in reading when they would have rated below basic on NAEP. Mississippi's standards were lowest, and Massachusetts' were highest.
-- Seventeen states deemed eighth-graders proficient at reading when they would have rated below basic on NAEP. Tennessee's standards were lowest, and South Carolina's were highest.
-- Ten states deemed fourth- and eighth-graders proficient at math when they would have rated below basic on NAEP. Tennessee's standards were lowest; Massachusetts had the highest fourth-grade math standards, and South Carolina had the highest eighth-grade standards.
In addition, the report said more states lowered standards than raised them from 2005 to 2007.
North Carolina state education official Lou Fabrizio said states face a dilemma because of No Child Left Behind, the 2002 federal law that prods schools to boost test scores to meet annual improvement goals.
States can set easier standards that ensure schools will meet the federally mandated goals, or they can set more challenging standards that help kids improve.
His state chose the latter, but Fabrizio said it was tough to explain that higher standards meant lower scores.
''That was a really difficult job for us to do and communicate to the public that students did not all of a sudden become very ignorant,'' he said.
North Carolina still has below-basic achievement standards for fourth- and eighth-grade reading.
___________________________________
www.nytimes.com/2009/10/15/education/15scores.html
U.S. Math Tests Find Scant Gains Across New York
By JENNIFER MEDINA
Published: October 14, 2009
New York State’s fourth and eighth graders made no notable progress on federal math exams this year, according to test scores released on Wednesday, sharply contradicting the results of state-administered tests that showed record gains.
In state exams, 80 percent of eighth graders met learning standards in math this year, a jump from 59 percent two years ago. But judged by federal standards, only 34 percent were considered proficient, up from 30 percent in 2007. Fourth-grade students actually performed worse than in 2007.
Across the country, many states posted disappointing results, with fourth-grade students stagnant nationally for the first time in nearly two decades.
The results of the federal exam renewed criticism that the state exams have become too easy. The gulf between the state and federal exams also put Joel I. Klein, the New York City schools chancellor, in a difficult position, because he has staked much on the state exams, tying them to consequences like student, teacher and principal bonuses and the city’s A through F grading system for schools. And the results come at a politically potent time for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who is trying to ride his record on education, and test scores in particular, to a third term.
While the results of New York City’s performance on the federal exams will not be available for several weeks, in previous years they have tracked closely to New York State’s federal results.
There has long been a chasm between what the state tests and the federal tests, called the National Assessment of Educational Progress, deem proficient. But perhaps the most embarrassing aspect of the latest federal results for New York education officials was that they showed little or no improvement during two years in which the state was claiming huge jumps in student achievement.
The state’s Education Department renewed its promise to raise standards and ensure that the state tests include less predictable questions next year.
“It is clear to us that this gap cannot stay,” said Merryl H. Tisch, the chairwoman of the state’s Board of Regents, who added that she considered the national exam the “gold standard” that did a better job of measuring overall student achievement. “We are going to start to address that this year and we are going to make the state tests more transparent and more truthful.”
David Steiner, the state education commissioner, said he was “particularly concerned by the tragically stubborn gaps” between black and Hispanic students and their white and Asian counterparts. According to the federal exam, 50 percent of white fourth graders are proficient in math, compared with 25 percent of Hispanics and 19 percent of blacks, contradicting results from state tests showing a significantly smaller gap.
“What this amounts to is a fraud,” said Diane Ravitch, an education historian who has been one of the most vocal critics of both the state exams and Mr. Klein. “This is a documentation of persistent dumbing down by the State Education Department and lying to the public.”
Christopher Cerf, a former deputy chancellor at the Department of Education, who is now advising the mayor’s campaign and spoke on its behalf, said that when the New York City numbers become public, they could show that city students outperformed their peers in the rest of the state.
“It would be impossible to draw any conclusions about New York City’s progress at this point,” Mr. Cerf said.
The federal exam, which is given every two years, uses what it calls a representative sampling of students. In New York, roughly 4,050 of the state’s fourth graders were tested, while nearly 198,000 students took the state test, which is given every year. In the eighth grade, about 3,800 students were tested on the national test, compared with 209,000 on the state exam. The state also tests grades three, five, six and seven every year.
The federal results for English tests are not expected to be released until the spring.
Critics of the state tests have said that they measure a narrow slice of the curriculum. And under state law, tests from previous years are publicly available, allowing teachers to give students many practice tests and predict what kinds of questions will be asked. The federal exam, on the other hand, does not encourage such preparation, in part because there are no consequences for teachers or schools if students do not perform well.
Mr. Klein said that the city has no choice other than to use the state exam to reward and penalize schools, because it is the only test that measures all city students. And he said that eighth-grade scores on the tests are reliable predictors of whether a student will graduate from high school. “This doesn’t in any way undermine what we’ve accomplished here,” he said.
In 2007, only 34 percent of New York City’s fourth graders and 22 percent of eighth graders were considered proficient on the federal math exam. On the state exam that year, those numbers were 74 percent and 46 percent, respectively.
The city made huge gains on the state math exams in 2009, with 85 percent of fourth graders and 71 percent of eighth graders passing.
“I have said many, many times that we should raise the bar,” Mr. Klein said. “The state’s definition of proficiency needs to be tethered to a more demanding standard.”
But in a show of the politics involving test scores, a spokeswoman for William C. Thompson Jr., the Democratic candidate for mayor, called the Bloomberg administration the “Madoff of the American education system” and a “national disgrace.”
“Bloomberg’s D.O.E. has systemically lied about test scores, graduation rates and dropout rates,” the spokeswoman, Anne Fenton, said in a statement. “Our children deserve a quality education; instead, they have become pawns in Mike Bloomberg’s 200-plus million-dollar public relations campaign to rewrite history.”
Defending the mayor and the city’s school system, Mr. Cerf, the Bloomberg campaign adviser, said that there were important differences in scope and content between the state and federal tests. And he and Mr. Klein noted that the even the federal No Child Left Behind law uses state tests to measure schools’ performance.
Michael Mulgrew, the president of the United Federation of Teachers, the city teachers’ union, said the federal results showed that the state tests were not reliable yardsticks.
“We’ve designed a school system that is just test-taking prep, and we have teachers saying, ‘I know I am not teaching children what they need to learn,’ ” he said.
Michael Barbaro and Robert Gebeloff contributed reporting.
______________________________________
