Where are you on this, Joe Williams, Michelle Rhee, Joel Klein?
NY1, the "news" organization that is only as good as Bloomberg wants it to be, set up a call in on their program on this report on friday, and I called in to say that when you have tenured teachers pushed out of their classrooms for any or no reason and have their classrooms given to substitutes without teaching licenses or who have no knowledge of the curriculum (and I dont mean ATRs, who are not being hired), then students cannot learn what they need to learn. I got on the air and was pushed off as fast as they could scramble to get the next caller. But, I had my two seconds and I made good use of them!
Independent Budget Office Report on Tracking Grade-to-grade Achievement For 46,000 Students
New Independent Budget Office report casts doubt on Bloomberg administration claims of school improvement
Study finds that 70% of students did not improve on standardized tests despite boasts by Mayor Michael Bloomberg of test score gains
BY BEN CHAPMAN / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
PUBLISHED: THURSDAY, JULY 12, 2012, 1:09 PM, LINK
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Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Walcott dispute the findings of a new Independent Budget Office study that finds most kids did not improve on tests scores between 2005 and 2009.
Mayor Bloomberg often boasts that his administration has boosted student scores on state exams, but a new analysis from the Independent Budget Office shows that the vast majority of kids - 70% - haven’t improved at all.
In its bombshell report, the IBO, for the first time, is zeroing in on the scores of individual students to see how they progressed over time.
This is in contrast to the traditional method of looking at test scores, which measures how all the kids in a grade perform on a test compared to the previous year.
The budget office analysts looked at reading scores for 46,400 students who started third grade in 2005 and found that, three years later, nearly 62% were at the same proficiency level in sixth grade as they had been in third.
That means kids who got low scores in third grade — a 1 or a 2 on the test — were still getting a 1 or 2 in later years.
Another 8% of kids lost ground, dropping down at least one level.
Just over 30% of the students tracked by the IBO showed improvement.
The study is a slap at the Bloomberg administration, which claims that ten years of reforms have improved city schools.
City officials disputed the findings of the report because the state’s standardized tests are not designed to be compared from one year to the next.
“As we explained to the IBO, their research is invalid,” said schools spokeswoman Jessica Scaperotti. “Testing experts know that performance levels on New York State tests cannot be compared from grade to grade without additional analysis, which this study failed to complete or consider. We are surprised the IBO would issue results with this fundamental flaw.”
The state uses a different scale for each exam and says progress cannot be measured from year to year without additional controls.
The report, authored by testing consultant Fred Smith, acknowledged the shortcomings of its approach.
Smith conceded that students who earn the same score from one grade to the next may have “actually improved, declined, or stayed the same.”
But Smith says his report can provide a “context to the public” in the debate about student scores.
Smith looked at 2005-2008 in part because it’s impossible to compare older scores to more recent ones. The state raised the bar for passing the exams in 2010 after years of rising scores.
bchapman@nydailynews.com
