By JENNIFER MEDINA
New York State education officials acknowledged on Monday that their standardized exams had become easier to pass over the last four years and said they would recalibrate the scoring for tests taken this spring, which is almost certain to mean thousands more students will fail.
While scores spiked significantly across the state at every grade level, there were no similar gains on other measurements, including national exams, they said.
“The only possible conclusion is that something strange has happened to our test,” David M. Steiner, the education commissioner, said during a Board of Regents meeting in Albany. “The word ‘proficient’ should tell you something, and right now that is not the case on our state tests.”
Large jumps in the passing rates, which Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg trumpeted in his re-election campaign last year, led to criticism that the tests had become too easy.
The state agreed to have researchers at Harvard University analyze the scores and compare them with results on national exams and Regents tests, the subject exams that high school students are required to take for graduation. Those researchers found that students who received a passing grade on the state eighth-grade math exam, for example, had a one-in-three chance of scoring highly enough on the math Regents test in high school to be considered prepared for college math.
State math and English exams, which are given to all third through eighth graders, have historically been easier to pass than national math and English exams, which are given to a sampling of fourth and eighth graders around the United States.
But according to the Harvard researchers, the New York state exams have become even easier in comparison with the national exams: students who received the minimum score to pass the state math tests in 2007 were in the 36th percentile of all students nationally, but in 2009 they had dropped to the 19th percentile.
“That is a huge, massive difference,” Dr. Steiner said.
The tests are developed by CTB/McGraw-Hill and overseen by the State Education Department and its volunteer technical advisory group, which is made up of several testing experts.
Dr. Steiner, who became education commissioner a year ago, said that the exams had tested a narrow part of the curriculum, particularly in math, and that questions were often repeated year to year, with a few details changed, so that a student who had taken a practice test — as many teachers have their students do — were likely to do well.
“It is very likely that some of the state’s progress was illusory,” said Daniel Koretz, the Harvard testing expert who led the research. “You can have exaggerated progress over all that creates very high pass rates. It doesn’t seem logical to call those kids proficient.”
The state said it had begun to include a broader range of topics on its tests, making the questions less predictable. Dr. Steiner refused to say what the passing scores would be for the tests this year but said the numbers would be a “major shift.” Last year, 77 percent of students statewide were deemed proficient in English, up from 62 percent in 2006; 86 percent passed the math test, compared with 66 percent three years earlier. The scores this year are expected to be released at the end of the month.
The changes are likely to lower the passing rates significantly all over the state, particularly in districts and schools in large urban cities. Superintendents in Buffalo and Syracuse are criticizing the changes, saying that the move to raise the passing scores is akin to moving goalposts.
“We’ve lost sight of the purpose of the test — it’s supposed to show you’ve mastered a certain skill at a certain time,” said Daniel G. Lowengard, the superintendent in Syracuse.
“I think it’s unfair to teachers to say thank you very much, you’ve been doing this work for the last three or four years, and now that your kids are passing, all of sudden we’re going to call a B a C and call a C a D.”
But in New York City, where the scores are used for things like letter grades assigned to schools and teacher and principal bonus pay, Chancellor Joel I. Klein said he supported the changes.
“We’ve said a million times we support higher standards,” he said. “It will make all of us raise the bar.”
The New York Times
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