Red flags from the ELA and math test results

The 2011 state test results, released in August, show city students made progress since last year, when the tests were first made harder to pass — but the reported gains mask some persistent problems.

Most of those students who typically face the greatest educational challenges — middle school students, children with IEPs, English language learners, low-income black and Hispanic students, and also very high achievers — did not progress on New York’s state tests, especially in English Language Arts.  

For grades 3-8 combined, the percent of all students who tested as proficient in ELA rose 1.5 points to 43.9 percent. The average math score climbed 3.3 points, to 57.3 percent proficient. Absolutely the right direction.

But teachers don’t teach combined averages, they teach students. And drilling down to the performance of selected subgroups raises some red flags.

No magic in the middle

For starters, the younger kids pulled all the ELA weight this year. Seventh and 8th grade proficiency rates actually declined. The city’s 7th graders dropped 1.7 proficiency points and 8th graders dropped 2.5 points. It was the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grade scores that rose to make that ELA average gain of 1.5 points.

And over the past six years at least, the percentage of 7th and 8th graders proficient in ELA has consistently run about 15 points lower than the proficiency levels in the lower grades. 

What is behind this pattern? Student achievement does tend to stall nationwide during the middle school years. Some say it’s the turbulence of early adolescence. But New York’s drop-off is steeper than the statewide average. Lately some teachers have blamed the city’s ELA curriculum, launched when the current 8th graders were first entering school, which has taught reading skills without giving students rich background or content knowledge. 

Measuring against the state

In reporting the scores, Mayor Bloomberg boasted that the city’s grades 3-8 average outpaced gains in the rest of the state. But city middle school students, in fact, fared worse than their statewide peers.

Achievement gaps between early grades and middle grades occurred throughout the state, but they were not as large — about 6 to 8 points in ELA compared with the 15-point difference in the city.

Another way to gauge this is to follow the cohort of students who were 3rd graders in 2006 and see where they wind up as 8th graders in 2011, comparing the city with the rest of the state. The table at the bottom of this article shows that city students who were 3rd-graders in 2006 lost 27 proficiency points in ELA by the time they took the 8th grade test, while students in the rest of the state lost only 20 points. The city students not only scored lower than the rest of the state. They also declined more.

Math results look better

In math, 7th and 8th graders kept pace with younger students — up nearly 3 points and more than 5 points, respectively. This pretty much mirrored statewide gains in math.

In addition, there is less loss in math proficiency. In the city, the percentage proficient at 8th grade (52.5%) was only 2 points below the proficiency percentage for 3rd graders (54.8%) this year. (Though statewide, 8th grade math proficiency was actually a sliver higher, at 59.8 percent, than 3rd grade proficiency of 59.6 percent.)

Why do students do better in math? It may be that math curriculums are stronger, though this is hotly debated. But education researchers say that ELA performance reflects a child’s total literacy environment, at home and school, while math is a more precise gauge of school effects. The stronger math performance over time likely reflects the fact that teachers are doing a good job of instruction, but that students will still struggle with literacy if they are in a language-poor environment.

Fewer high achievers

This year the percentage of students scoring at Level 4 —exceeding standards — in ELA was more than halved, from 7.3 percent in 2010 to 2.7 percent in 2011. This is the lowest percent of Level 4 students since the current generation of tests was launched in 2006. This year’s declines took place in every grade.

In math, far more students scored at Level 4s but that number too declined a little, from 22.2 percent in 2010 to 20.9 percent this year. 

A few factors could account for these declines. The new state tests include more questions aimed at Level 4s, and the result has been to drop many strong students down to the high-Level 3 group. But more troubling, the demands of high-stakes accountability, emphasizing passing over excellence, may be drawing attention away from strong performers. There has been little focus on Level 4s for the past few years, perhaps with the assumption that they will do fine by themselves. But it would be hard to find an educator or a parent to sign on to that theory. In fact, teaching to high achievers often lifts all boats.

Bad news on racial performance gaps

Both the black-white and Hispanic-white ELA achievement gaps have actually widened in every single grade with one exception (the black-white 8th grade ELA gap) from 2006 to 2011.  Math is no better.

Through 2009, racial gaps in proficiency did narrow, giving rise to claims of victory by the mayor. But the gains were probably related to the now-discredited state tests where the bar was artificially lowered, allowing weaker students to cross the proficiency threshold prematurely. The two charts above show that gaps have returned with a vengeance, in some cases exceeding what they were five years ago.

What happened? An emphasis on test-based accountability limits curriculum and drives the system to target kids who most readily contribute to improvement in the overall proficiency numbers. But that can leave behind the most challenging students, weakening them further. And that is pure anathema to teachers.