State ed revamps proficiency standards

By Joyce Kryszak

Buffalo, NY – Education department officials on Wednesday released Math and English test scores for third through eighth grades. Little more than half the students statewide meet the departments new proficiency standards.

Overall, the actual test scores went up. But officials say that's not good enough any more.

The scores are now being rated on a tougher proficiency scale. In a video conference, New York State Commissioner of Education David Steiner said the state has to raise the bar.

"We have to turn around our lowest-performing schools, schools in which for ten, twenty years the graduation rates have been below fifty percent," said Steiner. "That is just not acceptable."

He said the new standards more accurately reflect if students are on track to be college-ready. But the change wiped out the achievement gains - at least statistically - that schools thought they were making.

Statewide, only 53 percent of students met proficiency in English, compared to 77 percent last year. In Math, proficiency fell from 86 percent to 61 percent.
Buffalo saw a roughly 30 percent drop in proficiency overall - putting the district back at 2005 levels. Superintendent James Williams said Buffalo will stay the course.

But education department officials said schools need to get ready. They outlines long and short term strategies for improving student proficiency and giving them a better shot at being ready for college when they graduate.

In the short-term, assessment tests will be longer, with the format and questions harder to predict. In the long term, those tests will have more open-ended questions and essay answers.

More students also will get academic intervention. To help pay for it, officials said they are lobbying hard for a piece of the federal Race to the Top education grant. New York is a finalist.

Sam Radford is vice president of the Buffalo school district's parent coordinating council. He believes the state is twisting the data to up its chances of winning the grant. Radford said he will recommend that the council ask the United States Department of Education to investigate the state's real motives in revamping the standards.

He and district officials both added that changing the standards now leaves parents with no way to accurately tell if their child progressed academically from last year.