Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appeared Wednesday with city and state education officials to comment on reading and math test scores released hours earlier.
By JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ and ROBERT GEBELOFF
Published: August 7, 2013
The number of New York students passing state reading and math exams dropped drastically this year, education officials reported on Wednesday, unsettling parents, principals and teachers and posing new challenges to a national effort to toughen academic standards.
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In New York City, 26 percent of students in third through eighth grade passed the tests in English, and 30 percent passed in math, according to the New York State Education Department.
The exams were some of the first in the nation to be aligned with a more rigorous set of standards known as the Common Core, which emphasize deep analysis and creative problem-solving over short answers and memorization. Last year, under an easier test, 47 percent of city students passed in English, and 60 percent in math.
City and state officials spent months trying to steel the public for the grim figures.
But when the results were released, many educators responded with shock that their students measured up so poorly against the new yardsticks of achievement.
Chrystina Russell, principal of Global Technology Preparatory in East Harlem, said she did not know what she would tell parents, who will receive scores for their children in late August. At her middle school, which serves a large population of students from poor families, 7 percent of students were rated proficient in English, and 10 percent in math. Last year, those numbers were 33 percent and 46 percent, respectively.
“Now we’re going to come out and tell everybody that they’ve accomplished nothing this year and we’ve been pedaling backward?” Ms. Russell said. “It’s depressing.”
Across the state, the downward shift was similar: 31 percent of students passed the exams in reading and math, compared with 55 percent in reading and 65 percent in math last year.
The Common Core standards have been adopted by 45 states and the District of Columbia. Although not technically national standards, they are ardently backed by the Obama administration and education officials who contend that outdated and inconsistent guidelines leave students ill prepared for college and the work force. New York was one of the first states to develop tests based on the standards. Kentucky, the first state to do so, also reported plummeting scores.
Even with the drop in scores, New York City still outperformed the state’s other large school districts — in Rochester, for example, only 5 percent of students passed in reading and math. And despite its large number of disadvantaged students, New York City almost matched the state’s performance as a whole.
But striking gaps in achievement between black and Hispanic students and their counterparts persisted. In math, 15 percent of black students and 19 percent of Hispanic students passed the exam, compared with 50 percent of white students and 61 percent of Asian students.
Students with disadvantages struggled as well. On the English exam, 3 percent of nonnative speakers were deemed proficient, and 6 percent of students with disabilities passed.
Despite the drop in scores, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg appeared on Wednesday at a news conference just as he had in years when results were rosier. He rejected criticisms of the tests, calling the results “very good news” and chiding the news media for focusing on the decline. He said black and Hispanic students, who make up two-thirds of the student population, had made progress that was not reflected in the scores.
“We have to make sure that we give our kids constantly the opportunity to move towards the major leagues,” Mr. Bloomberg said.
In the past, Mr. Bloomberg has bristled at suggestions that the tests were too easy, and too easy to prepare for, to be considered an accurate measure of student ability. Critics of Mr. Bloomberg latched onto the disparities in the scores, arguing that the mayor’s 12-year effort to overhaul city schools had neglected the most vulnerable students. The politicians vying to succeed Mr. Bloomberg, who leaves office at the end of the year, quickly seized on the results.
William C. Thompson Jr., a Democratic candidate who has been endorsed by the city’s teachers’ union, said the results showed that for years the city had put too much of an emphasis on tests at the expense of deeper learning.
“Let’s be clear: We’ve accomplished nothing,” Mr. Thompson, a former city comptroller, said at a news conference. “Doors of opportunity are closing for families and communities across our city.”
Other candidates were less critical. “We don’t want to confuse test scores going down with stepping away from raising standards,”Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker and a Democratic candidate for mayor, told reporters.
In the city, scores fell in every district, but were more pronounced in poorer areas. In nine schools, no students passed the math exams.
And even at some of the city’s highest-performing schools, there were noticeable drops. At the Anderson School in Manhattan, a highly selective school, for instance, 5 out of 65 eighth graders did not pass the English test; last year, the entire seventh grade passed the exam.
At the peak of test scores, in 2009, 69 percent of students passed exams in English, and 82 percent passed in math. After concluding the tests had become too easy, the state made them harder to pass in 2010, resulting in score drops statewide. This year, New York State revamped the tests even more radically.
In April, when the Common Core exams were introduced, some educators said they required too much of students in a short time. A small number of parents, exhausted by the city’s testing regimen, had their children sit out the exams in protest.
At some schools, teachers said they had not received adequate training to prepare students for the test. “It didn’t happen, and our children are suffering for it,” Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said in a statement on Wednesday.
The new tests require students to show more sophisticated analytical skills, by solving math problems with several steps and writing in-depth essays.
On the fourth-grade English exam in 2010, for example, students read a passage about a bear playing sports and were asked to identify the story’s theme. This year, by comparison, they were instructed to use details from a story to form an argument about a girl’s relationship with her grandmother.
The dreary numbers in New York have prompted some critics to argue that the tests are simply too difficult to pass and that education officials have set unrealistic goals.
“We’re now demanding that most students are A students, and that’s ridiculous,” said Diane Ravitch, an education historian and a frequent critic of Mr. Bloomberg’s efforts to remake the school system. “It will feed into a sense that the tests are not even legitimate measures.”
More states are scheduled to introduce Common Core exams in the 2014-15 school year. But there have been signs of turbulence in recent weeks, with several states, including Georgia, Indiana and Oklahoma, halting efforts to roll out exams, citing concerns about cost. The pushback has complicated an effort that has been hailed as one of the most promising changes to American education in modern history.
New York’s bleak scores could prompt unease among elected officials who have staked their reputations on rising test scores.
“For educators and parents who aren’t crazy about testing to begin with, one can understand why they feel like they’re being subjected to bait-and-switch,” said Frederick M. Hess, an education policy scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
On Thursday, a group of prominent New York business leaders, hoping to stave off the resistance to the Common Core standards, will release a letter urging New York policy makers to move forward with the new standards.
Other advocates of the standards are also looking to high places for support. On Tuesday, the day before test scores were released, city and state officials organized a conference call with Arne Duncan, the federal education secretary, hoping to pre-empt criticism of the exams.
Speaking with reporters, Mr. Duncan said the shift to the Common Core standards was a necessary recalibration that would better prepare students for college and the work force.
“Too many school systems lied to children, families and communities,” Mr. Duncan said. “Finally, we are holding ourselves accountable as educators.”
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