Proficiency scores in New York drop hugely, so state board *changes* minimum scores for student proficiency

Subhead:  "State committee says the new, lower scores are the "new normal"

In New York, 2022 statewide test scores for grades 3 thru 8 dropped dramatically.  "Much lower."  In the once-sophisticated city of Schenectady, for example, not a single 8th-grader in the entire city school system scored "proficient" on the math proficiency test.

So in a state that prides itself on being oh-so-hip, so sophisticated, compared to the rest of us rubes, what do you suppose the state's "board of regents" did to fix that, eh?

Bet you already guessed!

Sure: they lowered the cutoff for declaring a kid "proficient."  From now on the cutoff will be 20% below the pre-2020 cutoff, due to the record-low average on the 2022 tests.  They actually call last year’s low scores "the new normal.”

Normal, eh?

The state committee quickly clarified that they must "reset scores because the tests will have new performance standards."

Wait, did that sound like word salad?  Yeah?  Oh well...

Duh "experts" in edjakayshun said there wuz "no doubt" that duh awful scores were caused by the state giving in to the demand of the teachers' union that all teaching be done on-line.

Oh wait...of course the state board of ed didn't actually blame the unions, cuz...reasons.  They used the mealy-mouthed rhetoric typical of liberal pencil-necks everywhere:  Don't say anything that might actually kick some ass that needs kicking, cuz...reasons.

The co-chair of a thing called the Technical Advisory Committee explained that her group must decide what is "just barely good enough” to go to the next grade, but then quickly added that kids who scored less than proficient will all be passed anyway, since holding anyone back a grade would hurt their feelings and risk pushback from parents notorious for anger-management issues.

Then after re-setting the cutoff scores, the committee considers how many students won’t be declared proficient if they set the score at that point.

She admitted there had been "learning loss" between 2019 and 2022, "but we don’t want to hold anyone accountable--especially teachers.  That would just be mean,” she said. “We’re at this new normal. So for New York we are saying the new baseline is the 2022 scores.”

“By setting new cutoff scores for 2023 as the 2022 scores, it will make it easier for every school to show improvement, right?  And that's what we want.  So this is the baseline from now on,” she said.

This summer the committee will do the same for the "U.S. history Regents exam."  They noticed that students felt that studying from the Revolutionary War was way too hard, so the schools began just teaching from the Civil War on.  But students felt that that was also too much, as did similar efforts to teach from WW1, then just from WW2.  So now "U.S. History" will cover from the election of Barack Obama--the Lightbringer, the one who made the rising sea level stop rising--to the election of 2016, where a Putin stooge colluded with Russia to steal the election from the faaabulous Hilliary.

Not surprisingly, all board members were totally in favor of that change, and it polled well with teachers too.

The state board calls these gradual changes "re-norming."  Teachers say this is needed because it's not the kids' fault that there was "learning loss" from 2020 to 2022.  In fact the committee took pains to explain that any learning loss was no one's fault, not even China's, because everyone knows the virus evolved totally naturally, like dough rising, or clouds.

Of course the usual anti-progress conservatives criticized the new standards, as expected.  One conservative claimed that once the cutoffs were lowered, the state would never raise them back to their pre-covid levels.  The committee neatly rebutted that by saying "Nonsense.  As soon as every student is proficient under the new normal, we'll start raising the cutoff score."

Another claimed the reduced standards left many students unable to pass admissions tests for more prestigious highschools.  But the director of the Alliance for Progress said that wasn't a problem, since the prestige schools were now reserving 40% of admission slots for those who couldn't pass the tests, because not doing that "wouldn't be fair," and would "diminish confidence in our education system."

The director said parents know “test scores aren’t a true reflection of learning,” she said, adding that changing minimum standards is nothing new.  She said when she was a teacher, educators would encounter students who were rated as proficient but were not truly proficient.  So there's absolutely nothing new here, citizen.

The director said state test scores have big consequences, since schools with poor scores can be labeled as failing, and that no one wanted to do that since it would hurt peoples' feelings.

Board of Regents member Frances Wills also questioned the proficiency tests, saying public confidence in education has declined since the state began testing  students in third through eighth grades.  "I think it's just awful that we make these stressed little kids have to take these awful tests," she said.  "They're meaningless."

She suggested what consultants are calling "adaptive tests," which are on computer.  In those tests if a student misses several easy questions, the test offers easier questions testing things the student already got right. Consultants also say their "adaptive tests" are specially designed to offer "alternatives to testing."  We asked what that means but didn't get a response.

She did say “You don’t want to put a test in front of a student that they can't pass, because that demoralizes them.  So we’re always looking for innovative ways to measure what students know.  I mean, everyone knows there’s more to a student than that standardized test.”

"For example, you can be a banker earning $3 million per year, or an airline pilot earning $150,000, and not be able to add.  Happens all the time.  That's why we have computers, to do the adding."

"Same with American history: When has anyone ever asked you who we won independence from, or which Amendment does what, right?  All students need to know is that on January 6th thousands of heavily-armed Rethuglicans, led by Donald Trump, mounted an assault on our capitol, trying to overturn a perfectly fair election.  And in trying to take over the government they killed a dozen unarmed Capitol Hill police officers." 

Source.