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City math scores show across-the-board gains

by Cara Metz

Jun 4, 2009 2:22 PM

Achievement gap between city and state, and racial gap within city narrow

Almost any way you look at the data, there was good news in the June 1 release of the 2009 statewide math test scores.

New York City students substantially narrowed the gap with their state counterparts; the racial gap on city test scores narrowed as well; and overall, 82 percent of students in grades 3-8 are meeting or exceeding standards. [To see how that breaks down grade by grade, see chart 1, at right.]

Middle schools posted strong gains, up 12 percent overall from last year — a new trend apparent in reading scores that were released last month, too.

At a press conference held at PS/MS 15 in the Bronx on June 1, UFT President Randi Weingarten shared pride in the day’s results with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Chancellor Joel Klein, Principal Eddice Griffin and Council of School Supervisors and Administrators President Ernest Logan.

The big question — how to parse the results — was answered with a lot of shared credit, and some differences in nuance.

Weingarten emphasized the “team effort” that produced the strong showing at PS/MS 15, with praise for hardworking teachers, students, parents and a principal that she said, “our Chapter Leader Eugenie Sullivan told us is the best.”

More broadly, she praised the “cohesion, stability and resources” that came with mayoral control, mentioning the investment in a core curriculum in math, enhanced professional development and increased investment in teachers demonstrated by increased salaries for city teachers.

The collaboration must continue, she said, despite the challenging economic times we are now facing. She called for the city to maintain “the strong investments made in our schools” and to restore some of the proposed education cuts that would halt the momentum and hamper student achievement.

“We must recognize that we’re moving forward because schools have a core curriculum in math, the resources to offer students things like extra tutoring and academic intervention services, and because of our great teachers and their great teaching,” she said.

Weingarten said her union’s support for mayoral control with adequate checks and balances and transparency has been consistent from the beginning.

The mayor, acknowledging a growing political consensus, said that some tweaks to the system would be acceptable, saying, “There is no law that can’t be improved. You either have control or you don’t ... but I can live with some changes” in mayoral control.

Bloomberg praised both unions, and took reporters through a multitude of graphs that analyzed the data, including the impressive achievements at the school hosting the press event, PS/MS 15, where math scores have risen sharply, from 30.8 percent of 4th-graders at or above grade level in 2002 when principal Griffin began her tenure there, to an astounding 92.6 percent today. For 8th-graders, those scores have jumped from a dismal 15 percent in 2002 to 88 percent today.

“Such dazzling progress shows that this school and others are on the right track,” he said.

Principal Griffin explained the school’s success, saying, “We are using our data to drive instruction, knowing our children, and using that to help them. It’s a journey I am proud to have been a leader of.”

After the press conference, school librarian/media specialist Amy Raiss told New York Teacher that the collaborative environment in the school, together with data-driven instruction utilizing periodic assessments and not just annual scores, the standard core curriculum and a “very strong math coach, Haydee Santino,” were the recipe for their stunning success.

Looking more closely at the citywide math data shows that 4th-graders gained 32.9 percentage points from 2002 to 2009, and 8th-graders gained 41.5 percentage points, rising from 29.8 percent to 71.3 percent at or above grade level.

They have significantly reduced the gap with students in the rest of state [see Chart 2 on page 6] with only a 3.6 percent difference for 4th-graders (a reduction of 20.8 points since 2002) and a 13.6 percentage point difference for 8th-graders (a reduction of 13.6 points since 2002). And, while New York City students continue to do slightly better than students in the state’s other big cities, those cities made more progress this year.

Within New York City itself, the achievement gap between black and white students has narrowed by 20.2 percentage points for 4th-graders, and 18.7 percentage points between Hispanic and white students. Among 8th-graders, the gap was reduced by 10.8 points for black students, and 15.3 points for Hispanic in comparison with white students.

Saying that no achievement gap at all is acceptable, the mayor called attention to this strong progress.

At a morning press conference held in Albany, Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and State Education Commissioner Richard Mills praised the “steady, measured gains” apparent statewide, which they credited to the 2006 adoption of a core curriculum for each grade, a significant investment in education over time, and the expansion of universal pre-kindergarten, which better prepares children for school.

They recommended looking at the finer detail of scale scores (students are graded on a scale of 400 to the upper 700s) rather than the simplified level scores (in which students are graded on Levels 1 to 4, and small gains can bump into the next level) for a truer picture. Overall, gains in scale scores were much more modest than gains in proficiency.