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State math exam scores have risen - but it's because tests have gotten easier
Test score increases reflect the fact that similar questions are asked every year and teachers do a lot of test prep. What else is new?
BY Meredith Kolodner and Rachel Monahan
NYS math test scores have gotten better, but are the tests easier?
It's the state exam version of grade inflation.
Soaring scores on the state math test don't necessarily add up to better schools or smarter kids.
That's because it has gotten easier to teach to the test as the questions have gotten easier to predict, a Daily News analysis revealed.
And, the tests may also be easier.
"It's the lesson of the financial crisis, and it's the lesson here - you can't just trust the numbers, you have to look at what the numbers mean," said Columbia University sociology doctorate student Jennifer Jennings.
"If you can always make pretty good guesses about what's going to be on the state tests, teachers aren't stupid and we're putting them under a whole lot of pressure, so basically they're strategic about what they teach."
Only a fraction of the simple arithmetic, algebra and statistics that kids should learn every year has been tested, Jennings found, looking back to 2006, when the state rejiggered the test.
Nearly identical questions have even appeared each year, Jennings found.
In 2009, at least 14 of the 30 multiple choice questions on the seventh-grade exam, for example, had appeared in similar form in previous years, she said. Only 54.7% of the specific math skills the state requires seventh-graders to learn were ever tested in the four years the exam has been given.
"If you've taught a grade long enough, you become comfortable with the test," said fourth-grade teacher Keith Peterson, at Brooklyn's Public School 114.
"You're better able to prepare [students] because the tests are pretty much similar," he said, noting that strategy is discussed at staff meetings.
That only a limited number of math skills are tested is a "substantial" and "important" finding, said state Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch. "That's what we need to fix," she told the News.
Tisch said she thought rising tests scores were a reflection of improvement at city schools - but "as my grandmother would say, it's nothing to write home about."
"Who are we kidding? And who's being cheated? We tell the parent, your kid is a high level 3. A high level 3 on what? On nothing," Tisch said.
Mayor Bloomberg defended the city schools' gains by citing a declining gap between the state and city schools when the results were announced.
Experts raised questions about whether scores were meaningful for comparisons between schools if there is widespread test score inflation.
"You can't tell where children are learning and where they're not. ... There's nobody who can tell you how much to trust these results, and that's unacceptable," said Daniel Koretz, a former member of the state's technical test advisory board and professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Experts also raised questions about whether the scores reflected an increase in students' skills.
"If the kids are essentially tipped off as to which specific items are going to be on the test, you undermine the validity of the test," said former testing chief for the city and NYU professor Robert Tobias.
"There's lots of other evidence - not performing well in high school, very large percentages need remedial education."
The tests getting potentially more predictable is not a conspiracy to boost scores and the reputation of schools statewide. It's not even unusual.
Experts said that developing a wider range of test questions year-to-year requires paying the test preparation companies more money.
"There is a phenomenon where a system sort of gets used to a test," said Michigan State education professor Suzanne Wilson.
"Some of the increase may be an increase in achievement, but some of it is familiarity with the test."
Jennings' research also raises questions about whether the state exams have gotten easier.
For third- through seventh-grade exams more questions tested what kids should have learned in the previous grade.
The eighth-grade exam already had a relatively high percentage of questions that kids should have learned before that grade.
State officials said scoring the exams takes into account any changes in how easy questions are.
— Meredith Kolodner and Rachel Monahan
New York Daily News
2009-06-07
INDEX OF OUTRAGES
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