WPCNR THE SUNDAY BAILEY. By John F. Bailey. May 14, 2007: At long last, 7 months after the New York State Department of Education sent out a news release on lamenting the plummeting of state math scores from Grades 3 to 8, the 2005-2006 State School Report Cards have been posted on the New York State Education Department website.
The New York State Education Department Building, Albany, NY.
The labyrinth of the State Education Department has done every school district a favor by creating totally unreadable, incomprehensible School Report Cards—unlike the hard-hitting year-by-year comparison charts available the last six years that told the sad, sad story of New York education as it was. Gone are the graphs that showed flat-out the year-by-year ups and downs of our little scholars across the state.
The new State Education Report Card format is embarrassing in its inept design, and disorganization of data.
Far be it from the State Education Department to attempt to obscure how lousy school districts are doing on the assessments year to year, right? It’s hard enough to get the straight story from your school administrations, without having the stats obscured intentionally by the NYSED to discourage reading the reports, and downplay the achievement gap. But, intentionally, or not, that’s what the NYSED has done.
Despite the mystery of why it took the State Education Department webmasters 7 months to post the State Report Cards for 2005-2006, when the results of the 2005-2006 assessments were obviously used to create the October 11, 2006 news release on the declining mathematics scores from grades 5 to 8 (shown here), the results of White Plains and other school districts’ academic performances for 05-06 are finally up on the NYSED website.
When did they go up on the NYSED site, concerned parents?
Four days after statewide school budget votes have been decided. What a coincidence! What convenient, politically correct timing! That is a joke…and it happens every year. Could the Masters Degree-ers and Ph.Ders in the Education welfare program known as the State Education Department do a little work? If they could analyze the math results for the entire state in three months, couldn’t they pop up the scores within 5 months? Did they delay deliberately?
Could they get the scores out faster instead of this one year lag? The lag perpetuates curriculums and techniques that don’t work for one year—to be ineffective for another year. We are talking about children here – not tax breaks. Tax breaks don’t hurt anybody. Lousy education impairs a child for a lifetime.
Come on. This lag in posting the reports is an outrage. The results have got to come out in September so curriculum coordinators can adjust . The SED has them.
Doesn’t anybody in Albany get that? They don’t. Instead we hear the same excuses from district administrators across the state every year. Now if districts are told their scores quietly before the school year begins and the districts take their time adjusting that is an even worse scenario to comtemplate. It means educators are slow to adjust or pay lipservice to adjusting.
New format roadblock to the past.
Now, this year the SED comes up with this new State Report Card format that, as far as this reporter is concerned, softfocuses the true picture of district performance by obscuring it by organizing data in an incomprehensible way that discourages trend analysis. The table graphs have changed and do not give the current year in comparison to last year for the total district. How can they do that?
The 2004-2005 Format Above Compared Current Assessment Results to Previous Year’s at a Glance. The 2005-2006 Format for White Plains Elementaries (below) does not. It just publishes the latest year’s test scores (2006 Assessments). No comparison is made so trends cannot be tracked easily.
The excuse the SED gives is that the 2005-2006 ELA and Math assessments were in a different format than the 2004-2005 tests, so the NYSED says they should not be compared.
The copy where last year’s results should be reads:
New assessments for elementary and middle level English Language Arts and Mathematics were administered in 2006. Results from those assessments cannot be directly compared to results from previously administered tests.
Poppycock!
Your reporter asks why not? Were the tests easier, harder, new format – what was different? Is 2 plus 2 no longer 4? How about an explanation in the State Report Card what was different that you can’t compare year to year?
This is sophistry.
Are We Measuring Skills or What?
Do they give the same QUESTIONS every year? No. If you change the format, the children should still have the skills to take the test and comparison has to be done.
Since there is no statement in the report as to whether the math and ELA tests in 4th grade and the math or ELA assessments in 8th grade were easier or more difficult – or in a different format, not making the comparison year-to-year in a readable graph as done in previous years – hides the true story.
The interested layperson has to go elsewhere in another section of the report to make the comparison. After 15 minutes of figuring out what the report means, the average person is going to go to EBay instead.
Again how convenient to put out a State Report Card format that makes it hard to see progress, or more significantly the continuous lack of progress and dropoff in performance statewide and within one’s own district.
White Plains to be Saluted.
The White Plains City School District did this comparison for its public – two weeks ago with the following charts, and Superintendent Connors is to be commended for not following the SED pedagogues out the window and throwing out past year results. Mr. Connors says White Plains parents should look at White Plains High School Graduation Rates instead (82% after 5 years), as proof the district is addressing its shortfalls in the high school years. The Results, broken down by ethnicity:
The Fourth Grade District Wide Elementary School Results Compared to Previous Year’s — from the White Plains City School District Showing the Number of Students Passing by Ethnic Group.
4th Grade Math Results–2006
Eighth Grade English Language Arts Assessment Results, 2006.
The 8th Grade Middle School Math Results
The Graduation Rate Dating Back to the Freshman Class of 2001.
New Format Does Not Cut to the Chase.
The new state Report Cards are in a new format, too, rearranging information to discourage, in this reporter’s opinion, the layperson from delving into the reports to get a true trend reading in how their school district is doing.
It is broken into two sections: The School “Accountability & Overview Report” and the “Comprehensive Information” — which is not comprehensive — breakdowns.
The Accountability & Overview Report slows you down by a series of check marks that show whether the district is making Acceptable Yearly Progress before you get to the graphed statistics for each school, which you click on individually.
This is meaningless. Give me the stats right away. The checkmarks are like the infamous Food Pyramid the FDA put out several decades ago. The checkmarks slows you down, and prevents you from getting to the nitty gritty. You can’t figure out what the check marks mean.
When you finally scroll down to the Test results, you find the 2005-2006 results without comparison to the previous year.
Performance of Minorities Buried Deep.
In White Plains, being a diverse district, I am interested in how our Black and Latino population of students – making up over 60% of our school population are doing. You cannot find until you scroll through all the grade levels of testing. And, again the results by race are not compared to previous years in the “Overview Reports”. This is softpedaling grim results.
Then in the “Comprehensive Information” section there is the ludicrous prospect of including Regents Exams Result Charts in when Regents exams are not given in elementary schools defying logic – yet conveniently makes the reader scroll forever to get at the individual elementary school results for a Church Street School, Ridgeway, Mamaroneck Road School, Post Road School.
This Overall Breakdown of the District Test Scores by Ethnicity, is no longer included in the current 2005-06 School Report Card. This is from the 2004-2005 report.
Unless I did not know better, I would think the State Education Department was trying to obscure performance of school districts for minorities, and the individual schools in the districts rather than shine a light on them.
Now, I am a staunch supporter of assessment tests. The No Child Left Behind Act is perhaps the Bush Administration’s only achievement – it has shown what a lousy job education is doing nationally with our children. And has spurred progress.
Now is not the time to start sugarcoating a bad news pill, obfuscating the meaning of each year’s test results, and reporting test results in a meaningless format. We get enough of that from City Hall.
Could we explain whether the tests are being dumbed down every year to enhance artificially the passing rates?
Somehow the Education Department never ever explains whether they have lowered the difficulty of the tests each year…or raised them.
If you think I am being unduly harsh on the vaunted academics in Albany, go to the report yourself and see what you think. Assess the White Plains 2005-2006 School Report Card at https://www.nystart.gov/publicweb/District.do?county=WESTCHESTER&district=662200010000
You may access the 2004-2005 State Report Card at http://www.emsc.nysed.gov/repcrd2005/overview-analysis/662200010000.pdf
