General News
National tests show no progress in math
Oct 29, 2009 12:45 PM
Teachers have been telling the UFT that there is too much emphasis on teaching to the state standards as measured by state tests. Now, the results of the national math tests this year support their claims.
Students in New York State showed no real progress on these tests this year despite big gains on statewide exams.
Flat scores on the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in math stood in stark contrast to large gains on the state test, where an unprecedented number of students have met state standards over the last two years.
“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,’” UFT President Michael Mulgrew commented. “It comes down to test-prep vs. real learning.”
The same disparity between the NAEP scores and state tests was evident in many other states.
NAEP tests set the proficiency bar much higher than most states, but the direction of results should be comparable. Yet on the 2009 NAEP, 4th-graders in New York State actually declined three points from 2007. Eighth-graders gained three points but the improvement was not statistically significant.
By contrast, state tests in May showed 4th-graders gaining more than 7 points in proficiency and 8th-graders more than 21 points over the same period.
Education experts and commentators questioned whether schools have become so focused on teaching to the specifics of state tests that they have sacrificed broader and more challenging curriculums. Others wondered if state tests have misled educators about how much students actually know.
“We are going to start to address that this year, and we are going to make the state tests more transparent and more truthful,” vowed Merryl Tisch, the chair of the state Board of Regents.
Based on student performance, teachers in New York State appear to have been doing their assigned jobs of teaching to the state exams with remarkable success. But the state’s teachers have often reported that the curriculum is too narrow and the standards too low. The new federal results suggest that their warnings were spot-on.
New York City NAEP results will be released in November, allowing for a closer look at city performance claims.
