Chalkbeat

The SAT is going digital. Here’s what to know.

2024-03-06T21:31:36+00:00

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No more No. 2 pencils. No more bubble sheets. The SAT this year is entirely digital. And that’s not the only change for the test.

The new SAT is shorter — just over two hours compared with the roughly three hours for the previous SAT and its main competitor, the ACT. It’s adaptive, meaning students who score relatively low on the first half of the test will get easier questions in the second half. There are fewer questions. And students have more time to answer each question.

The College Board, which oversees the test, made all of these changes with the hope of creating a less stressful experience. But the SAT’s status is in flux.

The first U.S. students are taking the new SAT this week; the digital SAT launched internationally last year. The College Board is rolling out the digital test after hundreds of U.S. colleges and universities ditched test score requirements for admissions in recent years. More than 1,800 colleges, including large state systems in Texas and California, won’t require applicants to submit test scores for the fall of 2025, according to data tracked by FairTest, a research and advocacy group. At the same time, some of the country’s most elite institutions are bringing them back.

The test optional movement, as much as the spread of technology during the pandemic, shaped the College Board’s thought process.

“If we’re launching a test that is largely optional, how do we make it the most attractive option possible?” said Priscilla Rodriguez, the College Board’s senior vice president of college readiness assessments. “If students are deciding to take a test, how do we make the SAT the one they want to take?”

Rodriguez said the College Board feels confident that a score of 900 or a 1300 will tell the same story about a student that it did a year ago.

But critics of the test remain skeptical. They question how the SAT can purport to provide objective information about students while changing the test so much from previous years and giving different students different tests. They worry the College Board is essentially conducting an experiment.

“The College Board gets to do what they want, and we have to trust fall into it,” said Jennifer Jessie, an independent college counselor and tutor based in northern Virginia who is steering her students away from the SAT this year.

Digital SAT is shorter — but that’s not all

Rodriguez said the pandemic pushed the College Board to create a digital SAT after several years of internal discussion. Most students have school-issued devices, and they’re used to working on a computer, she said.

“We were hearing that this was the last high-stakes test students took on paper, and it wasn’t natural, and getting those bubble sheets was more stressful,” she said.

The digital test is not just the old test moved to a computer, though.

Reading passages are much shorter — a single paragraph — because the longer passages didn’t render well on the screen.
Students will read more than 50 short reading passages with a single question each, instead of nine long passages with multiple questions.
Students can use a built-in graphing calculator on the entire test rather than having separate calculator and non-calculator sections.
The test is adaptive. Based on their performance on the first section, students will get an easier or a harder second section.

Making the test adaptive is what allows the test to be shorter, Rodriguez said. Because it changes based on how students answer early questions, the test can hone in more efficiently on what students can do.

Students who get the easier second section won’t be able to get the highest score of 1600. Rodriguez said that’s because students need to get a lot of questions wrong in the first half to end up with the easier second section.

“The mechanics itself does not preclude you from getting a certain score, but the student performance might,” she said.

Students can take the test on a school-issued or personal device, but they can’t take it at home and they can’t take it on a cell phone. Rodriguez said the College Board will provide laptops for students who indicate at registration they don’t have access to a device.

Students must download and take the test in the College Board’s Bluebook app. It requires minimal bandwidth and can go offline without disrupting the test, Rodriguez said. If a device loses its internet connection as a student is submitting their test, their work should be saved and re-encrypted until the connection is restored.

Students should get their results in a few days, instead of waiting weeks.

Rodriguez said in addition to wanting a better testing experience for students, the College Board wants a test that’s easier for schools to administer, now that two-thirds of students take the SAT during the school day rather than at a Saturday testing site.

In addition, teachers no longer need to store and protect boxes of paper tests or monitor calculator use. And the test takes up less of the school day.

The testing landscape is shifting

The SAT has evolved a number of times since its origins as an aptitude test closely related to IQ tests, said Derek Briggs, director of CADRE, the Center for Assessment, Design, Research and Evaluation at the University of Colorado’s School of Education.

In the last decade, the College Board has pushed dual purposes for the SAT — as a predictor of college success and as a way for states to meet federal accountability requirements.

The ACT has also marketed itself that way. Now the SAT is notably shorter — and potentially less burdensome for schools to administer — than its chief rival.

“You can reframe all of these test changes in terms of this battle between these two companies,” said Sheila Akbar, president and chief operating officer of Signet Education, which provides test prep and college advising.

Briggs said a shorter, adaptive test makes sense when entire state populations of students, including those who aren’t thinking about going to college, are taking the test.

An option that includes easier questions might make for better testing experience, Briggs said, and “perhaps students who didn’t think they would go to college would think, ‘Oh, maybe I can’” after taking it.

But Jessie said she’s seen the other scenario as well, where a lower-than-expected score leaves a student feeling like they aren’t cut out for college when the reality is they could be successful at a lot of institutions.

The adaptive aspect of the test concerns skeptics like Akbar and Jessie. They worry students who take longer to warm up or who are prone to small mistakes on easy questions won’t get a chance to show they can answer harder questions correctly.

They’re encouraging students who have to provide a test score to take the ACT, which is available in both paper and digital formats and hasn’t changed much in recent years. They also feel more confident that ACT practice materials align with the test.

The College Board has said both versions of the SAT have a mix of easy, moderate, and hard questions, and there is significant overlap between the tests.

Students can take up to four practice SAT tests through the Bluebook app and get used to the interface before taking the test. Heather Waite, director of college admissions at Kaplan, a company that provides test prep services, said it’s important that students practice with up-to-date materials, not previous year’s prep books.

Waite said students have provided positive feedback about the shorter test.

College advisers expect more universities to bring back test score requirements, and a good score can boost an application at some test-optional schools.

“At Kaplan, our students are looking for an edge over other students, and submitting their scores is something that makes them more competitive,” she said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee reading law’s retention policies should start as early as kindergarten, state board says

2024-03-04T23:54:55+00:00

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Tennessee’s top education policy board is urging Gov. Bill Lee and state lawmakers to refocus efforts to identify and help struggling readers on students in lower grades — as early as kindergarten — rather than waiting until third or fourth grade to intervene.

In a rare action, the state Board of Education unanimously approved a resolution Monday asking elected officials to revisit the state’s 2021 literacy law, which targeted third and fourth graders and strengthened retention rules for students who score poorly on state tests.

Over the past three years, the board has been working through the details and challenges of implementing the controversial law, which passed during a special legislative session called by the governor to address pandemic-related learning disruptions.

The law created popular summer learning camps and tutoring programs. It also included less popular provisions increasing the likelihood that third and fourth graders could be held back a grade eventually if they don’t perform well enough in English language arts under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

Third grade, when Tennessee begins to give its students TCAP tests, is a critical year for reading proficiency, because literacy is considered key to all later learning.

The board’s request for the state to reconsider the law’s retention provision is based in part on new tools that Tennessee teachers are using to identify reading problems before the third grade.

“Retaining students in grades K-3 rather than grades 3-4 will ensure that students who are in the most need of additional reading support will have access to foundational literacy skills instruction at a critical point in their foundational literacy development should they be retained,” the resolution reads.

While years of research shows the overall costs and benefits of retaining students are unclear, the general consensus among researchers and educators is that the earlier a struggling student is retained, the better the outcomes for that student.

“Third grade is too late,” Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds told the board last month when members asked whether Tennessee’s reading law is targeting the right age group.

Additionally, Tennessee students in kindergarten, first grade, and second grade now take three tests annually to screen them for potential reading challenges. Data from those tests wasn’t available when the 2021 law passed, but it could be used now to trigger key supports, interventions, and retention decisions earlier in a student’s academic career, the resolution says.

Ryan Holt, who represents Nashville on the board and wrote the resolution, said the law had a good intent but needs a “course correction.”

Executive Director Sara Morrison agreed. “It pushes us in the right direction as a state to look at those earlier grades and use data responsibly to make decisions earlier than third grade, but allows for that backstop to remain in third grade where we have that consistent TCAP measure,” she said.

Thousands of third graders were at risk of being held back last year because of their TCAP scores, but ultimately only about 900 third graders, or 1.2% were retained — not significantly more than in an average school year — thanks to intervention options and an appeals process that many families took advantage of.

The law also requires this year’s fourth graders to be held back if they don’t score as proficient, or show “adequate growth,” on their TCAPs.

Officials are projecting that the fourth grade retention number will be significantly higher than the third-grade rate, because the law allows for fewer exemptions for those students.

Just weeks ago, the state board approved a complex formula for what constitutes enough improvement for fourth graders — but not before several members questioned whether the law is targeting the right age group.

“I just want to encourage us to keep moving in the direction of working with teachers who would say the earlier, the better. Let’s not wait,” said Larry Jensen, a board member from West Tennessee.

Board Chairman Robert Eby, from Oak Ridge, said the body’s decision Monday to send a message to elected officials falls in line with its duty to develop and maintain a master plan for K-12 public education.

“We don’t pass many resolutions,” Eby said. “I think it shows the importance we’re putting on this issue.”

Asked about the board’s resolution, a spokeswoman for the governor reiterated the law’s intent, supports, and impacts.

“Beginning in kindergarten, students have access to high-dosage tutoring and summer school programs that reinforce proven phonics-based instruction,” said Elizabeth Lane Johnson, Lee’s press secretary. “Parents and teachers can track their students’ progress through regular reading screening tests, so they can determine the right path forward based on the unique needs of each student.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Massive House proposal is third universal school voucher bill before Tennessee lawmakers

2024-02-27T03:18:19+00:00

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Three school voucher proposals now before Tennessee lawmakers would create a new statewide program that eventually could open eligibility to all K-12 students, regardless of family income.

But the similarities end there.

The latest version, filed Monday by House Majority Leader William Lamberth, of Portland, has no testing requirements for students who accept public funding to attend private schools. Gov. Bill Lee’s version doesn’t either, but Senate leaders say that approach is a non-starter.

The House plan also would make it easier for middle-class families to access the program during its first year than under the two versions filed last week.

Proposals by the governor and the Senate would reserve the first 10,000 slots for families who are at or below 300% of the federal poverty level. But the House version would bump that to 400% of the poverty level, which equates to $124,800 for a family of four — a departure from Lee’s 2019 Education Savings Account law aimed at low-income families who attend low-performing schools in three urban areas.

The biggest difference, however, is in the House’s sweeping attempt to address a plethora of long-standing concerns by public school officials in a bill purportedly about school choice.

From complaints about overtesting of students to the cost of health care insurance for public school teachers, the 39-page proposal devotes far more pages to existing public school policies than new ones for vouchers.

Last week, House Speaker Cameron Sexton called the upcoming omnibus-style bill an “all-encompassing approach” that’s based on feedback from public school leaders during recent months.

“It’s not just about choice; it is about K-12 education,” Sexton said.

But Democratic leaders vowed that no members of their outnumbered party will support any of the voucher proposals, even if some include policies that they’ve fought for in the past for public schools.

“They’re trying to buy votes,” said Democratic Caucus Chair John Ray Clemmons, of Nashville. “They’re just throwing in everything they can to try to get enough votes to pass this voucher scam.”

Meanwhile, Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, who leads the Senate, said he’d “probably rather stick with the issues at hand” instead of expanding the bill’s scope beyond vouchers.

The legislation could be taken up Tuesday by a House subcommittee and Wednesday in the Senate Education Committee. But GOP leaders say it will be weeks before any votes are held.

Non-voucher proposals for public schools under the House bill include:

Reducing testing time and possibly pivoting from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program to a different “statewide standardized assessment.”
Increasing the state’s coverage of the cost of medical insurance for teachers and staff from 45% to 60%.
Phasing out the Achievement School District, the state’s turnaround district for low-performing schools, on July 1, 2026.
Adding several pathways beyond those outlined in a 2021 literacy law for fourth graders to get promoted if they don’t score proficient on this year’s TCAP in English language arts.
Reducing the number of required evaluations for higher-performing teachers.
Extending to eight years the validity of practitioner and professional teacher licenses.
Allowing high school students to take career readiness assessments instead of retaking the ACT exam.
Increasing the funding weight for small school systems from 5% to 8% under the state’s new K-12 funding structure known as the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement Act.
Reducing the frequency of student screenings through the state’s learning intervention program known as RTI.

Much of the disagreement over universal vouchers centers on the voucher program’s cost and how much private schools should be held accountable for results if they accept taxpayer money.

All three pieces of legislation would offer 20,000 vouchers this fall. But the House legislation stipulates that the program would increase by 20% annually if funding is available, while Lee wants to open it up to any student in the second year.

The governor proposes to give each recipient $7,075 this fall, which would cover about 62% of the average $11,344 cost of attending a private school in Tennessee, according to Private School Review.

Legislative staff released an initial financial analysis Monday showing the governor’s program would cost $144 million next fiscal year, which Lee has included in his proposed budget; $346 million the following year for an estimated 47,000 participants; and then exceeding that amount in subsequent years when “the liability to the state could significantly grow.”

Fiscal agents said over 1.12 million students would eventually be eligible to participate, including 155,650 students currently attending nonpublic schools.

“Due to the universal nature of the program, it is assumed that students already attending private school will seek the additional funding through the EFS Program,” the analysts wrote.

The analysts also noted that none of the legislative proposals include a plan to help offset an anticipated decrease in local revenue for public schools as students pivot to private schools.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s reading law gets pushback again as thousands of students could repeat fourth grade

2024-02-16T01:58:33+00:00

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Tennessee’s comprehensive pandemic-era literacy law, which last year provided several interventions to help struggling third grade readers advance to the fourth grade, offers no such escape hatches for those same students to avoid retention this year if they don’t show “adequate growth” under the 2021 law.

Now, as the State Board of Education prepares to vote Friday on what constitutes enough improvement for fourth graders who are at risk, state lawmakers are getting pushback from families whose students could be held back if they score poorly on state tests this spring, even after taking advantage of state-funded tutoring and summer learning programs.

At least 5,000 students are projected to fall in that category, according to the state education department. But some estimates put that number higher.

“I think we’re going to put so much pressure on these kids that it’s going to be a real mess,” said Sen. Rusty Crowe during a legislative hearing Wednesday.

The Johnson City Republican wants to revise the 2021 law so that students and parents who are engaged with their teachers in the learning process don’t get punished. He and Rep. Chris Hurt, a Halls Republican, have introduced legislation to let a struggling fourth grade reader’s teacher, principal, and parents decide collaboratively whether to retain the student based on multiple measures, not just state test results for English language arts under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

It’s uncertain whether the General Assembly is willing to revise the law again, especially after making several tweaks last year to widen the criteria for holding back third graders.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg repeatedly has said Gov. Bill Lee’s literacy law sets reasonable and appropriate expectations in the state’s long drive to improve reading proficiency.

“We’ve moved the needle from 30% to 40% proficiency [for third graders], but 40% still isn’t acceptable,” the Bristol Republican said at a January legislative hearing.

State board is required to define ‘adequate growth’

The State Board of Education appears poised to approve proposed policy changes that include a definition of “adequate growth” for fourth graders to get promoted if they don’t score as proficient readers this spring.

Chairman Robert Eby told lawmakers this week that he expects a full discussion Friday — but that members ultimately will follow the law, which directs the board to define adequate growth.

The proposed definition is tailored to each student, based on testing measurements that the state already uses to predict the probability that a student can become proficient by the eighth grade, when they take their last TCAP tests.

“It is complicated; it is not something that is easy to explain,” said Sara Morrison, executive director of the state board, during testimony before the Senate Education Committee.

“We do feel like it is statistically robust and makes sense,” she added. “But that doesn’t make it easy, and it doesn’t make it an easy decision for our board.”

Board members have received a lot of public feedback about the matter, including a letter this week from Erin O’Hara Block, a Nashville school board member who worked as Tennessee’s assistant commissioner for data and research in former Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration.

Block called the proposed calculations for measuring adequate growth “confusing,” and suggested that the real problem lies with the law itself.

“Instead of passing this revision of policy, I suggest that your board defer until a later date with a request that the legislature remove this portion of the law based on a lack of clear, transparent, viable, and implementable options,” she wrote.

In an interview Thursday with Chalkbeat, Block said state test scores are being misused because of the law. TCAP results were intended for diagnostic purposes, she said, not for high-stakes decisions such as holding a child back a year at school.

“This law was written quickly in the midst of a global pandemic and passed in a special legislative session. So why aren’t we revisiting it?” she asked.

Legislature drew a line in the sand

The law passed in 2021 during a weeklong session called by the governor to address pandemic-related learning disruptions. The same law created summer learning recovery camps that began that year and tutoring programs that started in 2022.

The interventions have proven popular to help students catch up, but the law’s retention provision — which began with last year’s class of third-graders — has been controversial.

Still, due to the intervention options and an appeals process that many families took advantage of, only about 900 third graders, or 1.2% from that class who took the test, were retained because of their reading scores.

The number of fourth graders expected to be retained this year will be significantly higher, officials say, based on the current law.

Research is mixed about whether holding students back helps or hurts them. Supporters say it spurs additional supports that struggling readers desperately need. Critics worry that retention falls disproportionately on student groups who are already marginalized, such as those who are of color or are economically disadvantaged.

During a workshop on Thursday, several State Board members questioned whether the law is even targeting the right age group — and Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds agreed. Intervention and retention policies aimed at kindergarten and first and second grades would be more effective, she said, adding that “third grade is too late.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Michigan Senate hears the case for requiring the “science of reading” in early literacy curriculum

2024-02-06T23:43:57+00:00

The Senate Education Committee Tuesday began hearing testimony in support of two proposed bills that would require schools to weave the “science of reading” into Michigan’s early literacy education.

The bills, which are aimed at better identifying and teaching students with dyslexia, would also likely benefit all early readers, supporters say. The legislation would mandate school districts and colleges use practices from the science of reading, or literacy instruction that emphasizes phonics along with building vocabulary and background knowledge, in assessments, interventions, and teacher education programs.

One bill introduced by Sen. Jeff Irwin, a Democrat from Ann Arbor, would add standards to existing screeners to identify students who have trouble decoding language and whether they are mastering foundational literacy skills. It would also call for interventions to be informed by the science of reading.

“We need to make sure that that pendulum is swung a little bit back toward those foundational skills of phonics in those early grades by making sure that our educators are bringing the science of reading into our classrooms – in the general ed classroom, in small groups, in individualized help, all the way throughout that classroom environment,” said Irwin.

Another bill introduced by Sen. Dayna Polehanki, a Democrat who represents parts of Canton and Livonia, would set standards for teacher preparation programs to train future educators on methods based on the science of reading as well as best practices to identify and support children struggling to read and students with dyslexia.

Currently, there is no set reading curriculum in the state and districts decide on their own under local control. The state does provide some guidance on using reading programs backed by research, but the proposed bills would provide more explicit direction on which methodology to use.

Michigan has long struggled to achieve literacy proficiency for its students and currently ranks 43rd in the country for reading for fourth graders.

Dyslexia is a common hereditary reading disability that can cause affected students to struggle in school. Studies show most people with dyslexia who get early high-quality intervention become average readers.

“Middle school is where I started figuring out that my brain was different from my peers,” said Deon Butler, now an adult who attended school in Inkster, during testimony in support of the bill. “I couldn’t read or write like them. When the teacher would call on me to read aloud, I would struggle. When I was struggling, everybody would laugh at me.”

Butler said though he managed to graduate with a 2.5 grade point average and got a football scholarship to attend Central Michigan University, he was still reading at a fourth grade level. The star athlete was signed by the Detroit Lions, but was eventually cut because he struggled to read the team’s playbook.

Butler said though schooling failed him, he learned to read from a tutor trained in Orton-Gillingham, a highly structured multisensory literacy program.

“This is urgent,” he said of the bills. “Changes need to happen. Don’t let anymore kids down, especially the kids in my community who have so much against them.”

Caroline Kaganov, parent of a ninth-grader with dyslexia, said during the hearing that students’ ability to access curriculum starts with their ability to read.

“Access to literacy should not depend on if your parent can pay for outside tutoring or if your parent has the knowledge to fight a school district to ensure the correct intervention,” she said. “We as a state are required to provide a free and appropriate public education for every child. We need to ensure that every child can read at a proficient level.”

Alyssa Henneman, an elementary school teacher in Centreville Public Schools, spoke in favor of the bills Tuesday, saying educators need training grounded in the science of reading.

“This training would improve my instruction as well as other teachers’ instruction to know where to focus our interventions to meet the needs of our individual students,” she said.

Those opposed to the bills have concerns there will not be enough funding to implement the requirements it would impose on school systems that are already struggling to hire teachers and combat learning loss.

Irwin said he would push for funding to back the bills in the upcoming school aid budget.

While best practices for reading instruction have evolved over the years, phonics has won over previously popular methods. Current research suggests effective literacy instruction should include five core pillars: phonemic awareness, phonics and word recognition, fluency, oral vocabulary, and text comprehension.

If the bills pass, Michigan would join at least 30 states that have enacted laws requiring instruction based on the science of reading.

Irwin and Polehanki have previously introduced similar legislation and have advocated for years for more help for students with dyslexia. In 2022, the bills passed the Senate nearly unanimously, but the House Education Committee never moved the bills forward.

Last year, a handful of House representatives took up the issue and co-sponsored two proposed dyslexia bills.

Rep. Carol Glanville, a Democrat from Grand Rapids, introduced legislation that would create a dyslexia resource guide and advisory committee within the Michigan Department of Education.

Rep. Kathy Schmaltz, a Republican from Jackson, co-sponsored a bill that would require schools to have at least one teacher trained in Orton-Gillingham. Both have been referred to the House Education Committee but have not yet had hearings.

Testimony on the Senate bills will continue at the next Senate Education Committee meeting on Feb. 13.

Hannah Dellinger covers K-12 education and state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

I teach future teachers. They don’t need the edTPA.

2023-03-31T14:00:00+00:00

I am a supervisor of teachers who work time and a half, for free. They arrive at work as early as 6:30 a.m., consult with guidance counselors during their free periods, tutor students after school, plan lessons and grade essays before and after dinner. They don’t sleep enough.

These teachers are student teachers, but they carry a full load. And they do all this work under the constant supervision of a veteran teacher and me, their university supervisor, with the expectation that they continuously revise their practice in response to feedback. Not all will make it out with a license. Those who do will have earned it.

When Illinois’ COVID Disaster Proclamation expires on May 11, the student teachers with whom I work will have even more on their plates. Lots more. The edTPA assessment for teacher licensure, which Illinois began requiring of all new teachers in the fall of 2015, will again be required in the spring of 2024.

The edTPA is often compared to the assessment required of veteran teachers seeking National Board Certification. Developed by the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity, it required my students to create some 50 pages of writing as well as video clips of themselves teaching. Despite its good intentions and fancy pedigree, this assessment is redundant, costly, and has the unintended effects of narrowing teacher education curricula and keeping strong candidates out of schools that need them — or out of the profession altogether.

To be sure, I want to hold future teachers to the highest standards; they are working with our most precious assets, our children. But to add such an onerous assessment when there are so many checks already in place is to fall prey to the accountability movement’s lie: that more testing is always good.

Already, pre-service teachers at my university have to apply for admission to our teacher education program after successful completion of prerequisite courses, maintain high grades in their education coursework, pass a state-administered content area test, and receive repeated positive evaluations of their student teaching by at least two veteran teachers. No additional testing is necessary.

For the few years that the edTPA was mandated in Illinois, its negative effects were immediately clear to me and went well beyond making a stressful student teaching semester remarkably more stressful. Because of the pressure to capture excellent student work on video, placement coordinators worried about assigning student teachers to some of the non-selective enrollment schools with which they had previously partnered. Because of the test fee, some teacher candidates with whom I worked — first-generation college students putting themselves through college and helping to support their families — put off licensure. And some, disheartened by not being able to finish on the planned timeline, put it off further.

Most ridiculously, my university colleagues and I devoted precious class time to teaching edTPA-specific vocabulary. The test emphasizes obscure terminology — terms like “language function” to describe “the content and language focus of the learning task, represented by the active verbs within the learning outcomes.” These terms left our and our students’ minds in tangles when we should have been focusing on teaching.

The edTPA doesn’t assess anything a good teacher education program doesn’t, and there are systems in place to assess the teacher education programs themselves. What the edTPA does do is distract from the work of teaching and increase stress, debt, and inequality, making it harder for lower-income student teachers to be licensed and disincentivizing their work in lower-income schools.

If the edTPA had proved itself to be a completely accurate assessment, that would be at least one point in its favor. But it hasn’t. Instead, we see damning data like that reported in a 2021 American Educational Research Journal article that “raise[s] serious concerns about scoring design, the reliability of the assessments, and the consequential impact on decisions about edTPA candidates.” (The testmakers have disputed those claims.) And yet edTPA is due to become required under law again in Illinois after the COVID-era emergency orders cease.

Hopefully, this will not come to pass. State lawmakers are considering changes to the licensure process, and I hope they make them. If the edTPA returns, I will have to return to using valuable class time to prepare students to clear this unnecessary hurdle. And I will again have to watch as the edTPA’s demands dangerously overload student teachers’ plates.

Indeed, as I watch this semester’s student teachers working so hard, giving up time with family and friends to support students of their own, I quake to think of asking future student teachers to do even more. Given Illinois’ teacher shortage (ISBE reported more than 2,000 unfilled teacher positions in 2022) and our children’s increased needs since the pandemic, we should be doing everything we can to get these dedicated aspiring teachers into the schools that need them.

Kate Sjostrom is a lecturer and associate director of English education at University of Illinois, Chicago.

A math problem with no easy solution: Regents scores plummeted during pandemic

2024-01-23T17:58:15+00:00

New York City high-schoolers’ scores on math Regents exams plummeted during the pandemic and have yet to bounce back, according to recently released state data.

Performance on the Regents tests, which serve as graduation requirements in New York, fell in every subject with the exception of U.S. History between 2019, the last year before the pandemic, and 2023, the data shows.

But the decline was steepest for city students in higher-level math courses. In Algebra II, proficiency rates for city students fell from 69% in 2019 to just 44% last year. In Geometry, 56% of city students passed the Regents test in 2019, but just 38% passed last school year.

The sharp decline is a stark indicator of the ongoing challenges the city faces in helping students recover from the academic impacts of the pandemic. Those challenges are particularly acute in math, where one course builds directly on the last and interrupted instruction can have ripple effects.

City officials are betting big on a new curriculum overhaul, where high schools for the first time are required to use a shared math curriculum for Algebra I.

“Math Regents scores have been unacceptably low for the last several years, even before the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Education Department spokesperson Nicole Brownstein. “We launched our rollout of the Algebra 1 Illustrative Math curriculum to address dropping test scores.”

The curriculum mandate is currently in place only for Algebra I, but city officials have raised the possibility of standardizing curriculum for higher-level math courses as well. Illustrative Math, the mandated Algebra I curriculum, has drawn mixed responses from educators.

The Algebra I Regents exam is also undergoing a change this year to align with a new set of standards, and similar changes are on the way for the Algebra II and Geometry exams.

Brownstein said the Algebra I curriculum mandate is “just the first stage” of the Education Department’s work to improve high school math instruction and that “we are confident we will see rising Regents scores as a result.”

Pandemic Regents waivers help explain drops

There are likely several factors that drove the unusually steep decline in higher-level math scores.

In general, math scores fell more dramatically than reading scores across grade levels and districts. That pattern held true for New York City on the state’s third-to-eighth-grade state tests and the National Assessment of Educational Progress, which tests fourth and eighth graders.

Bobson Wong, a veteran high school math teacher in Queens, said basic academic skills like knowing how to study, remember things, and ask for help – skills that are particularly important in memorization-heavy subjects like math – all took a hit during the pandemic.

But educators also pointed to specific features of New York’s high school Regents tests and the state’s pandemic policies that may help explain the size of the drops.

High school math, to a greater degree than other subjects, is cumulative – meaning it’s extremely difficult to perform well in Algebra II without having mastered Algebra I, said Wong.

Prior to the pandemic, many schools didn’t enroll students in Algebra II or Geometry courses unless they’d passed the Algebra I Regents exam. But during the pandemic school years of 2019-2020 and 2020-2021, when schools were partially or fully remote, Regents tests were mostly canceled and students could earn waivers by passing the course linked to the test.

As a result, when in-person instruction returned, educators said they noticed an unusual number of students enrolled in higher-level math courses who’d never really mastered Algebra I.

“I saw a lot of students in my Algebra II class waived through Algebra I and they didn’t know any algebra,” said Wong. “We didn’t really do anything to prepare them for a course like Algebra II. It requires so much knowledge of algebra and so much prior skill.”

During the pandemic, there were few good options to fairly assess students. State officials concluded that trying to hold Regents exams during the height of the pandemic, with schools offering varying levels of in-person instruction and students often struggling to engage in remote learning, would exacerbate inequality and unfairly block some students from graduating. Students in New York typically need to score a 65 or higher on five Regents exams to earn a diploma, and can receive an “advanced” diploma by passing more of the exams.

More than 80% of New York City’s high school graduates in 2020, and nearly three-quarters of graduates in 2021, had at least one Regents exam exemption counted towards graduation requirements, a 2022 analysis from Education Trust-New York found.

But while many educators supported the additional flexibility during the pandemic, some have expressed concerns that students granted Regents exemptions or who passed courses because of added pandemic grading flexibility didn’t get the support they needed to catch up, and were instead moved into higher-level courses for which they were unprepared.

“We had to make some really important and responsive decisions,” said Tracy Fray-Oliver, the vice president at Bank Street Education Center and a former math official in the city Education Department. “But without ensuring the mastery in these courses that came before, you’re going to see these kinds of results.”

Passing the Algebra II and Geometry Regents tests isn’t a requirement for graduation because students can satisfy the math Regents requirement by passing only Algebra I. But the tests are required for an advanced diploma, and passing them can be an indicator of whether students are on track to take and pass pre-calculus and calculus.

Gaps between racial groups grew

Across the state, the Regents exam declines were also largest on the Algebra II and Geometry tests, although the drops in New York City were larger in both cases.

The gaps between racial groups also grew. The share of Latino students in New York City scoring proficient on the Algebra II exam, for example, was more than cut in half, from 58% in 2019 to 28% last year. Just 26% of Black students passed the Algebra II test last year, down from 55% in 2019.

The proportion of Asian American students passing the exam fell from 87% in 2019 to 74% this year, while the share of white students scoring proficient fell from 82% to 63%.

Fray-Oliver said she applauded the city’s efforts to overhaul high school math curriculum, but added that many of the skills students need to succeed in higher-level high school math courses are first taught as early as elementary.

Critics have long argued that the Regents exams aren’t effective ways of assessing what kids know and encourage rote learning at the expense of deeper understanding. That’s part of why a Blue Ribbon Commission recently recommended to the state’s Board of Regents that New York offer more pathways outside of the exams for students to earn graduation credit.

Wong said he expects the scores on the higher-level Regents tests to slowly bounce back on their own as the effects of the pandemic fade.

“I wouldn’t push the panic button and say we have to do all these interventions,” he said. “If the drop-off continues, that could be more of an issue.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Blizzard of state test scores shows some progress in math, divergence in reading

2023-10-02T09:00:00+00:00

This story was co-published with USA Today.

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When it comes to how American students are recovering from the pandemic, it’s a tale of two subjects.

States across the country have made some progress in math over the last two years, while in English language arts some states made gains while others fell further behind.

“In math, almost every state looks pretty similar. There was a large decline between 2019 and 2021. And then everybody is kind of crawling it back,” said Emily Oster, a Brown University economist. “In ELA, it’s all over the map.”

That’s according to recently released results from over 20 state tests, encompassing millions of students, compiled by Oster and colleagues. The scores offer among the most comprehensive national pictures of student learning, pointing to some progress but persistent challenges. With just a handful of exceptions, students in 2023 are less likely to be proficient than in 2019, the year before the pandemic jolted American schools and society.

“Schools are getting back to normal, but kids still have a ways to go,” said Scott Marion, executive director of the Center for Assessment, a nonprofit that works with states to develop tests. “We’re not getting out of this in two years.”

Oster’s analysis of test data tracks the share of students who were proficient on grades 3-8 math and reading exams before, during, and after the pandemic. Every state showed a significant drop in proficiency between 2019 and 2021, a fact that has been documented on a variety of tests. (Testing was canceled in 2020.)

Prior studies from Oster and others have found that while schools of all stripes saw test scores decline during the pandemic, those that remained virtual for longer experienced deeper setbacks.

The recent state test data offers some good news, though: 2021 was, for the most part, the bottom of the learning loss hole.

In math, all but a couple states experienced improvements between 2021 and 2023. Only two — Iowa and Mississippi — were at or above 2019 levels, though.

In reading, a majority of states have made some progress since 2021 and four have caught up to pre-pandemic levels. However, numerous states experienced no improvement. A handful even continued to regress.

It’s not clear why state trends in math versus reading have differed. After the pandemic hit and closed down schools, math scores fell more quickly and sharply than reading, but now appear to have been faster to recover.

Testing experts say that standardized tests may be better at measuring the discrete skills that students are taught in math. Reading — especially the comprehension of texts — comes through the development of more cumulative knowledge and skills. “Is the test insensitive to what’s really going on in classrooms or are kids just not learning to read better?” said Marion. “That’s the part I can’t quite figure out.”

Oster suspects the adoption of research-aligned reading practices, including phonics, may explain why some states have made a quicker comeback. Mississippi, well known for its early adoption of these practices, is one of four states to have fully recovered in ELA. But more research is needed to understand why some states appear to have bounced back more quickly than others.

“Some people are doing a good job. Some people are not doing as good a job,” said Oster. “Understanding that would tell us something about which kind of policies we might want to favor.”

Some schools look to phonics to boost stagnant reading scores.

In Indiana, which made gains in math but not reading, officials are hoping a suite of recent laws embracing the science of reading will boost scores. In Michigan, which also saw no progress in reading, lawmakers pointed to recent investments in early literacy efforts and tutoring.

At Sherlock Elementary, part of the Cicero 99 school district in Illinois, just west of Chicago, Principal Joanna Lago saw how the pandemic set students back. Students are still climbing out of those holes, she said.

“Our scores are somewhat stagnant,” she said.

But Lago is hopeful a series of new initiatives will lead to gains for her students. This year, her district is adding an extra 30 minutes to every school day so staff can zero in on reading and math skills. This is the second year that teachers within the same grade level are working together more closely to plan lessons and review student performance data.

The district has also adopted a new reading curriculum aligned with the science of reading. Over the last two years, Lago, a former reading teacher herself, and her team got training on using decodable texts to emphasize phonics. Teachers visited each other’s classrooms to observe as they tried out new lessons. Pictures of mouths forming letter sounds now hang on classroom walls, instead of pictures of words.

It’s “a more strategic approach to help reach kids and fill some of the gaps of what they need,” Lago said. “How could this not lead to results? How could this not lead to more kids reading more fluently, having better reading comprehension?”

Educators are confronting persistent learning loss going into the last full school year to spend federal COVID relief money, a chunk of which is earmarked for learning recovery. Some school districts have already begun to wind down tutoring and other support as the money dwindles.

Marion of the Center for Assessment fears this extra programming will vanish too soon. “I’m pessimistic because I’m pessimistic about politicians,” he said.

The state test scores offer a slightly different picture of learning loss than a recent analysis by the testing company NWEA. While NWEA found little evidence of recovery last school year, most state tests showed gains in math proficiency last year.

There could be a number of reasons for this discrepancy, including the fact that some large states — including California and New York — have not released state test data yet, so the picture is still incomplete.

The new test score data comes with a few other caveats. Because states administer their own exams and create different benchmarks for proficiency, results from different states are not directly comparable to each other. Experts also warn that proficiency is an imprecise gauge of learning since it captures only whether a student meets a certain threshold, without considering how far above or below they are.

Plus, each year’s scores are based on different groups of students since regular testing ends in eighth grade. That means students fall out of the data as they progress into high school and some may never have fully recovered academically, even if state average scores have returned to pre-pandemic levels.

“There are kids who will forever be behind,” said Oster.

Matt Barnum is interim national editor, overseeing and contributing to Chalkbeat’s coverage of national education issues. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

U.S. math scores dropped, but reading and science results held steady on key international test

2023-12-05T10:00:00+00:00

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It’s a familiar story, with a few interesting plot twists.

That’s how one top federal official described the 2022 test results for American students on a high-profile international exam that allows for comparisons of what 15-year-olds around the world know and can do in math, reading, and science.

The results released Tuesday from the Program for International Student Assessment, or PISA, showed that math scores dropped significantly last year for 15-year-olds in the U.S. compared with 2018, the last time this test was given. But there was also encouraging news: Reading and science scores held steady over that time. And the nation’s PISA rankings actually rose because other countries’ performance dipped.

“These results are another piece of evidence showing the crisis in mathematics achievement,” said Peggy Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the PISA in the U.S. “Only now can we see that it is a global concern.”

The decline in math scores following the pandemic has become a topic of national concern, as scores for fourth and eighth graders dropped significantly on a key national test last year. Students in several states also saw big math declines in COVID’s wake, though there’s been some recent recovery.

Some educators say that’s because math skills build on one another, so students who missed critical lessons earlier in the pandemic may have a hard time filling in those blanks and catching up to their current grade level.

The scores come as officials and educators in several states are weighing the best way to teach students math — and how much classes should focus on real-world uses of math versus more theoretical applications. Others are trying to expand access to higher-level math courses like algebra and calculus. Historically, Black and Latino students have had much less access to these classes than their peers.

“There are a lot of hypotheses about what we need to do differently to move ourselves forward in mathematics,” Carr said. “But clearly we haven’t figured it out.”

Even though American students’ average scores dropped or didn’t change much, the U.S. climbed in the international rankings in all three subjects, as scores declined in other countries that tend to outperform the U.S.

The U.S. improved its rankings even as its students reported that their schools were closed on average for longer periods of time during the pandemic than their peers in other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries.

The relationship between academic performance and the length of school closures was small, Carr said, meaning that the variance in scores was mostly due to other factors. Some OECD countries that reopened for in-person learning more quickly than the U.S. saw steeper drops on the test, she said.

That finding echoes the analysis of a research team released last year that found remote learning was a contributor to score declines, but it wasn’t the primary driver of those academic losses.

Among the 81 international school systems that participated in the PISA last year, the U.S. ranked 26th in math achievement, up from 29th among the same group of school systems in 2018.

Among the 37 members of the OECD that gave the test, most of which are higher-income countries, the U.S. ranked 22nd in math achievement.

Norway, France, Iceland, and Portugal, for example, all scored better than the U.S. in math in 2018, but are now scoring at the same level statistically.

The U.S. ranked sixth in reading and 10th in science among the 81 school systems that gave the PISA last year. In 2018, the U.S. ranked eighth in reading and 11th in science.

The steady reading results among U.S. high schoolers run counter to the significant reading declines observed last year for younger students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. Academic recovery in reading has also been uneven. Carr said that could indicate that the NAEP has a higher difficulty level than the PISA.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona pointed to the results as an indicator of the impact of the federal investments made in schools during the pandemic, much of which was spent on academic recovery initiatives, such as tutoring and mental health support for students.

That spending “kept the United States in the game,” Cardona said. Without it, he said, the U.S. would be “in the same boat” as other countries that didn’t spend as much and saw steeper declines.

The PISA was given to around 4,600 students across the U.S. and some 620,000 students around the world.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

¿Los padres quieren que Colorado tenga exámenes estandarizados? Depende a quién se le pregunte

2021-02-17T20:07:48+00:00

Uno de los debates que está tomando importancia en la sesión legislativa de Colorado en 2021 es si se deben tener exámenes estandarizados en medio de una pandemia, y está dividiendo las opiniones de los defensores de la educación y también de los funcionarios electos.

¿Pero qué quieren los padres? Para indicar que el público general está de acuerdo con ellos, los grupos de defensa han publicado resultados de encuestas que han llegado a conclusiones opuestas.

Una encuesta de 600 votantes registrados comisionada por la organización Democrats for Education Reform (el grupo afiliado con Colorado Succeeds) y el grupo conservador de defensa Ready Colorado encontró que un 62% de los encuestados apoya dar exámenes estandarizados si no se usarán para sancionar a las escuelas o maestros cuando el desempeño estudiantil sea deficiente.

“A los padres les preocupa mucho la pérdida de aprendizaje este año y la calidad de enseñanza que están recibiendo sus hijos”, dijo Leslie Colwell de la Colorado Children’s Campaign. La organización no estuvo involucrada en la encuesta, pero citó los resultados en un comunicado de prensa pidiendo que el estado mantenga los exámenes este año.

Otra encuesta de más de 700 votantes activos comisionada por la Colorado Education Association (el sindicato de maestros más grande del estado), la Colorado Association of School Executives (que representa a los superintendentes), la Colorado Association of School Boards, y la Colorado Rural Schools Alliance encontró que un 58% de los encuestados quiere que este año se cancelen los exámenes, conocidos como CMAS.

“Como madre y educadora, sé que muchos padres quieren saber cómo les está yendo a sus hijos en la escuela”, dijo Amie Baca-Oehlert, presidenta de la Colorado Education Association. “Pero los exámenes CMAS no nos darán la respuesta”.

Para suspender los exámenes, Colorado necesitará un permiso del gobierno federal o se arriesga a perder millones en fondos federales. Una de las primeras decisiones importantes de Miguel Cardona, el nominado a Secretario de Educación del Presidente Biden, será si se emitirán esos permisos o no. En su audiencia de confirmación esta semana, Cardona dio señales mixtas, diciendo que no tiene sentido traer a los estudiantes de enseñanza a remoto a la escuela solamente para darles un examen, pero que es importante tomar en cuenta la pérdida de aprendizaje.

Ese es el mismo debate que se está dando en Colorado.

La Senadora Estatal Rachel Zenzinger, demócrata de Arvada, tiene planes de presentar una legislación para que el Departamento de Educación de Colorado pida un permiso del gobierno federal. Obtener ese permiso pondría a la legislatura “al volante”, dijo ella, y espera que sus colegas estén de acuerdo en cancelar los exámenes.

“Si uno analiza bien por qué queremos dar este examen, qué información estamos buscando, la respuesta más común que escuchará es que la gente quiere saber lo siguiente: ¿Hubo pérdida de aprendizaje?” dijo ella. “Pero cuando recibamos los resultados de ese examen, ¿qué tan útiles nos resultarán?”

Los exámenes están programados este año para abril y mayo, más tarde de lo acostumbrado, y hasta en años normales los distritos escolares no reciben los resultados hasta el verano. Los presupuestos del estado y los distritos escolares ya estarán definidos para esa fecha, dijo Zenzinger, y los estudiantes del próximo año se ubicarán en grupos de lectura y matemáticas basándose en su desempeño al empezar el año escolar, no en los resultados de los CMAS de la primavera anterior.

Los distritos escolares de Colorado han dicho que será sumamente difícil administrar los exámenes, ya que requerirá que recuperen y preparen las miles de computadoras portátiles enviadas a la casas de los estudiantes para poder aprender a remoto. Los requisitos de distanciamiento social y cuarentena también podrían hacer que tome más tiempo administrar los exámenes. Y ellos anticipan que menos estudiantes tomen el examen (especialmente aquellos que estén todavía aprendiendo a remoto debido a las inquietudes de salud de las familias), lo cual hará que los datos no sean fiables.

Quienes apoyan continuar con los exámenes dicen que es esencial hacerlo para evaluar la pérdida de aprendizaje y que los padres puedan tomar decisiones informadas, y para que los funcionarios estatales designen recursos a las comunidades más fuertemente afectadas.

Katy Anthes, Comisionada de Educación de Colorado, ha prometido $52 millones de la última ronda de fondos federales de alivio por el coronavirus para programas como tutorías, programas después de la escuela y escuelas de verano, pero los detalles no se han definido todavía.

Los exámenes estandarizados fueron cancelados el año pasado, y por lo tanto la información más reciente es del 2019.

“¿Por qué no saber en qué nivel están los estudiantes en lectura y matemáticas y decir que no nos molesta estar tres años sin información?” Preguntó Colwell. “A mí eso me parece una falta de consciencia.”

A fines del último mes, una mayoría de ambos partidos en la Junta de Educación del Estado estuvo a favor de dar los exámenes estandarizados este año.

“Si nos importa la equidad, nos tiene que importar la información”, dijo Rebecca McClellan, demócrata de Littleton y miembro de la junta. “Si no podemos definir dónde estamos atrasados, no podremos enfocar la ayuda donde se necesita”.

El Gobernador Jared Polis también parece apoyar los exámenes, y un portavoz de su oficina escribió que Polis “cree que es crítico que los padres, educadores, comunidades y formuladores de política entiendan cómo el virus de COVID-19 ha afectado el aprendizaje de los estudiantes en todo el estado, especialmente los estudiantes en desventaja económica”.

La opinión pública varía dependiendo de cómo se haga la pregunta. La encuesta de Keating Research (comisionada por personas que apoyan lo exámenes) inicialmente preguntó si los exámenes se debían administrar “dadas las interrupciones que han enfrentado las escuelas”, y encontró que un 46% de los encuestados dijeron que sí, un 41% dijeron que no, y un 13% dijeron no estar seguros. Si el examen fuera explícitamente separado de la responsabilidad de las escuelas y los maestros, el apoyo aumentó a un 62%.

Amplias mayorías estuvieron de acuerdo con la idea de que es importante tener una prueba a fin de año para determinar cuánta fue la pérdida de aprendizaje, enfocar la ayuda a quienes la necesiten más, reducir las brechas académicas por raza e ingresos, y ayudar a los padres y formuladores de políticas a tomar decisiones informadas.

Al preguntar otra vez si los exámenes se deben usar este año, el apoyo fue aún mayor.

La encuesta de Harstad Strategic Research, respaldada por el sindicato y el distrito, preguntó a qué cosas las escuelas les deben dar la mayor prioridad. Cincuenta y tres por ciento de los encuestados dijeron que lo más importante es la instrucción en un salón de clases, otro 37% dijo que es la salud social y emocional, y solamente un 7% dijo que lo más importante son los exámenes estandarizados.

Luego se les preguntó: “Debido a los retos que ha presentado el coronavirus, ¿cómo debe el estado manejar los exámenes estandarizados esta primavera?” Cuando la pregunta se hizo de esa manera, 58% de los encuestados dijeron que los exámenes se deben cancelar y 38% dijo que se deben tomar como de costumbre. Entre los padres de las escuelas públicas, un 77% de las madres quiere cancelar los exámenes, mientras que solamente un 52% de los padres quiere lo mismo.

Keating y Harstad son compañías de encuestas en Colorado, y ambas han recibido calificaciones de B/C de FiveThirtyEight.

En una conferencia de prensa organizada por los que se oponen a los exámenes, Laura Martinez (madre de Adams 14 y líder de la organización comunitaria Coloradans for the Common Good) dijo que sus hijos batallaron por el atraso en el comienzo del año escolar y tuvieron dificultades para tomar las clases a remoto, pero ella no piensa que la respuesta está en un examen estandarizado.

“Considerando todo lo que ocurrió este año, yo pongo en duda los beneficios de reemplazar el tiempo de instrucción con otro examen,” dijo Martinez.

Nota de redacción: Esta noticia fue actualizada para reflejar mejor el orden de las preguntas en las encuestas.

Milly Suazo ha traducido este reportaje.

Lo que los padres de Colorado deben saber cuando reciban — y traten de descifrar — los resultados de CMAS

2019-09-10T21:13:08+00:00

Read in English.

¿Recuerdas los exámenes que tus hijos tomaron en la primavera? Seguro te están por llegar los resultados, si no es que ya los recibiste.

Los reportes de los resultados del examen Medidas de Éxito Académico de Colorado, o CMAS por sus siglas en inglés, incluye muchos números y términos que no son muy claros, como “niveles de desempeño.” Aquí hemos juntado varias respuestas a algunas preguntas para ayudarte a mejor entender estos reportes, incluso que es lo que los distritos están requeridos a compartir, cómo interpretar los resultados, y dónde encontrar más información.

Para encontrar los resultados del 2019 a nivel escolar o de cada distrito, aprovecha nuestra página con un banco de datos. También puedes encontrar nuestra cobertura de estos resultados, en ingles, aquí.

¿Tienes alguna otra pregunta sobre los resultados? Mándanos una nota al co.tips@chalkbeat.org y trataremos de encontrar una respuesta.

Mi hijo tomó el examen CMAS en la primavera. ¿Hay un requisito de que la escuela me mande un reporte de sus resultados?

Sí, la ley estatal requiere que los distritos se aseguren que cada escuela, incluso las charters, distribuyan y expliquen los resultados del examen a sus padres. El asunto de “cuando” o “como” es lo que depende de cada escuela.

Christina Wirth-Hawkins, directora del desarrollo de exámenes para el Departamento de Educación de Colorado, dijo que aparte del lenguaje general en la ley, el Departamento no tiene mandato de cuando ni algún formato en el cual las escuelas tengan que producir los reportes.

“No les decimos como o cuándo lo tienen que hacer, pero en realidad debe ser lo más pronto posible,” Wirth-Hawkins dijo.

El estado le dio versiones electrónicas de los reportes a los distritos en junio y las copias en papel en julio.

Algunas escuelas ya mandaron copias a los padres, por correo o en las carpetas de los estudiantes. Otras escuelas tienen planes de compartir los reportes en los eventos de regreso a clases, o durante las conferencias entre padres y maestros.

Algunos distritos también hacen los reportes, en algunos casos en completo, y en algunos casos solo algunos números, disponibles en las aplicaciones como el de Infinite Campus o Empower.

¿Cuales estudiantes no recibirán los reportes de resultados del CMAS?

Si un padre pidió que sus hijos fueran disculpados del examen, esos estudiantes no recibirán un reporte. Si un estudiante estuvo ausente el día del examen, no respondió a ninguna pregunta, o si respondió a insuficientes preguntas para producir una calificación válida, tampoco recibirán resultados. En algunos casos, si una escuela manejó mal los exámenes o hubo otro incumplimiento del proceso de seguridad, tampoco habrá resultados.

¿Que debo hacer si no recibí un reporte de los resultados para mis hijos?

Si tus hijos tomaron el examen CMAS en la primavera y no recibiste un reporte de sus resultados, los oficiales estatales recomiendan que los padres llamen a la escuela de sus hijos directamente. Si eso no da resultados, llama al distrito.

¿Los reportes son publicados en otro idioma aparte de ingles?

En mayor parte, no. Sin embargo, los reportes sí fueron traducidos al español para los 2,900 estudiantes de tercer y cuarto grado que tomaron la versión español del examen de literatura. Los otros 124,000 reportes para los estudiantes de estos grados fueron producidos en ingles.

En su página de información para padres, el departamento tiene una guia en español (también la puedes ver mas abajo) para los resultados, al igual que una página que explica cómo los padres pueden usar los resultados para apoyar a la educación de sus hijos. También tienen ejemplos de reportes para los resultados de los exámenes de literatura, matemáticas, ciencia y estudios sociales.

El departamento del estado no ofrece recursos en otro idioma aparte del inglés y español pero algunos distritos si traducen sus reportes a más idiomas. El distrito de Denver, por ejemplo, ofrece cinco documentos del examen CMAS traducidos a vietnamita, amharico, birmania, frances, nepali, ruso y somalí. También tiene versiones en inglés y español.

Hay tanta información en el reporte. ¿Por dónde comienzo?

Comienza con el nivel de desempeño. En los exámenes de matemática y literatura, hay cinco niveles, y en los exámenes de ciencia y estudios sociales, hay cuatro niveles. En todos los exámenes, la categoría más avanzada es la de “superó las expectativas,” o “exceeds expectations” si es que estas viendo un reporte en inglés. La categoría que le sigue es de “cumplió con las expectativas,” o “meets expectations” en ingles. Los estudiantes que caen en estas dos categorías están trabajando a su nivel adecuado, o aun más avanzados.

La tercer categoría en todos los exámenes es de “se acercó a las expectativas,” o “approached” o “approaching expectations” en inglés. Estudiantes con calificaciones en esta categoría puede que necesitan más apoyo para llegar a su nivel adecuado, pero no están muy atrasados. (Más acerca de esto abajo.) En el examen de matemática y literatura este año, aproximadamente 25% de los estudiantes en el estado están en esta categoría.

Para los exámenes de matemática y literatura, la categoría que le sigue a la más baja es de “cumplió parcialmente con las expectativas,” o “partially met expectations” en inglés. Esta categoría significa que los estudiantes tienen poco entendimiento de lo que deben saber a su nivel de acuerdo a su año escolar. Finalmente, esta la categoría de “todavía no cumple con las expectativas,” o “did not yet meet expectations” en inglés. Un resultado en esta categoría quiere decir que estos estudiantes necesitan mucho apoyo para poder llegar a su nivel adecuado.

En el 2019 entre 10% y 20% de los estudiantes en Colorado terminaron en esta última categoría en los exámenes de matemática y literatura, dependiendo del año escolar. (“Cumplo parcialmente con las expectativas” es la categoría más baja en los exámenes de ciencia y estudios sociales.)

Los reportes también enseñan cómo se comparan tus hijos a otros estudiantes en su escuela y su distrito, al igual que alrededor del estado. Eso es lo que intenta demostrar el “rango percentil” o “percentile” en inglés. El reporte también demuestra cuántos puntos recibe tu hijo en cada sección del examen.

Oficiales del estado y de los distritos también quieren que los padres recuerden que estos resultados suponen ser solo una reflección de lo que saben los estudiantes en un momento y no necesariamente reflejan todas sus habilidades. Aun así los resultados y los niveles de desempeño sí ofrecen una forma de ver si los estudiantes han dominado las habilidades requeridas por el estado para asegurar que estén listos para la universidad o alguna carrera al graduarse de la escuela.

Mi hijo siempre ha recibido calificaciones en el rango percentil de 50 o más alto en los exámenes nacionales de literatura y matemáticas que usa nuestro distrito, pero en el examen de CMAS cae a la categoría de “se acercó a las expectativas.” ¿Esta pues mi hijo a nivel o no?

Hay varios puntos que aclarar aquí. Primero, el examen CMAS específicamente esta basado en las expectativas académicas de Colorado. Otros exámenes, aunque se usen aquí, no se enfocan en materia específica a Colorado.

Los exámenes de CMAS son evaluaciones con referencia a criterio, lo cual quiere decir que los resultados están basados en si un estudiante cumplió con un estándar, en este caso, las expectativas para cada nivel escolar. Un resultado en la categoría de “se acerco” quiere decir que tu hijo no cumplió con el estándar.

Muchos exámenes, incluso el CMAS, le dan la oportunidad a los padres de ver, en varios modos, como están haciendo sus hijos. Entonces comparar una parte de este examen con otro examen puede ser una comparación de cosas muy diferentes.

Un rango percentil de un examen que administra tu distrito te da una forma de ver como esta haciendo tu hijo solo en comparación a otros estudiantes que tomaron el mismo examen, pero no revela si tu hijo cumplió con las expectativas del estado. Un rango percentil de 50%, por ejemplo, significa que tu hijo esta haciendo igual o mejor que el 50% de los otros estudiantes que tomaron el examen.

Los oficiales del estado y de los distritos avisan que los padres que están preocupados por los resultados de sus hijos en CMAS deben hablar con los maestros de sus hijos. Pero vale la pena recordar que un resultado en la categoría de “se acercó” no necesariamente indica un problema serio.

“No es que esos niños no sepan cosas,” Wirth-Hawkins dijo. “Saben mucha información, pero simplemente no están cruzando esta barra.”

Matt Flores, el director académico del distrito de Jeffco, dijo que no tiene nada de malo hablar con los maestros de sus hijos, pero “nunca permitiría que un resultado de ‘se acercó’ se considere una emergencia.”

Mi hijo recibió un cero en la porción de escritura en el CMAS. ¿Eso quiere decir que no escribió nada?

No necesariamente. Hay algunas posibilidades aquí. Tu hijo puede haber respondido a una pregunta con una oración genérica en lugar de un párrafo más largo que tuviera detalles claves del texto que leyó. O quizás tu hijo escribió suficiente, pero su respuesta estuvo sin relación al tema y llena de errores.

De cualquier forma, muchos estudiantes en Colorado batallan con el examen de escritura. Los oficiales del Departamento de Educación dicen que no cuentan el número de estudiantes que recibieron un cero en el examen “a este momento” pero algunos distritos le han ofrecido estos números a Chalkbeat. En el 2018, los oficiales del distrito de Denver reportaron que 21% de sus estudiantes — más de 8,000 de 40,000 — recibieron ceros en el sub examen de escritura. El mismo año, oficiales del distrito de Aurora encontraron que 40% de sus estudiantes que tomaron el examen recibieron un cero en ciertas secciones del sub examen de escritura.

Para aprender más acerca de cómo se anota el examen de escritura, te podría ayudar el ver algunas preguntas que publicó el grupo PARCC. (Las preguntas de CMAS son muy parecidas a las de PARCC y se anotan en manera similar.)

Aquí esta un ejemplo de escritura de un estudiante en el examen de literatura del tercer grado, que resultó en un zero. En respuesta a una pregunta que pedía que los estudiantes explicaran cómo es que los dibujos y palabras en un cuento ofrecen detalles sobre la ubicación del cuento, un estudiante respondió: “The pictures and details provide you an iben of what the karitors are doing and how they are toking.”

La respuesta traducida, probablemente, hubiera dicho: “Los dibujos y detalles ofrecen una idea de lo que los personajes están haciendo y como están hablando,” pero hay varias palabras mal escritas y la respuesta es muy corta. De acuerdo a la explicación de la anotación, el estudiante no demostró comprensión, no usó evidencia del cuento, ni uso lenguaje para expresar sus ideas claramente.

Visita esta pagina para ver más ejemplos de muestras de lo que escriben estudiantes y sus resultados.

¿Los resultados de mi hijo en el CMAS afectan sus calificaciones o determinarán si se puede avanzar al próximo nivel?

No. Los resultados de CMAS no afectan las boletas de calificaciones, decisiones de no avanzar a un estudiante, ni las clasificaciones de los estudiantes en una clase.

“Esto es dato entre mucha evidencia que los maestros… usan para determinar cómo están progresando los estudiantes,” dijo Flores.

En el asunto de no avanzar a un estudiante, él dijo, “nunca quisiéramos usar solo un punto de datos para hacer ese tipo de decisión de altas estacas.”

Aunque es posible que algunos estudiantes que normalmente muestran buen desempeño, puedan tener un mal día en el cual fallan el examen CMAS, en general, los bajos resultados de CMAS reflejan problemas académicos que llevan mucho tiempo.

“Si un estudiante esta atrasado, deberíamos saber eso mucho antes del CMAS,” dijo Mat Aubuchon, director de educación primaria en el distrito de Westminster, al norte de Denver. Resultados bajos de CMAS, “deben verificar algo que ya sabemos y no algo que llega como sorpresa.”

Traducción por Yesenia Robles

Resultados del CMAS 2023 en Colorado: ve cómo les fue a tu escuela y distrito

2023-08-17T17:00:00+00:00

Read in English.

El jueves, Colorado publicó los resultados de su ronda de exámenes estandarizados que los estudiantes de tercer a octavo grado en las escuelas públicas tuvieron esta primavera.

En general, los resultados han mejorado ligeramente en comparación con el año pasado, pero menos estudiantes que en 2019 siguen sin alcanzar las expectativas. La tendencia es similar a 2022.

Nuestra gráfica de abajo te permite hacer una búsqueda para encontrar tu escuela y distrito, y compararlos con los promedios estatales tanto en matemáticas como en artes del idioma inglés. La gráfica muestra el porcentaje de estudiantes que contestaron el examen y que alcanzaron o superaron las expectativas en cada materia.

Los resultados se usarán en las evaluaciones de escuelas y distritos que quizás se publiquen a finales de este mes.

El número de estudiantes de cuarto y octavo grado que podían leer y escribir a nivel de grado o arriba de nivel de grado esta primavera pasada sigue siendo 4 puntos porcentuales más bajo que el número que podía hacerlo en 2019. Los estudiantes de séptimo y octavo grado demuestran un retraso similar en matemáticas. Cada punto porcentual representa miles de estudiantes que no están alcanzando las expectativas y están menos preparados para el siguiente grado.

Al mismo tiempo, los estudiantes de quinto y sexto grado están obteniendo resultados similares en lectura y escritura que sus pares hace cuarto años, y en matemáticas, todos los estudiantes de primaria lo están.

Cuando se examinan por nivel de grado, solo un grupo de estudiantes mejoró en comparación con sus pares en 2019: los estudiantes de quinto grado en matemáticas. Este año, 36.5 por ciento de los estudiantes de quinto grado alcanzaron o superaron las expectativas en matemáticas, un aumento en comparación con el 35.7 por ciento que lo hizo en 2019.

Las brechas siguen siendo grandes y persistentes. Los estudiantes multilingües parecen figurar entre los estudiantes que los oficiales estatales dicen podrían estar retrasándose aún más.

Los resultados de los exámenes de estudiantes que están aprendiendo inglés y aquellos que contestaron los exámenes de lectura y escritura en español causan serias preocupaciones.

Solo el 18.7 por ciento de los estudiantes de tercer grado que contestaron el examen en español alcanzaron o superaron las expectativas, una reducción de 8.8 puntos porcentuales en comparación con 2019—el mayor retraso por mucho en la recuperación de los estudiantes. Y solo el 14.2 por ciento de los estudiantes de cuarto grado que contestaron el examen en español alcanzaron o superaron las expectativas, una reducción de casi 5 puntos porcentuales en comparación con 2019.

Yesenia Robles es una reportera para Chalkbeat Colorado, cubriendo distritos escolares de kindergarten a 12º grado y la educación multilingüe. Comunícate con Yesenia por correo electrónico a yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Gobernador Jared Polis firma proyecto de ley para reducir los exámenes estandarizados. Ahora el gobierno federal tiene que dar su opinión.

2021-03-24T21:09:46+00:00

Es posible que los estudiantes de Colorado tomen mucho menos exámenes estandarizados este año — esto es, si los funcionarios de educación federales firman un acuerdo aprobado el martes en la Asamblea General de Colorado y firmado por el Gob. Jared Polis.

En vez de administrar el grupo completo de exámenes estandarizados que los estudiantes usualmente toman, los funcionarios de educación de Colorado buscarán un permiso para no tener que cumplir los requisitos federales. Si lo logran, este año no habrá exámenes de ciencia ni de estudios sociales, y los estudiantes tomarán un examen de matemáticas o de lectura/escritura, pero no ambos. Los exámenes no se usarán para evaluar el desempeño de los maestros ni para calificar a las escuelas.

Este proyecto de ley representa un acuerdo entre los sindicatos de maestros y distritos escolares, quienes querían cancelar los exámenes por completo, y los grupos de defensores de la educación, que querían que todos los estudiantes tomaran los exámenes de matemáticas y de lectura/escritura.

Los expertos nacionales en el tema de los exámenes dijeron que no saben de ningún otro estado que vaya a seguir la estrategia de Colorado. Y aunque algunos dijeron que este acuerdo proporcionaría suficiente información sobre el desempeño escolar — y quizás del aprendizaje individual de los estudiantes — otros dudan que el gobierno federal lo apruebe.

“El estado de Massachusetts le dará a cada estudiante la mitad de cada uno de los exámenes. Nueva York también está considerando eliminar una parte. Pero que yo sepa, Colorado es el único que está tratando de eliminar el examen completamente en ciertos grados/materias,” escribió en un email Marianne Perie, consultora de exámenes que ha trabajado con varios estados. “Me sorprendería que los federales lo permitan.”

Conseguir ese permiso federal es crítico para Colorado. En una carta enviada en febrero, los más altos funcionarios de educación federales dijeron que los estados deberán administrar los exámenes estandarizados pero ofrecieron flexibilidad para acortar el tamaño de los exámenes o expandir el periodo para tomarlos. Las directrices no mencionaron nada parecido al plan de Colorado.

El proyecto de ley pasó por la Asamblea General en menos de dos semanas. Los legisladores se movieron rápidamente porque la fecha límite para solicitar un permiso está muy cerca, dijo el viernes la Senadora Rachel Zenzinger, auspiciadora del proyecto y presidenta del Comité de Educación del Senado, y demócrata de Arvada.

Los legisladores demócratas originalmente tenían esperanzas de cancelar los exámenes del todo, pero llegaron a un acuerdo cuando quedó claro que tanto la administración de Biden como la de Polis estaban en oposición a ese esfuerzo.

Zenzinger aplaudió a la coalición que respaldó el proyecto de ley, y que incluyó a legisladores republicanos.

“Aparte de qué tan peligroso o impráctico sea administrar este examen, necesitamos de cierta manera limitada incluirlo (el examen) como parte de nuestra solicitud del permiso,” Zenzinger dijo.

Los estudiantes de Colorado típicamente toman exámenes estandarizados de matemáticas y de lectura/escritura en los grados tercero hasta octavo, y también un examen de ciencias o de estudios sociales, dependiendo de su grado. En Colorado, estos exámenes se llaman Colorado Measures of Academic Success, o CMAS.

Si el gobierno federal aprueba el plan de Colorado, los estudiantes en los grados tercero, quinto y séptimo tomarán el examen de lectura/escritura, y los de cuarto, sexto y octavo tomarán el de matemáticas. Los padres tendrían la opción de firmar para que sus hijos no los tomen. Y también podrían optar por que sus hijos tomen ambos.

El Senador Paul Lundeen, republicano de Monument, apoyó firmemente el proyecto de ley durante la sesión del senado el viernes. El acuerdo fue difícil para todos, dijo él, pero también retiene los exámenes para poder medir el aprendizaje de los estudiantes.

“Este proyecto de ley representa lo mejor de ambos mundos,” dijo Lundeen.

Él les pidió a los legisladores que animaran a los padres a pedir que sus hijos tomen ambos exámenes.

“Un niño tiene años de educación académica por venir, y es importante entender dónde están,” dijo él.

Un pequeño número de personas opuestas al proyecto de ley provenientes de ambos lados testificó en la Cámara y el Senado, y dijeron que ellos quieren una de dos cosas: que los exámenes se cancelen completamente o que se continúen sin cambios.

Algunos legisladores tampoco estuvieron de acuerdo. El Senador Bob Rankin, republicano de Carbondale, se opuso al proyecto de ley porque no incluye un examen de inglés en cuarto grado. Colorado está en medio de un esfuerzo más grande para mejorar la enseñanza de lectura, y las interrupciones de este año han causado más preocupación.

El Senador Jeff Bridges, líder de la mayoría y demócrata de Greenwood, dijo que los legisladores encontraron juntos la solución apropiada.

“Este no es el ideal de nadie, sino exactamente lo que Colorado necesita este año,” dijo Bridges.

Los funcionarios de educación del estado esperan presentar la solicitud del permiso esta semana. El Departamento de Educación de Estados Unidos no ha establecido un plazo para contestar las solicitudes. El periodo de exámenes de Colorado comienza la próxima semana.

Las directrices federales no mencionan eliminar materias básicas de grados alternos como una posibilidad, pero un informe sobre métodos de evaluación alternativos preparado a principios de este año por el Center for Assessment para el Council of Chief State School Officers explora la idea.

Hasta ahora Colorado es el primer estado en proponer la eliminación de exámenes en materias básicas, según el Collaborative for Student Success, un grupo de defensa nacional que quiere ver que la mayor cantidad posible de estudiantes tome los exámenes y cree que éstos se pueden usar para dirigir recursos a los estudiantes que necesiten ayuda.

“Tenemos algunas inquietudes en cuanto a si el plan de Colorado podrá lograr eso y estamos observando la situación de cerca,” dijo el grupo en una declaración. “Todavía está por verse si el Departamento de Educación aprobará lo que el estado está pidiendo.”

Joyce Zurkowski, jefa de evaluaciones del Departamento de Educación de Colorado, dijo que las opciones como hacer el examen más corto no son viables en Colorado porque ya el estado acortó bastante los exámenes CMAS en el 2018. Administrar el examen completo en grados alternos dará más datos válidos de qué tan bien los estudiantes están cumpliendo las expectativas académicas.

“Esto es un acuerdo razonable que ojalá resuelva la necesidad de tener datos de los estudiantes y a la misma vez reconocer los muchos, muchos intereses en competencia que las escuelas tienen que cumplir para satisfacer las necesidades académicas, sociales y emocionales de sus estudiantes — y de sus maestros,” dijo ella.

Cómo el estado usa la información dependerá en gran parte de quién participe, dijo Zurkowski, no solamente de cuántos estudiantes, sino también si representan bien todos los trasfondos raciales y étnicos de Colorado, a los discapacitados, y a quieres provienen de hogares bajo el índice de pobreza.

Andrew Ho, profesor y experto en exámenes de la Escuela Graduada de Educación de Harvard, dijo que darles exámenes a los estudiantes en cada materia en años alternos es un balance adecuado entre el deseo de tener información sobre el aprendizaje y el deseo de reducir un poco la carga de dar exámenes.

Una estrategia así proporcionaría suficiente información para saber cuáles escuelas están batallando más ahora que hace dos años, dijo él, lo cual debería ser el propósito principal de los exámenes ahora. Los padres perderían la oportunidad de ver un cuadro más completo sobre el desempeño de sus hijos, pero los que formulan políticas podrían ver dónde se necesita más ayuda.

Ho enfatizó que para tener una idea precisa de eso, los estados necesitan cambiar cómo analizan y reportan los datos de los exámenes, en particular porque el porcentaje de estudiantes que no los tomarán será mayor y decenas de miles de estudiantes no están en los sistemas escolares.

Al mismo tiempo, dijo Ho, Colorado debe determinar cómo resolverá las brechas de aprendizaje identificadas por los exámenes, especialmente con los $1,200 millones en fondos federales que recibirán las escuelas K-12 del estado mediante el último plan de alivio del Congreso por el coronavirus. Las escuelas que estén teniendo dificultades podrían recibir mucho más apoyo financiero.

Sin un plan así, Ho dijo que él no ve el punto de dar exámenes.

“Esta es una situación de ‘o lo aceptas o te callas’ para los defensores de los exámenes educativos,” dijo Ho. “La teoría es convincente y la oportunidad está ahí, pero ellos necesitan un plan porque hay mucha desconfianza.”

El reportero nacional de Chalkbeat Matt Barnum aportó a este reportaje.

Traducción por Milly Suazo.

A ‘mixed bag’ — again — for test scores at Colorado innovation schools, new report finds

2023-12-22T19:55:16+00:00

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For at least the third time in the 15 years since Colorado lawmakers created them, innovation schools have gotten middling marks in a new report meant to measure whether freeing the schools from bureaucracy boosts student test scores.

The report by the Keystone Policy Center found that students who attend innovation schools did no better on state math and literacy tests last spring — and, in many cases, performed worse — than students who attend traditional district-run schools and independent charter schools. The report did find some bright spots, such as students of color performing better on some tests and higher scores in Denver’s innovation zones, which have been controversial.

State policymakers had hoped innovation would be an effective strategy for turning around low-performing schools. That hasn’t necessarily turned out to be the case, as indicated by the report’s title: “A Decidedly Mixed Bag.”

Van Schoales, senior policy director at the Keystone Policy Center, said there’s nothing particularly new or different about the report’s conclusion.

“What’s different is that this started in 2008, so we’re now 15 years later … and it’s sort of like a, ‘Meh,’” Schoales said in an interview.

On the spectrum of school autonomy, Colorado’s innovation schools fall between district-run schools, which are the least autonomous, and charter schools, which are the most.

Under state law, innovation schools can waive certain rules to do things such as extend the school day or opt out of granting teachers Colorado’s version of tenure. The idea is that giving schools more autonomy allows them the flexibility to better meet students’ needs.

While the report says innovation schools’ academic results last school year were “lackluster,” innovation supporters argue that it’s hard to make generalizations. There are more than 100 innovation schools in Colorado and lots of variation between them, from the population of students they serve to the reasons they sought innovation status.

While some schools wanted the freedom to grow their own vegetables or focus on the arts, others sought innovation status in the hopes of boosting persistently low student test scores.

“Innovation is a strategy that has been used across the state in many different contexts and for many different reasons,” said Bailey Holyfield, executive director of an innovation zone in Denver called the Luminary Learning Network. “As we look at high-level aggregate data, it is unsurprising then in some ways that the data reflects a mixed bag, to quote the author’s title.”

What the report found

At least two other reports, in 2014 and 2019, concluded that innovation schools fared about the same academically as district-run schools.

Those reports were done by different research groups and focused only on Denver, which has more innovation schools than any other district in the state. The Keystone report looks at all innovation schools in Colorado.

Among its conclusions:

Overall, fewer students at innovation schools met expectations on state math and literacy tests this past spring than students at district-run or charter schools.
But there were some bright spots. For instance, Black and Hispanic students in grades three through eight at innovation schools outperformed Black and Hispanic students at district-run schools on the state literacy test. The same was true for students experiencing poverty at innovation schools on both the literacy and math tests.
A “more robust longitudinal study” is needed to figure out whether innovation status is an effective way for a school to boost student test scores. The Colorado State Board of Education has the power to order changes at chronically low-performing schools, and innovation status is considered the least disruptive option. But State Board members have wondered if it works — or if harsher options, such as closure, are warranted.
Innovation schools face barriers in being innovative. “At least some evidence exists that district systems may be slow to evolve, if they do at all, and may functionally prevent innovation schools and zones from fully implementing approved autonomies.”
Some innovation schools actually aren’t innovative, either because leaders are “simply ‘checking boxes’ that higher-ups want to see” or because higher-ups block ideas they see as too revolutionary. Innovation schools “may not actually be empowered to innovate in deeper ways that might truly transform outcomes for students.”

A zoom in on Denver and innovation zones

Another bright spot in the Keystone report is the academic results of innovation zones. The zones are groups of innovation schools. In some districts, innovation zones are run by district administrators. In Denver Public Schools, the zones are overseen by nonprofit organizations.

The report shows that statewide, innovation zone schools fared better on state tests last spring than did innovation schools that were not in zones.

A separate analysis of Denver data provided to Chalkbeat by Keystone shows the innovation zones in Denver did particularly well, outperforming every other type of school in DPS.

The report comes at a tumultuous time for Denver innovation schools. Of all the districts in Colorado, DPS has most embraced innovation and is home to about half of the state’s innovation schools. But a few years ago, shifting politics led to a backlash of sorts.

In 2022, the Denver school board voted to limit innovation schools’ autonomy in an effort to shore up teacher job protections. All seven board members had been elected with help from the teachers union, which didn’t like that innovation schools could waive parts of its contract.

This year, the school board dissolved one of the district’s three innovation zones. Instead of being overseen by a nonprofit organization, the two schools in that zone, Kepner Beacon and Grant Beacon middle schools, will now be overseen by the district.

Of the two Denver zones left, one has experienced a string of controversies, including the high-profile firing of a school principal and an investigation into the improper use of seclusion.

That zone, called the Northeast Denver Innovation Zone, is still in negotiations with the district over the renewal of a plan for how it will operate. Earlier this month, the school board met behind closed doors with the district’s attorney to discuss “legal options” for the zone.

Innovation supporters are hopeful that the election last month of three new school board members perceived as more friendly toward innovation will turn the tide.

“I’m hopeful we are getting to a generally less contentious place where folks doing good work and getting outcomes for kids can keep doing that work,” said Holyfield.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

School calendar check for 2024: Midwinter recess origins, a holiday-heavy April, and more

2023-12-20T01:01:31+00:00

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As New York City schools gear up for the weeklong winter break starting on Monday, some parents are already thinking ahead to days off later this year — and even next winter.

Typically, the new calendar isn’t out until the spring, but after a few years of delayed calendars and loud complaints, the Education Department released its calendars for the 2024-25 and 2025-26 school years early.

So, if you haven’t already marked it: the last day of school this year is Wednesday, June 26, 2024. The first day for the next school year is Thursday, Sept. 5.

Families were pleased to have the calendars for the upcoming years since many start their summer child care searches in January, and knowing the start of the school year is “part of the puzzle,” said Queens mom Tami M. Forman, who ran a nonprofit helping stay-at-home mothers return to work.

“For some families it helps to know for vacation planning,” said Forman, whose daughter is a junior at the Academy of American Studies and whose son attends a special education school with a different calendar. “But for the vast majority of NYC families, it’s really about planning care for the many weeks and days that kids aren’t in school but parents do need to work.”

As we head into the new year, here are some things to note about school breaks in 2024:

Midwinter recess, first spurred by 1970s oil crisis, carries on

As usual, New York City schools will close for the weeklong midwinter recess in February, starting with Presidents Day on Monday, Feb. 19. And as usual, this break can be stressful for families struggling with child care.

Midwinter recess dates back to 1978, when the Board of Education decided to do it as an experiment to save energy, according to a New York Times article from that time (though at least one Brooklyn district defied the order and remained open). To make up for the lost instructional time, schools added some days to the start and end of the academic year.

The February break became codified in 1991 as part of a cost-cutting deal between the city’s Board of Education and the teachers union. The deal deferred paying wages to teachers as a way to avoid thousands of midyear layoffs, according to reports.

From its start, midwinter recess has been a thorn in the side of many families who have to make child care arrangements. Grumbling over the week off was especially loud during the 1993-94 school year, when classes started late because of an asbestos crisis and then remained open during a snow emergency.

April could be lean month for instruction

Don’t expect a lot of instructional time this April. There will nearly be as many days off (10, including Easter weekend) as days in school (13).

Under a new contract between the city and the teachers union, Easter Monday was added to make a four-day weekend, starting Friday, March 29. Spring break was stretched from five days off to seven to correspond to Passover, starting April 22. In between those two breaks, schools will be closed on Wednesday, April 10, for the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr.

But that’s not all: Much of the month for the city’s students in grades 3-8 will be filled with testing and most likely, test prep.

For those taking the state English language arts tests on paper, it will be administered right after Eid, on April 11-12. For those taking computer-based tests — which includes all fifth and eighth graders — the exams are being given April 9-24. (Paper-based tests for math will be May 7-8, and computer-based tests will be administered May 7-17.)

Next December’s calendar has a one-day school week ahead of break

While classrooms this Friday will likely be filled with sugar, movies, and perhaps a fair number of empty seats, the day before next year’s winter break could see even sparser attendance than usual.

Families planning ahead for next year’s holiday will be faced with a conundrum: what to do about Monday, Dec. 23, 2024. Schools will be open that day before closing the rest of the week, from Tuesday, Dec. 24 through Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025. (And fun fact: The Jewish holiday of Hanukkah will overlap precisely with the period from Christmas through New Year’s.)

The past two times in recent years that Dec. 23 fell on a Monday — in 2013 and in 2019 — schools were closed for the entire week, but things have gotten tight as the city has added other holidays to the school calendar (like Diwali, which will be on Friday, Nov. 1) and still needs to meet the required 180-day minimum of instructional time.

For teachers who are looking for alternatives to showing movies just before the break, there’s an array of project-based learning suggestions, such as making video games or a podcast, that John Spencer, an education professor at Portland’s George Fox University and a former middle school teacher, shared on his website.

“This is a chance to make something meaningful — something that your students will remember forever,” he wrote.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Education advocates push once again to end New Jersey’s high school exit exam

2023-12-14T20:10:57+00:00

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As scores on New Jersey’s high school graduation exit exam show large percentages of students are not “graduation ready,” some education advocates are hoping for a last-ditch effort to eliminate the exit test before the end of the lame-duck legislative session.

It’s the latest effort to end the graduation test, with opponents pushing for nearly 10 years against the various tests that they say can be biased and not an adequate measure of student performance.

The New Jersey Graduation Proficiency Assessment is designed to measure whether students are prepared to graduate based on their knowledge of standards in grade 10 English language arts and Algebra 1 and Geometry. The test serves as the primary pathway for students to fulfill their graduation requirements. In 2023, 80.5% of students passed the ELA exam and 55% of students passed the math exam. Black and Hispanic students, as well as economically disadvantaged students, multilingual learners, and students with disabilities scored below average.

The Assembly passed a bill calling for the elimination of the graduation test in June, but the bill has not moved in the Senate. The legislation has the support of Senate Education Committee Chair Vin Gopal (D-Monmouth) and major education groups, including the New Jersey School Boards Association, New Jersey Association of School Administrators, New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association, New Jersey Education Association, and the New Jersey School Counselors Association.

“The fact that it’s passed the Assembly, that you have so many states moving, that you have consensus among all the state associations, this makes it potentially the best chance to get this done,” said Stan Karp of the Education Law Center.

What happens in other states?

Only nine states still have a high school exit exam requirement, down from a high of 27, according to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. The organization urged the passage of the bill to eliminate the test in a statement on Dec. 6.

Gopal said in a statement that he has requested the bill be posted to the Senate Education Committee a few times, but Senate leadership has not approved it.

Sen. Majority Leader Teresa Ruiz (D-Essex) said she has not heard about the bill moving during lame-duck. Last year, Ruiz, who had headed the Senate’s education committee and was the lead on many key education bills, introduced a bill that would make changes to the exit test that stalled in the Assembly after passing the Senate.

She said if neither bill becomes law during the lame-duck session, the goal is to move forward in a coordinated effort with the Department of Education to create the next iteration of graduation exit exams. Ruiz said she is alarmed by recent statewide test scores and believes there needs to be a “full hands-on-deck, urgent approach” to ensure students are learning at grade level.

“There are so many different pathways for graduation that it just becomes a data point for us to create better policies,” Ruiz said.

When could it happen in NJ?

One of the bill’s Senate sponsors, Sen. Shirley Turner (D-Mercer), said there is a “good chance” the Senate will act on the bill before the end of the lame-duck session. The bill is one of her priorities to be brought before the education committee. As of 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, it was not listed on the legislative calendar for the meeting on Thursday, Dec. 14.

“One test should not be the sole criteria to determine whether a student should graduate because there are so many students who do not test well under pressure,” Turner said.

Currently, if students do not pass the New Jersey Graduation Proficiency Assessment they can fulfill the graduation requirement by achieving a certain score on other standardized tests including the PSAT, SAT, ACT, or ACCUPLACER or by submitting a portfolio appeal to the state Department of Education.

Turner said grade-point average should be another option to fulfill the graduation requirement. Education Law Center’s Karp said GPAs and course transcripts are more reliable indicators of future success than a single exam.

Karp said the exam hurts the most vulnerable students, including special education students and multilingual learners who typically pass at far lower rates than other students. In 2023, only 17% of students with disabilities and English language learners passed the math exam.

Students with disabilities, English language learners, African American, Latino, Native American, and low-income students are far more likely to be denied a diploma for not passing a test, according to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing.

“It’s important to use testing to hold schools and districts accountable, not to impose punishments on individual students,” Karp said.

Turner said students with a high school diploma are better able to continue their education or get a job to provide for themselves after high school. High school graduates are also likely to earn more money than their peers who don’t graduate, she added.

Making the case for keeping the test

Paula White, executive director of education advocacy group JerseyCAN, said the test should not serve as a barrier to graduation because there are multiple pathways to fulfill the graduation requirement. She said having more data regarding student achievement is a good thing, especially when it comes to promoting accountability for schools.

White added that the test gives students confidence about what their diploma means and offers them something to strive for.

“We understand that students, if they’re doing their best and if they’re compliant with other aspects of the requirements, we don’t want them to be capriciously penalized. With that said they do deserve to have the information,” White said.

The meaning of a high school diploma in New Jersey has also been complicated by changes to graduation requirements over the years. From 2022 to 2023, the State Board of Education lowered the passing score from 750 to 725, which is aligned with the Education Department’s original recommendation. Graduation tests were not administered in 2020 or 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Since 1981-82 when a graduation exit exam was first required in New Jersey, the test has taken many different forms.

Hannah Gross covers education and child welfare for NJ Spotlight News via a partnership with Report for America. She covers the full spectrum of education and children’s services in New Jersey and looks especially through the lens of equity and opportunity. This story was first published on NJ Spotlight News, a content partner of Chalkbeat Newark.

Newark Public Schools seeks to improve science scores with renewed emphasis on state standards

2023-12-12T11:00:00+00:00

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Newark Public Schools says it has developed a plan to improve student achievement in science after spring state test scores showed students performed below the state average for a second year in a row.

Officials didn’t provide details of the plan, but the district’s director of science education, Kathleen Tierney, suggested it would involve reinforcing a key element of state standards that call for three-dimensional learning, an approach to teaching science that supports students’ understanding of science content and its application to the real world.

The plan comes three years after the state adopted new science learning standards, including a requirement for climate change education across multiple grades and subjects.

Results of this year’s New Jersey Learning Assessment show Newark students continue to need academic support in English language arts, math, and science to recover from the pandemic. The state science test is given to students in fifth, eighth, and 11th grades. This year, 11th graders had the highest proficiency rate, and eighth graders the lowest.

Most Newark students saw small gains on this year’s state science test but continued to perform below the state’s average. Overall, nearly 8% of students demonstrated proficiency on the tests, a roughly one-percentage-point increase from last year. Across the state, roughly 25% of students passed this year’s science test.

To improve student performance, students have to make science connections to the real world, said Janice McDonnell, a science, engineering, and technology agent for the Department of 4-H Youth Development at Rutgers University. That means teachers have to find a way to blend key ideas so students can apply them in their daily lives.

“We just came out of COVID. where everyone had to learn how to interpret graphs and charts and trends,” McDonnell said. “Now we’re focusing on climate change education and questioning things like if it’s better to have an electric car or natural gas car. All of those things tie back to your understanding of science and the impact of science.”

Plan focuses on ‘three dimensional learning’ and applied science

At a school board committee meeting last month, Tierney said the district’s plan focuses on emphasizing three-dimensional learning, a reference to New Jersey state science standards that are expressed as “three dimensions”: disciplinary core ideas, science and engineering practices, and crosscutting concepts.

That means showing students how scientists develop theories and models based on core ideas, how engineers investigate data and identify patterns, and how both use these skills to create explanations and solutions to real world problems.

The standards call for integrating the three dimensions into science instruction and creating assessments to gauge how well students understand and apply them. The standards were developed to provide flexibility in the way that students can show proficiency in the subject, according to the state. McDonnell describes the approach as a braided cord.

The state’s standardized tests require students to show that they understand core concepts and practices and can identify patterns in the real world to apply what they learned in the classroom. But Newark’s public schools have faced challenges in securing school science facilities and equipment that create opportunities for hands-on learning.

A 2010 report found that Newark’s “K-8 teachers are attempting to teach science without basic equipment such as faucets and sinks, lab tables, microscopes, and balances.” The report also said the district’s magnet high schools had better science facilities than its comprehensive high schools.

Since then, the district has worked with the city and the nonprofit Students 2 Science to create virtual science labs for more hands-on learning. It also uses the Inspire Science curriculum for elementary students, which uses a framework known to support in-depth, collaborative, evidence-based, and project-based learning opportunities.

For middle school students, the district uses IQWST, which stands for “investigating and questioning our world through science and technology,” a curriculum that aims to support the real-world applications of science.

At November’s committee meeting, Tierney also stressed the importance of three-dimensional teaching and said teachers would get resources to help with the lessons. But the district did not say what resources or support they would receive.

Even for students who are not interested in pursuing a career in science, it’s “more important than ever” to ensure they understand these ideas because of the “grand challenges that we’re facing,” McDonnell said.

“Always answering the ‘Why should I care about this?’ is really important, because they are kids,” McDonnell said.

In 2020, the state became the first in the country to adopt standards requiring K-12 public schools to teach about climate change across grade levels and in nearly all subjects. The requirement challenges students to think critically and broadly about the effects of climate.

McDonnell also says ideas such as how we use our land and how we fuel our cars are key in helping students apply real world challenges to their science education in schools.

Newark students need academic support in science, too

The state science assessments, given three grades apart, each cover several years of science education, not just what a student learned during the year they take the test.

Since remote learning caused by pandemic disruptions impeded students’ academic progress, school districts are paying more attention to state tests and using them as a measure to gauge recovery.

Trends in this year’s science scores are in line with results in English language arts and math that show students’ slow academic recovery after the pandemic.

According to state data, 13% of Newark Public Schools’ 11th graders met proficiency standards on the science test this year, a slight improvement from results in spring 2019, when 10.7% met the standards. For fifth graders, the proficiency rate was 7%, down from 10.3% in 2019. Among eighth graders, the proficiency rate was roughly 4%, even with 2019.

Students with disabilities and English language learners scored the lowest and continue to need the most support.

The Newark district also uses curriculum and benchmark assessments as well as grades as an indicator of students’ progress.

Tierney told board members last month that the district’s Office of Science developed benchmark assessments for grades 2-11 that include biology, chemistry, and physics.

The data gathered from those assessments will be used to inform teachers, schools, and, ultimately, the district’s science strategy, Tierney said.

Ultimately, McDonnell said, it’s important for students to think critically about the application of science in their lives and build their knowledge in science, technology, engineering, and math so they feel confident making decisions about their environment and future.

“You don’t have to be a scientist to vote and be engaged in these kinds of conversations about climate change and how we use our resources,” McDonnell said.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

New Jersey state test results show small gains for most students, but disparities persist

2023-12-11T20:50:00+00:00

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New Jersey’s third graders didn’t see improvement in reading over last year in the latest state Student Learning Assessments, the second round of standardized tests administered since the pandemic disrupted learning more than three years ago.

Results from the 2023 state tests in reading and math showed that seventh graders and Algebra 1 students struggled to improve in math, and disparities remained strikingly wide. Newark’s proficiency rates, in large part, continued to trail behind statewide averages — among the most daunting are third grade reading proficiency rates as low as 1.6% in one elementary school.

But even so, there were notable overall gains in reading and math across many student groups, state Department of Education officials said as they presented the latest test score data at a state Board of Education meeting last week in Trenton that streamed on YouTube.

The results serve as a reminder that the pandemic disproportionately affected thousands of students across the state and in Newark. They also highlight the challenges facing districts, which are scrambling to find effective strategies to help students catch up as the fourth year since the pandemic began approaches.

“This is going to take time,” said Jorden Schiff, the education department’s assistant commissioner of teaching and learning services, as he referred to ongoing efforts to return to pre-pandemic levels in key subject areas, such as reading and math. “No one can predict exactly how many years it will take.”

Some grades, schools show minimal progress

New Jersey put a pause on state standardized testing in 2020 and 2021 during the height of the pandemic. The annual spring exams in reading, math, and science restarted in 2022, providing the first glimpse of the learning loss that occurred since the pandemic began. The English language arts exams are administered to grades 3-9. Math exams go to grades 3-8, while specialized math exams in Algebra 1, Algebra 2, and Geometry are administered to students taking those courses. Science is administered to grades 5, 8, and 11.

The statewide results for 2023 showed some positives when looking at the overall picture: There was a 2.2% increase in math proficiency and 2.4% increase in reading proficiency when looking at the average of scores across all grades. Similarly, Newark Public Schools saw an overall increase of 2% in both math and reading.

But a closer assessment of the data reveals more nuance to this picture.

Third graders’ reading proficiency statewide remained at 42%, the same as last year — and 8 percentage points lower than the 50% rate in 2019. All other grades that took the reading exam, though, showed at least a 1 to 4 percentage point improvement over last year.

Similarly, seventh graders’ proficiency in math remained at 34% this year — 8 percentage points behind the proficiency rate of 42% in 2019 — and the Algebra 1 proficiency rate went unchanged from last year at 35%, also 8 percentage points behind the 2019 rate. Again, all other grades that took the math exams showed some improvement between 1 and 6 percentage points over last year.

“When we disaggregate based on grade level, this is when you’re starting to see some differentiation,” Schiff said.

Newark third graders’ reading proficiency rate of 19.1%, an improvement of .1% over last year, was still 9 percentage points behind 2019 and 22.9% behind the state’s average.

A close look at school-by-school results in the district show third graders at a few schools are exceeding the district’s and state’s overall proficiency for that grade, while others are trailing significantly.

Forty-two percent of third graders at Ann Street, 46.9% at Ivy Hill, and 50% at Sir Isaac Newton elementary schools are proficient in reading. But at other schools, the third grade proficiency rate is bleak — with Hawkins Street elementary at 1.6%, Quitman Street at 1.9%, and Dr. E. Alma Flagg at 2.6%.

Over at North Star Academy, the largest charter school network in Newark, 58.6% of third graders are proficient in reading — a rate that far exceeded the district and state averages in third grade English language arts.

Over the last year, North Star has put extra attention on teacher training and tutoring during the school day, with a focus on small group instruction, said network spokesperson Maria Alcón-Heraux.

Across the city, local leaders have been taking steps to address the learning impacts on children.

Before the start of the 2022-23 school year, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka launched a 10-point Youth Literacy Action Plan that called on community groups and local programs to get young children reading and writing in and out of school. The public school district also mandated students attend summer school as an additional learning opportunity.

Paula White, executive director of education advocacy group JerseyCAN, said in a statement that the latest state test scores provide “evidence that our children are not acquiring the skills and knowledge that will prepare them for a viable life in adulthood.”

“It is fair to say that we continue to lack the urgency and leadership to fully address the needs of our public school students,” White said.

State, districts search for strategies to close gaps

The state’s analysis of test results broken down by other student groups, such as race and ethnicity, English language learners, economically disadvantaged, and students with disabilities, shows improvements across the board, said Schiff, the assistant commissioner, at last week’s state school board meeting.

He noted Black students across all grades showed a jump in reading proficiency of 3.2%, an increase from 30.5% in 2022 but still behind the 37.9% rate in 2019. Latino students also saw an increase in reading proficiency of 2.3% over the 34.8% rate in 2022, but also still behind the 43.7% rate in 2019.

The reading and math proficiency rates for Black and Latino students, as well as students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, students with disabilities, and English language learners, highlight wide-ranging disparities in New Jersey.

State school board members pressed the education department officials for strategies to address learning gaps evident in the scores.

“These gaps are just unacceptable,” said Arcelio Aponte, a state school board member, during the presentation. “We really need to think through a better strategy to try to close these gaps.”

State education department officials said several programs are in the works to help address the learning loss evident in the results. The department has a high-impact tutoring program set to be underway in January and a professional development program for educators teaching literacy to elementary grades called RAPID.

The state’s office of special education is also offering a professional development program this winter for educators to learn about new strategies for interventions, strategies for trauma-informed classroom instruction, and how to improve preschool outcomes, officials said. The state is also partnering with higher education institutions across the state to support these programs, they said.

State school board member Joseph Ricca said the answer to addressing disparities requires more analysis and discussion. In addition to increased tutoring and learning opportunities, officials need to be “making sure all of our children are fed every day” and “making sure that there’s mental health care services available for all of our children in all of our schools,” he said.

“When we talk about test scores we need to recognize that these are not a singular indicator to human success,” Ricca said. “Recognize that there are issues that we must address within the lives of our children in order to achieve the types of academic growth and results we’d like to see.”

Jessie Gomez contributed reporting to this article.

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark. Reach Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

Thousands of Indiana students move on to 4th grade without reading skills, despite state policy

2023-12-05T20:51:34+00:00

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Thousands of Indiana students advanced through elementary school without demonstrating critical reading skills, new data from the Indiana Department of Education shows, as state lawmakers consider requiring more students who struggle with reading to repeat third grade.

It’s the state’s policy to hold back third graders who don’t pass the state reading test — the IREAD-3 — but data shows that retention rates have sharply decreased over the last decade, despite a simultaneous decline in reading scores.

Around 96% of students who did not pass the IREAD3 moved to fourth grade over the last decade, according to a presentation at the State Board of Education meeting on Tuesday.

In 2023, 13,840 third graders — or 18% of all third graders in the state — did not pass the test. Of those, 13,428 moved on to fourth grade and 412 stayed in third grade for another year.

The state allows exemptions to its policy for students who have disabilities, or those who are English learners. Roughly 5,500 students received an exemption in 2023, allowing them to move on to fourth grade despite not passing the test. These students do not take the reading test again, so it’s unclear whether they attained third grade reading skills, education department officials noted.

But the remaining 7,925 students who moved on to fourth grade in 2023 did not have such exemptions; they moved on through a practice known as social promotion, which is allowed under state policy. A 2021 memo from the Department of Education outlines that schools should consider a student’s “overall academic performance” and not just their IREAD-3 score in determining whether they need to repeat a year.

This group of students must take the IREAD-3 in fourth and fifth grades, and receive additional support in literacy, but officials said it’s not clear from the available state data if these students ever reach reading proficiency.

Indiana Education Secretary Katie Jenner noted that some of these students are transient, making it harder to track their data.

Changes to third-grade retention policy likely

Jenner emphasized that schools are not at fault for the drop in retention rates since 2012, when the state policy went into place.

Of the roughly 6,000 students who did not pass the IREAD-3 in 2012, around 4,000 received exemptions, and nearly 2,000 were retained. Just 24 were “socially promoted” to fourth grade without exemptions.

“Schools are following what’s allowable in the state,” Jenner said. “Schools are not breaking the rules on this piece.”

Lawmakers have already indicated that they want to tighten the rules on retention in the next legislative session that begins in January. Reading has been an ongoing focus for the legislature, which this year passed sweeping laws requiring schools and teacher preparation programs to use reading methods based in the science of reading.

Republican state leaders also said they would plan to tackle absenteeism, which Department of Education officials linked to poor reading performance. Absenteeism rates are highest in early elementary grades and in high school, according to state data.

At a November press conference, the Indiana State Teachers Association declined to comment on a potential change to the state’s retention policy until a bill is filed. ISTA President Keith Gambill said class sizes along with the state’s relatively late age for mandatory school entry of 7 years old could affect literacy rates.

“We support efforts to make sure we’re doing all we can to have students reading at grade level,” Gambill said.

Effects of retention are mixed

Along with retention rates, reading scores have shown a steady decline since the 2012-13 school year, when proficiency rates peaked at 91.4%. After dropping from 87.3% to 81.2% from 2019 to 2021, scores have inched up by a fraction of a percentage point each year to 81.9% in 2022-23.

The progress is not enough to meet the state’s goal of 95% of having third graders reading at grade level by 2027, officials noted.

Not reading proficiently by third grade is linked to several concerns, many of which education department officials highlighted on Tuesday. Students who don’t pass the IREAD-3 are unlikely to pass state tests in older grades, Jenner said. They experience ongoing academic challenges and are less likely to graduate.

“When a child is sitting in your classroom and is unable to read, it is mortifying when they’re in ninth grade,” Jenner said. “They’re acting out because they’re embarrassed.”

Studies on retention have shown mixed results, with many finding that retained students go on to have higher test scores.

A recent study of Indiana data from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University found that third-grade retention boosted student performance in reading and math immediately, and that the effects persisted into middle school.

Furthermore, the study found that retention did not affect nonacademic factors like attendance and student discipline, which are a common concern when retention policies are discussed.

One of the study’s authors, NaYoung Hwang, a professor at the University of New Hampshire, told Chalkbeat that further studies are needed on the effects of retention on other nonacademic factors, like students’ self-esteem and friendships, and teachers’ expectations.

Hwang said early intervention was key in retention policies, as third grade represents a transition point in students’ learning.

“Up to fourth grade, most students have the opportunity to learn how to read. But then after that, it’s ‘read to learn,’” Hwang said. “Once you become a fourth grader, and you can’t read, it can have really negative consequences on all your learning.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Gaps in Michigan student achievement remain wider than pre-pandemic norm, report finds

2023-11-16T23:00:57+00:00

The gaps between Michigan’s lowest and highest performing K-8 students are wider than would have been expected before the pandemic, and some students are falling further behind, according to an analysis of benchmark testing results released this week.

However, the students and districts that saw the most learning loss also have shown the strongest academic recovery, the research findings suggest.

“Overall, the results show us that progress is being made, but that progress is gradual — especially compared to how large the impact of the pandemic was,” said Tara Kilbride, interim associate director of the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative, the research group that did the analysis. “It’s going to be a long-term, multiyear effort.”

The analysis covers assessments given to Michigan students each fall and spring since 2020, and captures how student growth compared with national trends before the pandemic.

Since spring of 2021, student achievement in the state improved slightly in math and very little in reading, the report found.

In fall 2020, Michigan students were in the 42nd percentile of national norms in math, meaning 58% of students nationwide performed better. Michigan students fell to the 39th percentile in math by spring 2021. In spring 2023, they returned to the 42nd percentile.

It is likely that students are still behind where they were in math prior to the pandemic, since the first benchmark assessments were administered well after in-person learning went on pause in March 2020.

In reading, students in the state fell from the 51st percentile in fall 2020 to the 45th percentile in spring 2021. Results in reading have not moved substantially since then.

“The differences in recovery align with findings from other states across the country — at least what we see in math,” said Kilbride. “But reading results in other states have been varied. Michigan falls somewhere in the middle.”

Districts that were the most affected by the pandemic — many of which are in urban areas serving more diverse populations of students from low-income families — made the strongest recovery, according to the report. The accelerated learning rates out of those districts drove overall growth at the state level.

Overall, Michigan students are making the growth in a school year that would have been expected before COVID, the assessment results in the report show, but some students are still falling behind, because they are not learning at a fast enough pace to catch up.

The same trend is being seen nationally, researchers say.

“We are making only very slow progress,” said Dan Goldhaber, a professor at the University of Washington and director of the National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research.

“You really need the pace of learning to be considerably faster” to make up for lost learning, he added, “and we’re not seeing that.”

Goldhaber said the state of recovery nationally is “concerning” because tests are highly predictive of how kids will fare later on in life.

Benchmark assessments offer researchers and policy makers a couple of advantages over yearly M-STEP standardized test results, because they more clearly measure student growth during a school year, from fall to spring. Some of the assessments show how kids are achieving at a level beyond their grade.

In many cases, the assessments can be better than letter grades or report cards at helping parents understand how their children are performing, said Goldhaber.

“Grades are actually higher than they were before the pandemic, and they don’t seem to comport with what we know about test scores,” he said. “The meaning of an ‘A’ in terms of knowledge as assessed by the test is different from what we knew before the pandemic. I am worried that parents can be getting false signals about how their students are doing from grades, and maybe they should be paying some attention to the tests.”

The assessment results do have their limitations. The analysis includes assessments from about 773,000 of the 947,000 K-8 students in the state, at 769 of 852 school districts.

Legislation that passed in 2020 requiring Michigan districts to give the benchmark assessments gave them several options of approved test providers. Because of this, researchers did not include students who moved districts in their analysis.

Additionally, many students missed testing dates.

“Some of the reasons students did not take tests are the same reasons that they may have been impacted even more by the pandemic,” said Kilbride. “That could mean our results are showing a rosier picture than what truly happened.”

Hannah Dellinger covers K-12 education and state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s how NY Regents exams, high school grad requirements could change

2023-11-13T14:52:39+00:00

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The Regents exams, a rite of passage for New York students for more than a century, aren’t going anywhere.

But high school seniors in the coming years could see a big shift in what’s needed to graduate, with a slew of additional options to demonstrate mastery, as well as new subjects that could count towards their diplomas, including civic responsibility, financial literacy, and the arts.

A 64-member Blue Ribbon Commission, tasked more than a year ago with rethinking what knowledge and skills high schoolers should be required to know upon graduation, released its findings to the state’s Board of Regents on Monday.

Among its 12 recommendations is a move to further increase the number of assessment options beyond the Regents exams, offering students other ways to demonstrate their learning, such as performance-based assessments, capstone projects, and experiential learning. Other suggestions include broadening access to career and technical education, better aligning the state’s learning standards with college and career expectations, and enshrining instruction in culturally responsive-sustaining education practices in teacher preparation programs.

The recommendations also call for additional credit requirements in subjects like cultural competence, writing, STEM, and more.

But it may be some time before any of the recommendations are adopted.

In a press briefing last week, State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa called the report “a blueprint,” adding, “The real work starts with the design.”

State officials plan to take a “deeper dive” into each recommendation this summer, with hopes of developing timelines for implementation in the fall, she said.

State officials have debated future of Regents for years

The commission launched in 2022 after years of discussion over whether and how New York’s graduation policies should change.

In 2019, Rosa — then Chancellor of the Board of Regents — called for revising the state’s graduation requirements. She pointed to “stubborn gaps in achievement” that persisted between students of color, those with disabilities, English language learners, as well as those from low-income backgrounds compared with their white and more affluent peers.

Rosa is looking forward to a future of graduation assessments that are expansive — offering more options to students who may have struggled with the more traditional exams, she told reporters last week.

She hopes the new recommendations will establish a more inclusive learning environment, while building more opportunities for work-based learning and college readiness. She wants to move away from a “one-size-fits-all approach” and toward something “nurtures” students’ differences.

“Our students have different ways of demonstrating their knowledge,” she said. “What we want to do is uplift that.”

The future of Regents exams

The process of rethinking the state’s graduation requirements initially sparked speculation over the potential end of New York’s Regents exams, which have been offered since the 1870s and have been required of most students to earn their diplomas.

New York is one of a handful of states that still require exit exams, though research has found little evidence to show such exams improve student achievement.

Over the past year, the commission reviewed the state’s graduation requirements, as well as research findings, workforce trends, and community input. Members also considered graduation requirements, assessment options, apprenticeship models, and educational policies across other states and countries.

Parents and students involved in the process called for more flexibility in credit requirements and testing, according to the report. Many students reported feeling the Regents exams were not sufficient measures of student learning, calling for more project-based forms of assessments, as well as the option to replace the state tests with Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams.

Angelique Johnson-Dingle, deputy commissioner of P-12 instructional support, said the state’s Education Department is already working to identify such alternative options and pathways for students.

“We have students that suffer with test anxiety that at times makes it difficult for them to be able to truly show everything that they’ve learned,” she said. “This is just one way to help those students — to give them another option to be able to meet the requirements of high school graduation.”

Some schools have already embraced alternative options. New York City already has nearly 40 schools that are part of a “performance standards consortium,” or “consortium” for short, that receive waivers from the state to forgo Regents exams, and instead have students work on projects or experiments and present their findings to a panel of educators and experts in what’s known as a “performance-based assessment.”

Kim Sweet, executive director of Advocates for Children of New York, called the proposed changes to diploma assessment requirements “an important step in the right direction. But her organization, which supports the most vulnerable students, is continuing to push for the state to unlink the Regents exams from graduation requirements, as many other states have done.

”There is no evidence that exit exams increase academic rigor or boost student learning, and they have been shown to increase drop-out rates, particularly for students of color and students from low-income backgrounds,” Sweet said in a statement. “We have worked with far too many students who had the deck stacked against them, yet persevered and completed their coursework and were prepared to move on to post-secondary life — only to be blocked from a high school diploma because of a single high-stakes exam.”

Meanwhile, Jacquelyn Martell, executive director of Education Reform Now New York, questioned whether the new assessments would be “objective” measures of whether students were prepared for college and careers after high school. The organization has advocated against changing graduation requirements, instead calling for the state to address systemic issues by further bolstering instruction in literacy, math, and other skills.

“New York must have true guardrails in place so when a high school senior receives their diploma, it’s not just a piece of paper,” she said in a statement. “Graduation needs to put our students on the path to success or they are doomed to failure.”

The commission’s recommendations additionally call for the number of diploma types to be reduced from three to one, while offering options to add seals or endorsements. Currently, the state doles out local, Regents, and Regents with advanced designation diplomas, which vary based on the number of assessments a student passed and the required passing scores.

In the report, commission members also developed a “portrait of a graduate,” or a set of attributes that New Yorkers should demonstrate upon graduation. Those included critical thinking, effective communication, cultural and social-emotional competences, innovative problem solving, literacy across content areas, and a status as a “global citizen.”

The portrait will serve as “the north star” of the state education system, according to the report.

Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College and an expert in testing, said the skills demonstrated by the portrait extended further than what exams had traditionally tested for.

“What I’m most struck by is the sheer amount of work necessary to convert the [Blue Ribbon Commission’s] portrait of a graduate into a set of standards and measures,” he said in an email. “Inevitably, this broad array of competencies we desire in a college and career-ready high school graduate argues for multiple forms of assessment, well beyond what historically has been measured by the Regents’ exams.”

See the commission’s full list of recommendations below:

Replace the three diploma types with one diploma with the option to add seals and endorsements.
Diploma credit requirements must include: > civic responsibility (ethics); > cultural competence; > financial literacy education, including systems, personal finance, and the social-historical context; > fine and performing arts; > science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) credit(s); and > writing, including writing skills for real-world scenarios.
Ensure access to career and technical education (CTE), including internships and work-based learning opportunities for all students across New York State.
Move to a model that organizes credit requirements, including content area credit requirements into larger categories (e.g., mathematics and science courses could be included in the “STEM” category). This model must: > allow for a competency-based (proficiency-based) model to award credit; > allow local districts to offer unique options for students to earn course credits (these options must reflect students’ identity and experiences); >increase the number of elective courses that may be used to fulfill credit requirements; and > provide student choice in the options used to satisfy the diploma credit requirements.
Reduce and/or modify diploma assessment requirements to allow more assessment options. Such options must: > align with the Culturally Responsive-Sustaining Education Framework; > allow students to demonstrate competence in multiple ways; > assess the attributes included in the portrait of a graduate; > be available to all students; > include writing, including writing skills for real-world scenarios as an integral part; > measure higher-order thinking skills; >meet the needs of all learners, including English language learners, students with disabilities, and other underserved populations; and > provide student choice in the options used to satisfy the requirements including performance-based assessments (PBA), capstone projects, and experiential learning.
Create state-developed rubric(s) for any performance-based assessments allowed as an option to satisfy the diploma assessment requirements. The Commission recommends convening P-20 teachers to develop performance-based assessment rubrics and create a curated collection of exemplars.
Create more specific, tailored graduation requirements to address the unique circumstances of certain groups of students (e.g., non-compulsory age students, newcomer students, refugee students).
Provide exemptions from diploma assessment requirements for: > students with significant cognitive disabilities and > major life events and extenuating circumstances (e.g., medical conditions, death of a family member, trauma prior to sitting for a required exam).
Pursue regulatory changes to allow the discretion to confer high school degrees posthumously.
Require all NYS teacher preparation programs to provide instruction in culturally responsive-sustaining education (CR-SE) practices and pedagogy.
Require that professional development plans include culturally responsive-sustaining education practices and pedagogy.
Review and revise the NYS learning standards to: > better align with college and career expectations, and update for family and consumer sciences, health, media literacy, and climate education; > emphasize higher-order skills and competencies (e.g., health education, communication, decision-making, time management, soft skills); and > use a culturally responsive-sustaining education (CRSE)/diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and accessibility lens in all subject areas, including history.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

See how your Philadelphia school did on the latest state tests in English and math

2023-11-08T21:51:41+00:00

Philadelphia students’ state test scores are slowly recovering back to pre-pandemic levels, but most students still aren’t proficient in English language arts, math, and science, while longstanding performance gaps between student groups persist, according to new state test scores.

And the city’s students are still scoring far below their peers in the rest of the state on the tests, which were administered last spring. The scores, released on Wednesday, essentially confirm preliminary data shared with the Philadelphia Board of Education in early September showing that Philadelphia students made small gains from last year, but that most are still not proficient. The scores also indicate that Philadelphia has far to go to meet the school board’s own long-term academic targets.

Scores released Wednesday for the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA, data for grades 3-8 show major disparities between white and Asian students and their Black and Hispanic peers in Philadelphia district and charter schools. Those gaps are most pronounced in math: Only 9.3% of Black students scored proficient and above on the math tests, while 44% of their white counterparts scored proficient or above. Some 11% of Hispanic students scored proficient or better in math while nearly 53% of Asian students scored the same.

Just 15% of economically disadvantaged students — who make up more than two-thirds of all city students — scored proficient or better in math.

Overall for the 2022-23 school year, 34.2% of Philadelphia students in grades 3-8 scored proficient or better in English, 20.4% of students in those grades scored proficient or above in math, and 41% of students in grades 4 and 8 scored proficient or better in science.

In 2021-22, the proficiency rates were 34.7% in English, 16.2% in math, and 37.1% in science — though the district’s science scores from that year do not include charter school students.

Philadelphia’s scores do show that students are gradually catching up to where they were before the COVID pandemic.

In 2019, 21.6% of students in Philadelphia scored proficient or better in math, while in English, 35.7% of students were proficient or better.

In late 2020, as part of a multi-year “goals and guardrails” plan, the district and school board set a goal that by 2026, 52% of students in traditional district schools, in grades 3-8 would achieve proficiency on the state math exam, and 65% of students would achieve proficiency on the state English exam.

Statewide, students scoring proficient or above in English increased slightly from 54.1% in 2021-22 to 54.5% in 2022-23. Over the same period, proficiency scores in math increased from 35.7% to 38.3%, and science scores increased from 54.4% to 58.9%. (Students did not take the state tests in 2020, while state officials say 2021 scores are not truly comparable to pre-COVID results.)

“This year’s assessment results underscore what we have said before — that with each passing year, participation and achievement will continue to improve,” Secretary of Education Khalid Mumin said in a statement Wednesday. “Pennsylvania’s results are well on their way to returning to pre-pandemic rates and we look forward to helping our students exceed those levels in the years ahead.”

But just as a much higher share of white and Asian students were proficient on state exams than Black and Hispanic students, there is a similar disparity when it comes to the lowest scores.

In English, 13.9% of white students in grades 3-8 scored below basic, compared to 29.4% of Black students, 33.4% of Hispanic students, and 9.6% of Asians, 14.1% of those who identify as multi-ethnic, and 27.7% of economically disadvantaged students.

In math, such differences are also stark. Overall, 57% of students in grades 3-8 scored below basic. That included 32.6% of white students, 69% of Black students, 66% of Hispanics, 22% of Asians, 45.4% of multi-ethnic students, and 45.4% of those who are economically disadvantaged.

District officials and board members said they were heartened by the increases from last year — however small — but said there’s more work the district can do.

Tonya Wolford, the district’s chief of evaluation, research, and accountability, told board members in September it is important to keep in mind that students “likely are not going from below basic to proficient in one year.” She said Philadelphia students will need more time, resources, and support to make the jump.

To emphasize the importance of students achieving proficiency in reading by third grade, the district also set a goal for 62% of third graders to score proficient on the state exam by 2026. Yet in 2022-23, only 31.2% of third graders scored proficient or above on the PSSA.

On Keystone exams — another state standardized assessment for high school students in literature, biology, and algebra — Philadelphia students also lag behind peers statewide. Just 25.1% of city students are proficient or better in algebra, compared to 34.2% of students statewide.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s first A-F letter grades for schools will stress proficiency

2023-11-03T00:01:41+00:00

After months of asking Tennesseans how the state should judge its public schools when giving them their first A-F letter grades, Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds mostly ignored the feedback.

In her first major initiative since taking the helm of the state education department in July, Reynolds chose a school grading system that elevates the importance of proficiency — whether students are meeting certain academic standards on state tests — over the progress that schools make toward meeting those standards over the course of a year.

Her plan, unveiled on Thursday, will mark a sharp change of course for Tennessee, considered a pioneer in emphasizing growth measurements to assess its students, teachers, and schools.

It’s also significantly different from what Tennesseans have asked state officials for since Reynolds announced in August that an overhaul in the state’s grading system was coming. The overwhelming feedback at 10 town halls, meetings with stakeholders, and in nearly 300 public comments was for keeping the calculation focused on growth, as it has been the last five years.

Reynolds’ plan is similar to the model backed by ExcelinEd, the education advocacy group founded by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and where Reynolds previously served as policy director.

It will still include improvement as a factor, as required by a 2016 Tennessee law, but achievement will get more weight than under the original formula — and there won’t be a way for schools to meet the achievement criteria by meeting certain improvement goals, according to a presentation to the state Board of Education.

“This version is recalibrating that balance point and is going to say more about where the kids are in those schools right now,” said David Laird, assistant commissioner of assessment and accountability in the education department. “It is less of a referendum on maybe what the school’s impact has been, but it’s more clearly articulating their challenges right now.”

The department also announced that the grades will be released in mid-December, a month later than previously planned. State officials say they need more time to verify data going into the grades.

This is the first time the state will issue its letter grades since the 2016 law requiring them took effect. Previous attempts were called off because of testing glitches and the pandemic.

There are several other changes to the calculation.

The formula will factor in test scores for science and social studies, although not as much as for math and English language arts, which were the focus of the original model.

Gone is data related to chronic absenteeism. A new factor will be how well schools are helping their lowest-performing quartile of students to improve. For high schools, college and career readiness will be included, based on measures such as ACT scores, postsecondary credits, or industry credentials.

The debate about growth vs. proficiency was the biggest concern for school leaders who have been waiting and planning for grades for five years.

Focusing on proficiency likely will mean fewer A’s and generally worse grades than expected for many schools, especially those serving students from lower-income families in rural and urban communities.

Beyond the stigma of getting a D or an F, officials representing those schools eventually may face hearings before the state Board of Education or audits of their spending and academic programming.

Several board members worried that teachers could flee schools graded D or F, exacerbating the challenges faced by schools in high-poverty areas, where students face extra challenges before they even walk into a classroom.

“It’s a struggle for me to think about saying everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, when some folks have a closet full of boots, and some have none,” said Darrell Cobbins, who represents Memphis on the board.

Many education advocates worried the state could return to an era when schools with many affluent students coasted to the top ratings, while doing little to show they were helping students improve. Meanwhile, schools in high-poverty areas will have little chance to earn an A or B, they told Chalkbeat.

“Measuring only absolute proficiency for 50% of a school’s grade will most certainly disadvantage our highest poverty schools,” said Erin O’Hara Block, a school board member for Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools, who served on the working group giving input to the state.

“I’m not sure what this system is supposed to motivate for schools, nor how it will truly inform parents on differences in what various schools can offer to their children,” she said.

Reynolds said the letter grades are a tool to provide families and school communities with information they can use to make decisions, not necessarily to incentivize schools to improve.

“We want to tell the truth about whether or not our kids are actually achieving,” she said.

But Gini Pupo-Walker, director of the Education Trust in Tennessee, is hopeful the grades will somehow be tied to extra resources to help struggling schools.

“We look forward to learning more about how the state plans to support schools that receive D’s and F’s,” she said, “and ensure schools are paying attention to the success of all students.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois student test scores closer to pre-pandemic proficiency levels, but absenteeism remains high

2023-10-30T14:00:00+00:00

Illinois public school students made strides in recovering from pandemic disruption, with gains in English language arts and math test scores, a jump in high school graduation rates in the past decade, and an increase in students taking advanced courses, according to data from the state’s latest report card.

The report card issued by the Illinois State Board of Education shows that more students were considered proficient on standardized tests in the 2022-23 school year compared to the previous year, but scores have yet to return to pre-pandemic levels.

In a press conference on Wednesday, State Superintendent Tony Sanders said educators and families should be proud of the progress made on the 2023 report card.

“I’m so happy to see a second year of strong recovery post-pandemic,” said Sanders. “We’re moving fast toward recovery, although we still have quite a distance to travel.”

The annual report card provides families and educators with a glimpse at how their district and school are doing in comparison to the state’s 850-plus districts. Among the metrics collected by the State Board of Education are test scores, enrollment data, chronic absenteeism, teacher retention rates, graduation rates, the number of students taking advanced coursework such as Advanced Placement or dual credit, and participation in career and technical education programs.

The latest report card offers some good news for Illinois districts that are still working to help students recover from pandemic-related disruptions. To address learning gaps, they have focused on hiring more staff, creating after-school programs, and hosting summer learning opportunities. Some of those efforts were funded with the $7 billion in federal COVID relief funding the state received.

However, the state’s public schools will have to figure out how to continue these programs as federal relief funding will expire at the end of September 2024. Chicago Public Schools officials recently projected a $391 million budget deficit next school year.

Here are some of the highlights from the 2023 report card.

Test scores are trending up, but haven’t returned to 2019 levels

Illinois standardized test scores show that reading recovery continues to improve while math scores have yet to make similar progress. While all student groups across race and ethnicity made significant gains, the report card found that Black students made the most progress. The state board noted that Black students were hit the hardest in the pandemic and often remained in remote learning longer than other students when school buildings began to reopen in the school year 2020-2021.

On the 2023 Illinois Assessment of Readiness, known as the IAR, a yearly standardized test used as one of the measures in the report card, 35.4% of students between third grade and eighth grade were proficient in reading, a 5.2 percent point increase compared to 2022. In math, 27% of students in those same grades were proficient, a 1.6 percentage point increase. However, the 2023 scores still fell short of pre-pandemic levels; in 2019, 37.8% were proficient in English language arts and 31.8% in math.

Last month, Chicago Public Schools reported about 26% of students were considered proficient in English Language Arts on the 2023 IAR test, compared with 27.3% in 2019. For math, 17.5% of students passed, compared with 23.6% in 2019.

Students were unable to take the spring assessment in 2020 when the pandemic upended learning and forced school buildings to close. In 2021, participation was low as some schools had the option of offering the exam in the spring or in the fall, but participation rates returned to normal in 2022.

For 11th graders who took the SAT, a standardized exam used by colleges as part of admission criteria, 31.6% of students were considered proficient in reading and 26.7% were considered proficient in math. That’s fewer than the 36.2% of 11th graders in 2019 who scored proficient in reading and the 34.4% who scored proficient in math.

State sees increase in enrollment for English learners

The state’s overall enrollment continues to decline steadily. Over 1.8 million students were enrolled in Illinois public schools in 2022-23, a loss of more than 11,500 students compared to the previous school year. In a media call on Wednesday, Sanders said the declines track with a drop in birth rates across the nation and in Illinois.

Public schools saw an increase of Latino and Asian American students enrolling last school year. However, white and Black student enrollment has decreased.

Across student groups, English language learners had the largest bump in enrollment over the last five years, according to the report card. Sanders said the state board cannot say for sure how many students are migrants from Central America or refugee students from Ukraine or Afghanistan.

Students continue to be chronically absent at high rate

About 28% of students were chronically absent from school last year. That’s a slight decrease — about a 1.5 percentage point — from the 2021-22 school year when about 29.8% of students were chronically absent.

Students are considered chronically absent when they miss about 18 days, or 10% of school, with or without a valid excuse. Student mental health days also count towards chronic absenteeism.

When students miss a significant amount of school it can impact their academic performance.

The report card shows high rates of absenteeism among Black, Native American, and Latino students. But Black, Latino, Asian American, and white students also saw improvement in school attendance compared in 2021-22. During last school year, chronic absenteeism rates were high among students from low-income families, students experiencing homelessness, and students with Individualized Education Programs.

The Illinois data is similar to what schools are seeing across the country. Attendance Works — a nonprofit organization that looks into attendance rates across the country — has seen early data from 11 states that found about 27.9% of students were chronically absent during the 2022-23 school year — a 2.2% decrease in chronic absenteeism rates compared with the 2021-22 school year.

Illinois students graduation rates improve

High school seniors who graduated in the spring of 2023 entered high school in 2019. Their freshman year was disrupted in March when COVID-19 shuttered schools. Now state data shows that those students graduated at the highest rate in 13 years, excluding 2019-20 when graduation rates were inflated due to a reduction in graduation requirements in the spring of 2020.

Last school year, 87.6% of students graduated from high school, a 1.4% increase from 2019 and a 3.8% increase from 2011. Black and Latino students saw significant gains when it comes to graduation rates compared to 2019 — 80.1% of Black students, or a 3.6% increase, and 88.5% of Latino students, a 6.3% gain, graduated from high school in the spring of 2023.

During the press conference on Wednesday, Sanders was asked what factor led to higher student achievement for Black students when compared to previous years. Sanders attributed much of it to the evidence-based funding formula.

“The investment that local school districts have been making to better support our students of color is, I think, why you’re seeing some of these significant increases not only in student proficiency, but also in graduation rates and other key indicators,” said Sanders.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago, covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education, and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

How Michigan teacher evaluations would change under proposed reforms

2023-10-30T10:30:00+00:00

Proposed legislation in Michigan that would eliminate student test scores as a factor in teacher evaluations would represent a victory for teachers if it passes, and a turnabout in an education reform effort that began nearly a decade ago.

Current state law requires that student scores on standardized tests count for 40% of a teacher’s performance rating. Under two proposed bills that passed the Senate last week, that requirement would go away, and the districts would be able to use their own criteria for evaluating teachers, such as classroom observations, samples of student work, rubrics, and lesson plans.

The bills would also de-emphasize evaluations as a factor in districts’ decisions to fire or demote teachers or deny them tenure. But they would require districts to take action against teachers who don’t improve after repeated interventions.

The House Education Committee is expected to take up the bills on Tuesday.

Here’s some background on the current law, and highlights of the new proposals:

Michigan law followed a push for more accountability

Michigan’s law on test scores and evaluations grew out of a push for greater accountability in education that began in the 2000s. Some advocacy groups theorized that more rigorous reviews would generate detailed feedback that could be used to improve teachers’ performance.

In 2009, under the Obama administration, the federal government offered money from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act to states that made policy changes, including revamping teacher evaluations to include test scores.

In response, Michigan passed a law in 2015 requiring that teacher evaluations be 25% based on student growth, as measured by changes in test scores from one year to the next. The requirement went up to 40% at the start of the 2018-19 school year.

Skepticism of test-based evaluations has grown

Teachers have long argued that growth in test scores is an unfair way to measure their job performance, because it compares the performance of two different cohorts of students.

And in recent years, many education experts and policy analysts have become more vocal in questioning the changes that were made in the 2010s.

By 2019, nine states had stopped requiring that test scores be considered in teacher evaluations. Many other states have considered making the same change.

Proponents of returning to the old evaluation method say there is no evidence to suggest the current system benefits students, and that tying ratings to test scores contributes to burnout amid persistent teacher shortages.

Critics are concerned that de-emphasizing student test scores could lower standards for teachers while students are still struggling to recover from pandemic learning loss and need high-quality instruction.

How the proposals would change teacher evaluations

The bills proposed in Michigan would be a return to the system that was used before 2015. Districts would have more power to set their own standards to decide how and when teachers are evaluated.

But the proposals would still require districts to set up a common rating system, and they prescribe some consequences for teachers who don’t measure up.

School districts would have to start using teacher and administrator rating systems by July 1, 2024, that include four possible ratings: “highly effective,” “effective,” “minimally effective,” and “ineffective.” After that, districts would have to add “developing” and “needing support” ratings as well.

Teachers rated “needing support” would get individualized development plans from their districts to improve their performance within 180 days.

Districts would not be allowed to fire, deny tenure to, or withhold full certification from teachers rated “ineffective.” But they would be required to terminate teachers or administrators who are rated “needing support” three years in a row. Those who receive that rating could request reviews of their evaluations.

Staff who conduct evaluations would have to take “rater reliability training” from their districts.

A Senate analysis of the proposals said local districts might face some new costs to update teacher and school administrator evaluations and to incorporate collective bargaining agreements as part of that process.

On the other hand, it says, schools could save money by not having to calculate testing data, and by evaluating consistently effective teachers less often.

Hannah Dellinger is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 education. Contact Hannah at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee rushes to revamp its A-F letter grades for schools. Educators cry foul.

2023-10-26T10:00:00+00:00

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It was supposed to make things simpler.

A 2016 Tennessee law required the state to assign each public school a letter grade, A to F, based mostly on student test results. The intent was to give parents and communities an easy way to assess the quality of education at each school.

Nothing about it has been simple, though. Since the law took effect, the state hasn’t issued any grades, mostly because of testing glitches and the pandemic.

And now there’s a new complication: As the state prepares to finally issue its first grades in November, the education department and its new leader are revamping the grading formula. The changes likely will mean fewer A’s and generally worse grades than expected for many schools, especially those serving students from lower-income families in rural and urban communities.

The rollout will be a jolt to many Tennessee public school leaders, who have been waiting and planning for these grades for five years, thinking they understood what the criteria would be. And beyond the stigma, the grades could have real consequences: Officials representing schools that get D’s or F’s eventually may face hearings or audits of their spending and academic programming.

“It almost seems like we’re trying to change rules after the game’s already been played,” said Brian Curry, a school board member in Germantown, during an August town hall in Memphis to discuss potential changes with state officials.

Why the letter grades for schools matter

Tennessee’s 2016 school report card law didn’t include consequences for schools that get low grades.

That changed last year, when Tennessee passed a new system for funding K-12 education.

Under the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement Act, or TISA, school districts or charter authorizers can face hearings before the state Board of Education if their schools get D’s or F’s on the state report card, beginning with the 2024-25 school year.

Ultimately, administrators could have to submit a corrective action plan or undergo a state audit of spending and academic programming at the school in question.

State board member Darrell Cobbins, whose district includes Memphis schools, acknowledges that the increased funding that came with TISA warrants additional accountability. But he wonders about the feasibility of what the law asks of the all-volunteer board. Holding hearings for potentially hundreds of schools will be a “major undertaking,” he said.

The board is working with a consultant, Bellwether Education Partners, to develop a review process that Cobbins hopes will be logical, consistent, and explainable.

At the crux of the state’s late change is a long-running debate over proficiency vs. growth — whether students should be judged based more on whether they meet certain academic standards, or on how much progress they make toward those standards. Where the state lands in that debate is especially important for schools where students face extra challenges even before they walk into a classroom.

But many public school leaders believe there’s a larger political motive behind the sudden drive by Gov. Bill Lee’s administration to change the rules: advancing his school choice agenda.

Under a 2019 voucher law pushed by Lee, Tennessee now provides taxpayer money to help some families send their children to private schools. But the program has fewer than 2,000 students enrolled in the three counties where it operates, significantly below this year’s 5,000-seat cap. Lee wants to expand enrollment and eventually take the option statewide.

“School choice has got to be part of what’s driving all this,” said Mike Winstead, director of Maryville City Schools and a former Tennessee Superintendent of the Year.

“Think about it,” he continued. “If you have an A or B school in your community, that may not motivate parents to want to pull their kids out of public schools to use a voucher.”

Several other district leaders brought up the same concern to state officials at town halls hosted by the department in August and September to get public feedback about revising the grading formula. But state officials flatly deny there’s a connection between the voucher law and changes to the grading formula.

The grading law “was passed to promote transparency, and families should be able to know and to understand how their students’ schools are performing,” a department spokesman said in a statement to Chalkbeat.

Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds said the goal of the new formula is to generate grades that signify meaningful differences in school performance in a way that make sense to Tennesseans, whether they reflect proficiency, growth, or other criteria that are ultimately chosen.

“Whether you are a student, parent, teacher, policymaker, or an interested community member, school letter grades will empower all Tennesseans with the information they need to support K-12 public education and our local schools,” she said.

Tennessee initially adopted growth-focused model

State law requires that Tennessee’s model for grading schools take into account student performance and improvement, as demonstrated on annual state tests, and it allows inclusion of other reliable indicators of student achievement. The statute directed the education department to come up with a formula to turn those results into a single letter grade for each school, to be published online on the State Report Card.

When developing the calculation under former Republican Gov. Bill Haslam’s administration, the department stressed achievement and growth in math and English language arts. And it created two pathways for schools to demonstrate achievement.

One way was based on what the state calls “pure achievement,” meaning that a certain percentage of a school’s students demonstrated a required level of proficiency, skill, or knowledge. By this metric, a school that started the school year with a high proficiency rate was likely to receive an A even if it had not improved student learning during the school year.

The other way rewarded schools that met certain goals to move their students toward proficiency from one year to the next. The idea was that all schools, especially those serving low-income students or that have historically performed poorly, should have an opportunity to get an A as long as they make strong progress toward the state’s achievement goals.

So even the achievement part of the grading formula could be fulfilled with strong growth. In this way, Tennessee was an early adopter of a growth-heavy model when developing its accountability system.

“All means all!” became the mantra of then-Education Commissioner Candice McQueen as she worked with education stakeholders for nearly a year to design a system to incentivize improvement for all students — whether they are considered low, average, or high achievers — as well as for all schools, regardless of their demographic makeup.

Tennessee had modest success with that approach, even though the actual letter grades were never issued. Before the pandemic hit in 2020, students were showing incremental growth in math and reading based on some of the nation’s highest proficiency standards.

But state lawmakers have become increasingly impatient with the pace of improvement, especially in reading. About a third of the state’s students meet grade-level standards on the English language arts test, which requires students to demonstrate the ability to read closely.

“School choice has got to be part of what’s driving all this. Think about it. If you have an A or B school in your community, that may not motivate parents to want to pull their kids out of public schools to use a voucher.” — Mike Winstead, Maryville City Schools director

“At the end of the day, I want to know: Can you add, subtract, multiply, and divide, and can you read, regardless of how much you have grown from one year to the other?” said Rep. Mark Cochran, an Englewood Republican, during one legislative hearing about the state’s emphasis on growth.

Meanwhile, the legislature has sought to provide more options for families dissatisfied with the performance of traditional public schools by introducing private school vouchers and allowing charter schools to open statewide.

Now as Tennessee revamps its school grading system, Lee’s administration is poised to shift weight in the equation from growth to pure achievement. Reynolds wants the state to do that by eliminating the growth pathway for demonstrating achievement. Growth would still be a component of the overall grade, as dictated by state law, but a much smaller part.

“I want to be very clear that when we’re talking about academic achievement, we’re talking about academic achievement,” Reynolds, the new education commissioner, said at an Oct. 12 meeting of education stakeholders.

State hears strong calls for retaining growth focus

Reynolds, who was sworn in to her post in July, launched the reevaluation of the grading system about a month later as her first major initiative. She invited Tennesseans to weigh in on how the state should measure a school’s academic success. At the time, state officials said all options were on the table.

At town halls, meetings with stakeholders, and in nearly 300 public comments from Tennesseans, state officials heard a common theme: Keep some kind of growth option as part of the achievement calculation. Measuring student performance with a single letter grade requires nuance, many educators said, and the growth-based model allows that.

“Is having a campus that has only 15% reading proficiency really a B school, if those kids cannot read?” — Lizzette Reynolds, Tennessee education commissioner

A formula that’s weighted too heavily toward pure achievement, they warned, would produce grades that essentially mirror the economic profiles of the schools — with high-income communities getting the A’s and B’s — and families wouldn’t be able to use the grades to differentiate the performance of one high-poverty school from another.

“Given the strong correlation between achievement and poverty, I think it’s really difficult to talk about just achievement in isolation. We really need to balance this with growth,” said Madeline Price, policy director for the State Collaborative on Reforming Education, at an Oct. 5 meeting of the stakeholders group.

“All schools, especially low-income and traditionally low performing schools, should have a very real opportunity to receive an A” if they significantly improve student performance, the leaders of Tennessee’s school superintendent organization wrote in a letter to Reynolds.

Meaghan Turnbow, who coordinates programs for English language learners in fast-growing Rutherford County Schools, south of Nashville, noted pitfalls in a model that emphasizes proficiency over growth.

“We have students come to our district from all over the world with various education levels and English levels,” she wrote in a public comment. “Year to year they grow, but it may be several years before they are considered meeting or exceeding expectations.”

Tennessee Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds speaks to a gathering of school superintendents in September. Reynolds has signaled that she wants to narrow the way the state judges student performance.

But soon after asking for public feedback, Tennessee’s new education chief signaled that she wanted to narrow the way the state judges student performance.

During an Aug. 29 town hall in Chattanooga, Reynolds acknowledged that the education department, before scuttling plans to issue grades in the fall of 2022 under former Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn, had run the numbers but didn’t like what it saw. For instance, she said, a school with 80% of its students reading on grade level might have received a B, but so might a school that had only 15% of students reading on grade level, while also demonstrating high growth.

“Is having a campus that has only 15% reading proficiency really a B school, if those kids cannot read?” Reynolds asked.

“We should celebrate growth,” she continued. “We should also celebrate achievement, because at the end of the day, kids can grow. But if they never get on grade level, they don’t have much of a future, particularly when it comes to reading and math.”

How a single school could get conflicting evaluations

The A-F grading system, as required by the state, was billed as a simple, common-sense tool to help parents understand how their child’s school is doing and compare schools.

But changes the department is making could add a new layer of complexity for school communities.

When Tennessee developed its accountability plan in 2017, it opted for a single system to satisfy both the state law and a 2015 federal accountability law called the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA. That way, “we’re not sending different messages to parents and the general public,” said Winstead, the Maryville schools director who served on the state task force that developed the plan.

ESSA doesn’t require A-F grades, but it directs the state to use its own criteria to identify schools that are academically in the bottom 5%, plus other schools showing low performance or significant disparities across groups of students who are Black, Hispanic, economically disadvantaged, or English learners, or have learning disabilities. Such schools become eligible for additional federal funding.

Because of the link between the two laws, the schools that would earn the lowest grades under Tennessee’s current formula are the same ones that would get federal support to help them improve. And educators would work with a common set of goals, priorities, and incentives.

Changes that the Tennessee Department of Education is making could create two separate accountability systems, producing conflicting assessments of how a school is doing.

Under Reynolds, the Tennessee education department appears ready to decouple the state’s A-F system from its federal compliance plan. The change would result in Tennessee having two accountability systems, potentially producing conflicting assessments of how a school is doing.

For example, if the new state formula places less emphasis on certain student groups than the federal system does, a school that has big racial or economic disparities in student performance could still earn high grades from Tennessee based on overall proficiency rates. Meanwhile, a school with low proficiency rates would get a D or an F, even though it may serve certain groups of students better than an A or B school.

Mary Batiwalla, former assistant commissioner of assessment and accountability in Tennessee, says what’s going on here has parallels in Texas, where Reynolds used to be chief deputy commissioner. Officials there changed their grading criteria this year to apply to schools retroactively. However, after some school districts sued that state over the changes, Texas delayed the release of its grades.

Texas lawmakers are also in the midst of a special session on vouchers to debate whether students should be able to use public dollars to attend private schools. Batiwalla worries that officials in both states are hijacking the grading systems for political aims, not to incentivize school communities to improve.

“If you want to do vouchers, do vouchers,” said Batiwalla, an outspoken critic of Reynolds’ efforts. “Don’t take away this policy tool that has the potential to drive improvement from the rest of the public schools.”

Proficiency focus could shortchange some students

Other tweaks are likely when Tennessee releases its new equation in the days or weeks ahead, just before giving schools their first set of grades.

“If you want to do vouchers, do vouchers. Don’t take away this policy tool that has the potential to drive improvement from the rest of the public schools.” — Mary Batiwalla, former assistant commissioner, Tennessee Department of Education

The department has heard calls to include social studies and science scores in the calculation, as well as data related to third-grade reading, participation in tutoring programs, and postsecondary indicators like dual enrollment and career and technical education offerings, just to name a few. There’s also a growing consensus around ditching student absenteeism data, which is a factor in the current equation.

But most educators have their eye on the growth vs. proficiency debate. They worry that greater emphasis on proficiency will motivate schools to focus on improving “bubble kids” — those scoring just under proficiency — instead of working to improve students at all levels of achievement.

“You’re incentivizing bad choices that serve just a few kids instead of all kids,” Winstead said.

Winstead’s suburban school system should be fine. Maryville City Schools, near Knoxville, is one of the state’s highest-achieving districts and stands to benefit if Tennessee’s revamped grading formula puts more weight on proficiency. But Winstead philosophically disagrees with the approach that the state appears to be taking.

“This is going to demoralize a lot of school communities,” he said, “teachers, kids, and parents — folks who have done incredible things to move kids forward.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org. Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools reschedules High School Admissions Test

2023-10-18T21:27:08+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools announced a new testing schedule Wednesday for the High School Admissions Test, which was canceled last week after technical problems.

District students will take the test next week, on either Oct. 24 or Oct. 25. The district will assign one of those dates to each eighth grader’s school, according to a CPS letter to families. Students taking the exam in Spanish, Arabic, Polish, Urdu, or simplified Chinese will test on Nov. 1.

Non-CPS students — whose testing window last weekend was canceled — can take the exam on Oct. 28, Oct. 29, or Nov. 5 at Lane Tech or Lindblom high schools, the district said. These students must sign up for an exam date in GoCPS, the city’s admissions application system, by 9 a.m. Oct. 23.

The exam will not be the same one as was planned for last week, and students who were able to access the test will not see the same questions, officials said.

Students who were able to complete the exam will be allowed to retake the test, and their new score will be used for admissions even if it’s the lower of both tests, officials said. Students who don’t want to retake the exam must opt out by filing out this form and returning it to their school by Oct. 23. However, due to last week’s glitches, district officials “strongly recommend that students take advantage of this opportunity” to retake the exam, they said in the letter to families.

CPS’ roughly 24,000 eighth graders were set to take the HSAT in school on Oct. 11. The exam is part of admissions requirements for selective enrollment high schools and for enrollment at some schools outside of their neighborhood boundaries.

But on test day, a technical problem broke out with the testing vendor, Riverside Associates, LLC, officials said. The company later discovered that backlogged servers caused the problem, according to an FAQ on the district’s website. Students were unable to log into the testing platform, and the company’s help desk could not be reached, educators told Chalkbeat. District officials instructed principals to stop exam administration for students who were unable to log in.

The district later canceled the exam for non-CPS students, who were scheduled to take it Oct. 14 and 15.

The company fixed the problem by “adding server capacity” and testing the system to ensure that it works, the FAQ said.

Students’ HSAT scores help determine which selective high schools they might be admitted. This year, students must submit their top choices in the district’s admissions system — GoCPS — by Nov. 9, a month earlier than usual. Students were originally allowed to re-rank their choices by Nov. 22, but given the rescheduled HSAT, district officials have extended the re-rank deadline to Dec. 1.

After last week’s glitches, the district plans to be “very cautious” about the new testing plan and is “putting some strategies in place” to eliminate potential issues, said CPS Chief Education Officer Bogdana Chkoumbova during a Wednesday Board of Education meeting to review the agenda for an upcoming full board meeting. Neither she nor district officials immediately elaborated on what extra steps they’ve taken to ensure the test will resume smoothly.

In the online FAQ, the district said that its team has “reviewed results of vendor testing to confirm preparedness for resuming the HS Admissions Test program.”

During the board meeting Wednesday, Chkoumbova apologized to families for the glitches and said she was “a little bit disappointed” by the problems, given that the district’s aim was to reduce anxiety for students. The district had shortened the test length this year to an hour, from a previous 2 ½ hours, and had offered it for the first time in Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Urdu, and Polish.

“Our team went into the testing session with a lot of assurances,” Chkoumbova said. “We did triple check everything, but the platform failed.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Dyslexia support proposals are back in the Michigan Legislature

2023-10-18T15:17:20+00:00

Four bills introduced in the Michigan Legislature this month would aim to better identify and teach students with dyslexia, and jumpstart reform initiatives that have stalled in the past.

The new legislation comes with bipartisan support and follows years of failed efforts to better address dyslexia in school — most recently last year, when a package of bills calling for better screening of students for dyslexia languished in the Legislature.

Dyslexia is a hereditary reading disability that affects an estimated 5% to 20% of people. Students with dyslexia who go undiagnosed and don’t receive interventions are more likely to struggle in school, and studies show most people with the learning disability who get high-quality instruction early on will become average readers.

“We have to do something about it now,” said Rep. Kathy Schmaltz, a Republican from Jackson who introduced one of the bills. “When we know how to fix something and we’re not doing it, that’s on us, and our children shouldn’t have to suffer because we can’t get it together.”

The legislation includes two bills in the House and two in the Senate. All four were referred to their respective education committees. Here’s what they would do:

A bill introduced by Sen. Jeff Irwin, a Democrat from Ann Arbor, would tighten the state standards for the literacy screeners schools use to ensure that they can identify a student who has dyslexia or has difficulty decoding language. The bill also aims to provide evidence-based support early on for students who are identified as having a reading disability.
Sen. Dayna Polehanki, a Democrat who represents parts of Canton and Livonia, introduced a bill that would set standards for teacher education programs to ensure future educators have the tools to help students with dyslexia.
In the House, Rep. Carol Glanville, a Democrat from Grand Rapids, introduced legislation that would create a dyslexia resource guide and advisory committee in the Michigan Department of Education.
Schmaltz’ House bill would require school districts to have at least one teacher trained in Orton-Gillingham, a multisensory teaching methodology that research suggests helps students with dyslexia.

Rep. Mike McFall, co-sponsor of Schmaltz’ bill, said the additional resources will give teachers “more tools to ensure positive student outcomes and educational growth.”

Lawmakers who back the bill say the measures would help students who have difficulty reading and processing language due to dyslexia. But some advocates disagree, citing Michigan’s restrictive parameters for determining whether schoolchildren are eligible for special education.

The percentage of students in the state identified as having a specific learning disability, which includes students who schools identify as having dyslexia, decreased from 35% in 2013-14 to 25.9% in 2022-23, according to data from the Michigan Center for Educational Performance and Information. Nationally, the number went up during the same time period, aside from a dip during COVID.

“It is meaningless if they don’t incorporate changes to the criteria for determining specific learning disabilities,” said Marcie Lipsitt, a special education advocate.

Lipsitt also said requiring schools to have one teacher trained in Orton-Gillingham methodology presents its own challenges.

“To say you’re training Orton-Gillingham, does that mean the teacher does four hours of training and then they are considered the Orton-Gillingham teacher?” she said.

Hannah Dellinger is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering K-12 education. Contact Hannah at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools cancels this weekend’s High School Admissions Test for non-district students

2023-10-12T21:52:35+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools is canceling this weekend’s High School Admissions Test for students who are not currently enrolled in the district but are planning to apply for the city’s selective and magnet high schools.

District officials cited ongoing technical difficulties with the vendor’s testing platform.

The cancellation comes after similar issues forced the district to pause testing Wednesday, when all CPS’ roughly 24,000 eighth graders were supposed to take the exam in school.

“We are working now to reschedule all students who were scheduled to test this weekend and will share updates to families as soon as possible,” district spokesperson Samantha Hart said in a statement.

The district said it is working with the vendor, Riverside Assessments, LLC, to solve the technical problems and to provide new testing dates “for students who were impacted by the vendor’s technical issues.”

In July, the Board of Education authorized a $1.2 million no-bid contract with Riverside, in part to provide testing materials for the HSAT.

The vendor’s website Thursday included a note that it was aware schools in several regions were unable to log in or complete testing and that a team is “working around the clock to resolve this issue.”

Applications for next school year are currently due Nov. 9. In previous years, CPS has extended the deadline.

The glitches Wednesday prevented students from logging into the testing platform to take the exam, school leaders told Chalkbeat. Some students at one North Side school also encountered some Spanish words on their exam and needed teachers to translate, according to an administrator.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago Public Schools pauses High School Admissions Test amid technical problems

2023-10-11T21:43:28+00:00

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Chicago Public Schools paused the High School Admissions Test that was underway Wednesday morning due to technical problems on the testing platform, officials told principals.

“For any students currently testing successfully, they can continue and complete,” Peter Leonard, executive director of student assessment for CPS, wrote in an email to principals. “In any other case, schools should stop testing today.”

Students take the HSAT as part of admissions requirements for the city’s selective-enrollment high schools and to enroll at some schools outside of their neighborhood boundaries. On Wednesday all eighth graders were set to take the exam on computers in school. This year’s exam was set to last an hour instead of the previous 2½ hours. CPS made the change in order to “reduce anxiety for students” and increase accessibility, a spokesperson said last month.

In his note, Leonard said students who finish the test today can use their scores as they apply for high schools in GoCPS. For students who couldn’t finish, the district will share alternative testing dates “as soon as possible,” Leonard wrote.

District spokesperson Samantha Hart said in a statement that the district is working with the testing vendor to resolve the technical problems. They don’t expect any changes to this weekend’s scheduled HSAT testing for non-CPS students, Hart said.

“We recognize the stress many students and families experience when it comes to admissions testing,” Hart wrote.

The district authorized a $1.2 million no-bid contract over the summer with Riverside Assessments LLC to provide test materials for high school admissions and other placements, including gifted programs.

At one North Side school, students received error messages as they tried to log in to the testing platform, even after refreshing the page, according to an administrator at the school, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. The school’s testing coordinator tried to call a help desk for the testing vendor but got a busy signal.

Similar problems cropped up at Brentano Elementary Math and Science Academy in Logan Square, said the school’s principal, Seth Lavin.

“They came in anxious and focused, and then they sat down, and for about an hour and a half, proctors tried to log kids into the test and they could not — and nobody knew what was going on,” Lavin said.

By the time CPS notified schools at 10:30 a.m. that it would pause the test, a handful of students were able to complete the exam at both Brentano and the North Side school.

Other students at the North Side school were finally able to log in by that time, the administrator said. But there were other issues. Some students saw words in Spanish pop up and had to ask teachers to translate, the administrator said. This is the first year the test is being offered in Spanish, Arabic, Mandarin, Urdu, and Polish.

The North Side administrator called the glitches a “gross oversight” by the district, and said that it should have ensured that the system could handle tens of thousands of students taking the exam on the same day. CPS enrolled nearly 24,000 eighth graders this year, district data shows.

The administrator said all students — not just those who weren’t able to complete the exam — should be allowed to retake the test, since the process was so stressful. Students were already “very anxious” about the HSAT, this person said.

Asked about the testing issues at an unrelated press conference Wednesday, Mayor Brandon Johnson said the public school system should “not reject the hopes and aspirations and desires” of families — Black families, in particular.

“The ultimate desire is to actually build a school system that no matter where you are in the city of Chicago, that you have access to a high quality education,” he said. “I’m committed to doing just that.”

Lavin, who has criticized the district’s selective-enrollment system for being inequitable, said Wednesday’s problems underscore that the admissions system “is so fragile and arbitrary.” The exam accounts for 50% of the admissions rubric for selective-enrollment high schools.

“Kids who are 13 years old should not have a 60-minute experience that decides so much about the next four years of their life,” Lavin said.

He added, “If we are going to let some kids into some high schools and not let some kids into some high schools, we have to find a better way to do it than this.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Selective middle school admissions return to one Manhattan district after fierce debate

2023-10-05T20:16:00+00:00

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A Manhattan school district is reversing course, allowing some schools to screen middle school applicants for accelerated programs in the upcoming admissions cycle, according to a letter its superintendent sent to families this week.

It’s the first time middle schools in District 2 will screen applicants based on their fourth grade academic performance since the onset of the pandemic, when the city paused academic screens for middle schools.

Selective admissions for New York City’s 10-year-olds were later reinstated for this year’s incoming sixth graders in some districts, but at dramatically reduced rates.

Instead of a blanket approach across the city, schools Chancellor David Banks last year tasked superintendents of the city’s 32 local school districts to work with their communities to decide their middle school admissions guidelines. Manhattan’s District 2, along with about nine other districts that previously used selective admissions at some of its middle schools, opted to ditch screens.

This year, once again, the chancellor tapped superintendents to choose their admissions policies. The Education Department has yet to share the decisions of districts across the five boroughs.

Changes to middle school admissions have sparked debate across the city, particularly in District 2 — one of the city’s most affluent school districts, spanning such neighborhoods as TriBeCa, Greenwich Village, Gramercy, and the Upper East Side. Some families argue the elimination of screens reduces academic rigor in some classrooms, while others say practices like screened admissions harm integration efforts in a school system that remains among the most segregated in the nation.

District 2’s decision to drop screens last year spurred some ire in the area, where the group Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, has a foothold on the district’s parent-led Community Education Council — with endorsed candidates winning seven of the 10 elected seats. The group advocates for test-based and other selective school admissions.

For this year’s admissions cycle, which starts next week, District 2 will offer programs that select students based on grades at four zoned middle schools, Superintendent Kelly McGuire said in the Oct. 3 letter to families.

The four schools are the Sun Yat Sen Middle School (M.S. 131), Wagner Middle School (M.S. 167), 75 Morton (M.S. 297), and Baruch Middle School (M.S. 104), according to the letter.

“Over the past several months we have spoken with District 2 parents and families about middle school admissions,” McGuire said in the letter. “While there is a wide diversity of perspectives across our district, we have developed a plan that offers pathways for accelerated learning through screened programs, maintained sibling priority, and ensured that all students have access to every District 2 middle school.”

The programs would offer accelerated learning in core subjects, McGuire said. Several non-zoned schools in the district also offer accelerated academics and a pathway to Regents-level coursework, he added.

Students applying to the four schools can include the general program and/or the screened program on their child’s middle school application, according to the letter.

Schools using academic screens in admissions rank 10-year-olds based on their fourth grade GPAs in core subjects.

Parent council pushes for more academic screening

During a September meeting, some members of the district’s Community Education Council urged the district to reinstate academic screens at middle schools that had used them prior to the pandemic. About 18 out of 23 middle schools in the district screened at least some segment of their applicants for the 2020-21 school year, according to city data.

Leonard Silverman, president of the council, called the district’s decision “a good start.”

“If it comes down to four over nothing, we’ll take four,” he said. “This was the culmination of a lot of advocacy, and fighting, and pushing, and prodding, and parents letting their voices be heard.”

Some details about the screened programs remained unclear, he said, like how many seats they’ll have.

“I hope we’ll continue to expand these types of programs to meet the needs of all students — not just the higher performing students, but to slot kids into where they are academically,” Silverman said.

Silverman said he wished there had been more engagement with families in the district, adding he worried some parents had left district schools over a lack of screened middle school options.

A letter the education council sent to the superintendent last month also called for state test scores to be considered in the admissions process, arguing grades are too subjective a measure. But others contest the claim that state test scores are an objective measure.

Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed, an organization that advocates for integrated schools, said the district’s decision was “disappointing.”

“You’re talking about judging the educational attainment of students that are as young as 9 years old,” she said. “To narrowly put them on a track at that age, I think, is just fundamentally inappropriate for learning, for teaching — and it’s essentially a gatekeeping tool that can create haves and have-nots.”

Though just four schools in the district will see academic screens reinstated in this year’s admissions cycle, Berg remains concerned about its potential impact, particularly as it can take years to understand the effects of a policy change.

“I’m very wary of chipping away at progressive policies,” she said. “Whether we’re going backwards at a lightning speed or at a slower pace, it still means that we’re going backwards.”

The city’s Education Department has said middle school admissions will broadly operate the same as last year, though this week declined to provide specific information for each district.

Applications open on Oct. 11, giving families until Dec. 8 to submit. Offers are expected to be released in April.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

NYC test scores: Roughly 50% proficient on reading, math exams, data shows

2023-10-04T23:37:34+00:00

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Roughly half of New York City’s third through eighth graders were proficient in reading and math, according to last year’s state test scores released by city officials Wednesday.

The scores provide a first look at student performance under new learning standards, after state officials revamped the tests for the most recent academic year. The tests, administered by schools across the state each spring, offer one measure of how students are faring.

Though 51.7% of the city’s third through eighth grade students were considered on grade level based on their reading exam scores, and 49.9% were on grade level for math, student performances diverged across grades.

Eighth grade students, for example, fared worse on math exams — with just 42.3% achieving proficiency, compared to 55% of third graders.

On reading tests, the opposite occurred, with 59.9% of eighth graders considered on grade level, compared to about 48% of third graders.

In a statement Wednesday, schools Chancellor David Banks called the results “encouraging,” pointing to an “upward trajectory” from last year’s exams, which saw roughly 49% of students pass reading tests and about 38% achieve proficiency in math.

“These results tell us: we’re on the right track,” he said. “We are making strides in our recovery from the pandemic, and we are going to build on this success this year and beyond.”

But state officials have warned against comparing the data to prior years, and the city’s Education Department acknowledged the results were not “directly comparable” in a press release Wednesday.

This past spring, students took new exams that followed the Next Generation Learning Standards, which were established after revisions from the controversial Common Core. The state also established new thresholds to measure student proficiency, which delayed public release of the test scores.

David Bloomfield, a professor of educational leadership, law, and policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, called the city’s framing of the results “nonsensical.”

“They need to go back to math class,” he said in an email. “Lack of comparability means this snapshot can’t be put into historical perspective.”

But even as the exams have changed, disparities continue to appear among student results.

About 77.6% of Asian American students and 70.2% of white students demonstrated proficiency their math exams, compared to 34.3% of students who are Black and 35.7% who are Latino. On reading tests, 72.3% of Asian American students and 69.5% of white students were on grade level, compared to 40.3% of Black students and 39.4% of Latino students.

Among students with disabilities, 21.7% demonstrated proficiency in reading and 24.4% did so in math. Among students learning English as a new language, 11.1% were on grade level in reading and 21.5% were in math.

Want to see how your school fared on the state exams? Use our searchable database below:

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org

Newark Public Schools’ state test scores show slow gains as post pandemic recovery efforts continue

2023-10-03T15:36:46+00:00

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Newark Public Schools’ state test scores went up 2 percentage points in both math and English language arts this year, according to data released by the district.

On average, 15% of Newark students in grades 3 to 9 passed math assessments while about 29% passed English language arts tests, spring 2023 New Jersey Student Learning Assessment preliminary scores show. Additionally, English language arts scores did not increase this year for Newark third graders, a grade considered critical for long-term success in literacy.

This year’s new state scores, only the second since 2019, highlight Newark students’ slow recovery from the disruption of remote learning. Last year, district officials implemented tutoring and other academic recovery measures after 2022 state scores showed dismal drops that Superintendent Roger León called “horrible” at the time — passing rates of 13% in math and 27% in English language arts.

The state’s Department of Education has not yet released statewide scores.

“We’re coming out of a unique and historic window caused by the pandemic. And students have been seen to have lost a lot of ground in regard to their achievement,” said Rochanda Jackson, executive director of the Office of Policy, Planning, Evaluation, and Testing, who presented the scores at a school board meeting last week.

Many of the trends in Newark — such as a large decline in math scores — are on par with national trends. Test scores in 2022 and this year show results were still behind pre-pandemic levels. In 2019, about 26% of Newark students passed the math test and roughly 36% passed English language arts.

And as schools across the country continue to reel from the effects of the pandemic, marginalized students, such as those from low-income families and different ethnic and racial groups, are among the hardest hit and remain the furthest from recovery.

“I want everyone to understand that the impacts of the pandemic are very real,” said León during last week’s presentation.

Third-grade reading levels remain stagnant

While about 29% of Newark Public School students passed their English language arts tests, only 19% of third graders passed the assessment this year, the lowest of any grade in the city for a second year in a row.

Experts say reading is part of a developmental process that starts at a young age and impacts a child’s likelihood of graduating high school, pursuing college, and ultimately a career. Reading proficiency levels among Black third graders in public schools started to decline in 2019, even before the pandemic, according to a report by The Racial Equity Initiative.

Last year’s initial drop prompted local groups like JerseyCAN, a statewide organization advocating for high-quality public school education, to urge state leaders to develop a plan to improve literacy in public schools. In July, Mayor Ras Baraka launched a 10-point Youth Literacy Action Plan that called on the city’s community partners and programs to get young children reading and writing amid low state test scores.

This year’s scores are “unacceptable,” said Paula White, executive director of JerseyCAN.

“The warnings that began shortly after the pandemic have now escalated to real-time results, with Newark children being deeply affected,” White said.

Among all grade levels, seventh and eighth graders had the highest English language arts scores, each at about 37%, and the greatest increases, surpassing the district’s passing rate. Seventh grade scores increased this year by about 4 percentage points and eight grade scores by roughly 5 percentage points.

In grades 3, 4, and 6 the passing rates remained the same at about 19%, 22%, and 26% respectively.

“Any effort short of overhauling the district’s literacy infrastructure will not work. Newark is in crisis, and we owe it to our children to review every area of the learning process, from teacher training to actually developing a new curriculum,” White added.

Among the district’s 41 elementary schools, 26 increased their proficiency rates in English language arts in comparison to last year’s results. Ten high schools also increased their passing rates in the same subject from last year with five schools increasing their scores by at least 5 percentage points or more.

Of more than 39,000 students across 41 elementary schools, 3,538 students across 41 schools increased their English language arts proficiency levels since 2022, according to Jackson.

Newark Public Schools’ state test scores increased by 2 percentage points, according to spring 2023 results.

Math scores are “the biggest lift” ahead

Newark public school officials have “the biggest lift” in helping students refine their math skills, said León during last week’s presentation.

The overall math passing rate increased from 13% to 15% with grades 3, 4, 7, and 9 surpassing the district average this year by 1 to 8 percentage points.

“The increase in math performance, overall nominal, is there,” Jackson added.

This year, third and fourth graders increased their scores by 4 and 5 percentage points respectively, and sixth and seventh grades each by around 2 percentage points.

Among the district’s 41 elementary schools, 27 increased their math passing rates. Of those, six increased their proficiency levels by at least 5 percentage points. Eight high schools also increased their passing rates this year and of those, three did by at least 5 percentage points.

Jackson said it is important to track student recovery and proficiency increases from one level to another as the district continues to work to address learning loss.

Of more than 39,000 students, 3,146 moved up in math levels since 2022.

District works to address student learning loss

In an effort to improve student achievement, the district has created new curriculums, placed an emphasis on student attendance, and pushed for tutoring at least three times a week.

“It’s extremely important that students are taking advantage of tutoring opportunities,” León added during Thursday’s school board meeting when the results were presented.

Last year, León emphasized the district’s Excel after-school program for grades K-8 as a way to address student trouble areas in reading, writing, math, and other subjects. This year the district also mandated roughly 10,000 public school students attend summer school in an effort to refine critical skills amid low state test scores.

After Jackson’s presentation, board member Crystal Williams was the only member to ask a question about the district’s strategy to improve student performance. León said the district’s program and instruction committee would discuss plans and goals for the year for English language arts when the committee meets in October.

Also in response to William’s question, board member A’Dorian Murray-Thomas said the district aims to reach a “30%” passing rate in the math test by next year, double the number of this year’s 15% math passing rate.

Williams called this year’s results “alarming” on Thursday.

“I would be upset if my child didn’t rank proficient. I just want to know what the plan is,” Williams added.

Jessie Gómez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Applying to NYC’s screened high schools? Selection criteria remains unchanged

2023-09-28T17:04:08+00:00

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Eighth grade families eyeing New York City’s selective screened high schools take note: Applicants will once again be sorted into different priority groups based on their seventh grade GPAs in core subjects.

This year’s groupings are nearly unchanged from last year’s, according to the Education Department’s website.

The updated guidance, released Thursday, comes just days before applications open on Oct. 3.

The city’s months-long high school application process is notoriously complex, often spiking anxiety and confusion among families. It can at times feel inequitable, too, as families with more time and resources are able to better navigate the more than 700 programs across New York City’s 400 schools, parents say.

The criteria used to determine priority groups has been the subject of some controversy, with some families pushing for state test scores to be reinstated in sorting the city’s 13-year-olds. But test scores will continue to be excluded from the process.

This year, the process for screened schools will operate much the same as the last cycle, though the citywide grade averages required to sort students into each group are slightly different. Applicants can qualify for a group based on either a citywide or school threshold.

Here’s how students will be grouped this year:

Group 1: Those with final seventh grade course grades with an average of at least 94 qualify for the citywide threshold, as do students who are in the top 15% of their school, with an average of at least 90.
Group 2: Those with an average of at least a 89.66 average qualify for the citywide threshold (if they’re not in Group 1), as do those in the top 30% of their school with an average of at least 80.
Group 3: Those with an 82.75 average qualify for the citywide threshold, along with those in the top 50% of their school with an average of at least 75.
Group 4: Those with a 76.33 average qualify for the citywide threshold, along with those with seventh grade course grades in the top 70% of their school with an average at least 65.
All others will be in Group 5.

When there are more applicants in a priority group than seats available at a particular school, admissions decisions will be made based on each applicant’s random number — often referred to as a lottery number.

Those numbers will be available to families in their MySchools account on or after Oct. 3. Admissions consultants have warned against placing too much weight on them.

“Your lottery number isn’t your fate,” said Joyce Szuflita, a Brooklyn-based admissions consultant who runs NYC School Help.

Instead, it’s one part of a complex matching process with many variables, she said. And a worse lottery number doesn’t necessarily equate to not getting into a school an applicant might prefer.

“Somebody’s number eight choice is somebody else’s number one choice,” she added.

Some high schools may also require applicants to complete an additional assessment, like an essay. At such schools, the impact of the random number on admissions is further reduced.

Screened schools also set aside a number of seats for students with disabilities. Those seats are filled separately from the general education pool but follow the same priority groups among applicants with disabilities.

More than 40 selective schools also participate in a diversity initiative, setting aside a certain number of seats to students who are low-income, English language learners, or live in temporary housing. Again, those seats are filled following the same priority groups among applicants who qualify for the seats.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

New Denver Public Schools progress report highlights goals met and missed but glosses over gaps

2023-09-27T21:43:30+00:00

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Denver Public Schools students as a whole met goals the district set for math achievement but fell short in reading, according to a new report that measures academic and other progress against Superintendent Alex Marrero’s year-old strategic plan.

But the 20-page Annual District Report doesn’t break down test scores by student race and ethnicity, obscuring wide and persistent gaps between white students and students of color — gaps Marrero acknowledged in a presentation to school board members last week.

In an interview, Marrero said he was “incredibly encouraged” by the overall results. In the cases where DPS missed its goals, it was often only by a percentage point or two. The report also highlights that the district surpassed its graduation goal, posting a four-year graduation rate of 76.5% for the class of 2022, which was the highest ever in DPS.

“We’re trending in the right direction,” said Marrero, who was hired as superintendent in 2021. “When you’re shifting a major organization, you’re given grace for an implementation dip. Everything is new. If this is our implementation dip, good Lord, where we’re going to be.”

Some advocates have criticized the new report as spin. The higher test scores and graduation rates of white students from middle- and high-income families in DPS mask how the district is struggling to serve Black and Latinx students and students from low-income families, who make up the majority in the 89,000-student district, critics say.

“When you just release the totals, it gives a very different impression,” said Rosemary Rodriguez, co-chair of the advocacy group EDUCATE Denver and a former DPS school board member. “But when you break it down into subgroups, it’s not such a rosy picture.

“I think it’s important to be as honest as possible with as many people as possible so that we all can appreciate what’s going on with achievement in the district.”

A more detailed presentation Marrero gave to the school board last week shows that the district mostly missed its academic targets for Black and Latinx students in both reading and math.

The lack of progress perpetuates yawning gaps between the test scores of students of color and white students in DPS, which have been the largest in the state.

For example, state data shows 73% of DPS white students in grades three through eight met or exceeded expectations on state literacy tests this past spring, compared to 27% of Black students and 24% of Latinx students.

Similarly, the graduation rates for Black and Latinx students were 73% and 74%, respectively, for the class of 2022, compared to 86% for white students, according to state data.

Marrero’s strategic plan, which he released last year, listed several goals he hoped DPS would accomplish by the year 2026. The plan did not include incremental annual benchmarks. But the just-released report does, at least for last school year and this school year. The goals in the report are different from the goals the school board will use to evaluate Marrero’s performance.

Here’s a snapshot of how DPS is measuring up, based on the data in the new report and the presentation Marrero gave to the school board.

Goal: 62% of all kindergarten through third grade students would score at grade level or above on reading tests in spring 2023. By spring 2026, the goal is 70%.

Result: Not met. 58% scored at grade level or above in spring 2023.

Goal: 40% of all third through fifth grade students would meet or exceed expectations on state literacy tests in spring 2023. By spring 2026, the goal is 48%.

Result: Not met. 39% met or exceeded expectations in spring 2023.

Goal: 28% of all sixth through eighth grade students would meet or exceed expectations on state math tests in spring 2023. By spring 2026, the goal is 36%.

Result: Met. 28% met or exceeded expectations in spring 2023.

Goal: 26% of Latinx students in third through fifth grade would meet or exceed expectations on state literacy tests in spring 2023. Neither the report nor the presentation includes a goal for 2026.

Result: Not met. 23% met or exceeded expectations in spring 2023.

Goal: 15% of Latinx students in sixth through eighth grade would meet or exceed expectations on state math tests in spring 2023. Neither the report nor the presentation includes a goal for 2026.

Result: Not met. 13% met or exceeded expectations in spring 2023.

Goal: 26% of Black students in third through fifth grade would meet or exceed expectations on state literacy tests in spring 2023. Neither the report nor the presentation includes a goal for 2026.

Result: Not met. 24% met or exceeded expectations in spring 2023.

Goal: 16% of Black students in sixth through eighth grade would meet or exceed expectations on state math tests in spring 2023. Neither the report nor the presentation includes a goal for 2026.

Result: Met. 16% met or exceeded expectations in spring 2023.

Goal: 21% of English language learners in third through fifth grade would meet or exceed expectations on state literacy tests taken in both English and Spanish in spring 2023. Neither the report nor the presentation includes a goal for 2026.

Result: Not met. 17% met or exceeded expectations in spring 2023.

Goal: 22% of redesignated English language learners, meaning they no longer need ELL services, in grades six through eight would meet or exceed expectations on state math tests in spring 2023. Neither the report nor the presentation includes a goal for 2026.

Result: Met. 22% met or exceeded expectations in spring 2023.

The report and presentation also summarized results from new surveys the district conducted of students, families, and employees. For instance, 89% of families said they feel safe and welcomed in DPS, according to the presentation, and 52% of employees said they feel valued.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s complex high school admissions process opens Oct. 3. Here’s what families should know.

2023-09-28T17:09:08+00:00

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The new school year has barely begun, and already New York City’s notoriously complex (and often controversial) high school admissions process kicks off next week, lasting through early December.

The process can be daunting for the tens of thousands of eighth grade families applying to public high schools, and economic and racial diversity concerns remain at the city’s most selective schools.

Last year, nearly half of the city’s eighth grade applicants were admitted to their top choice school, while about 75% were admitted to one of their top three picks. About 95% of applicants were admitted to one of the 12 schools they ranked in their application, according to city data.

The months-long process can lead to heightened levels of anxiety and confusion for families. It often feels inequitable, with families who have the time and resources to devote to the process having an upper hand, parents say.

Details about tours and application requirements can vary from school to school, and information posted online can at times be slow to update. Meanwhile, the roughly two-month timeline and wide array of options, with more than 700 programs at over 400 schools, add further stress to the equation.

Joyce Szuflita, a Brooklyn-based admissions consultant who runs NYC School Help, called it “a scavenger hunt with too little time.”

For families who are going through the middle and high school application process simultaneously, it can feel even more overwhelming. “How can those families not blow a gasket?” she said.

When do applications open? What is the deadline for high school applications in NYC?

The city’s high school application process is expected to open on Oct. 3.

Registration opens the same day for the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test, or SHSAT — the sole metric by which eight of the city’s prestigious specialized high schools admit students.

The test will take place during the school day at public schools, with additional weekend test dates available for public school students, 9th grade testers, and charter/non-public school testers, according to Education Department officials.

Families will have until Oct. 27 to register for the SHSAT.

High school applications will remain open until Dec. 1, with offers set to release on March 7.

Meanwhile, middle school admissions are staggered by about a week, with applications opening Oct. 11 and closing Dec. 8. Middle school offers are expected to be released on April 3.

The city’s Education Department will hold several virtual admissions events in October. Many schools list their open houses and tours on the city’s MySchools directory. High school fairs are listed there as well.

How did NYC high schools admit students last year?

Schools across the city employ different methods of determining admissions, with various application requirements specific to each.

For admissions to the city’s selective screened schools, this fall’s incoming ninth graders were sorted into four different priority groups based on their seventh grade GPAs in core subjects. In cases where there were more applicants in a priority group than seats, selections were made based on a random number assigned to each applicant, often referred to as a lottery number.

Some schools also required admissions essays or auditions, which were further used to make determinations.

Other schools used open or educational option admissions, which primarily used an applicant’s random number for admissions, though some took into account additional criteria to create priority groups. (Educational option programs set aside seats for students at different academic levels to promote academic diversity.)

Will this year use the same application guidelines?

Screened schools will follow the same admissions process as last year, according to the city’s Education Department — though the grade averages for each priority group have shifted slightly.

Middle school admissions will also follow the same broad format as last year, officials said.

What do experts recommend to get started?

Sindy Nuesi, director of the Middle School Student Success Center at the Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation, recommends families start by narrowing down the vast field of possible schools.

Nuesi advises families and students to first decide how far they’re willing to commute to school, or whether there are specific neighborhoods in which they’d like to attend school. From there, they can look for programs that fit their child’s interests.

“Even though a lot of students are still not too sure what they want, if they do have some particular interest that they really like, it narrows down the options,” she said, adding families can filter searches based on interest areas. “That makes it less overwhelming.”

Nuesi also suggests developing a relationship with your school counselor, who can help at each step of the admissions process.

Elissa Stein, an admissions consultant who runs High School 411, urges parents to look at the process holistically and not become fixated on a particular school or program.

“I always tell families that they should be taking things into consideration based on their child,” she said. “So think things through in terms of the size of the school, the things that they offer, the academic ranges, the commute, the building, the neighborhood — there are so many things that will make a school a good fit for your child or not.”

Opening your mind to exploring schools you’re not as familiar with also aids in the process, she added.

“There are schools that everybody knows by name and reputation,” Stein said. “But there are a lot of other schools that aren’t as well known that could be wonderful fits.”

What are some tips to avoid getting overwhelmed?

Staying organized, keeping track of important dates, and taking notes can help ease the process, Stein suggested.

Pamela Wheaton, an admissions consultant who runs SchoolScoutNYC, suggested families cast a wide net in their applications and take advantage of resources like InsideSchools, which posts information about schools across the city.

Families should also find ways to tap their communities. Parents can team up with other families to coordinate school visits, allowing them to cover more ground in the condensed timeline, Wheaton said.

What does your high school lottery number mean for admissions?

Last year, for the first time, the Education Department sent all families their lottery numbers — a string of 32 numbers and letters — at the beginning of the application process. Many families on Facebook groups sent around tip sheets on how to interpret the number to figure out where students fell to gauge their odds.

Education Department officials said families will be able to see their random numbers when they start their high school applications in MySchools on or after Oct. 3.

Szuflita warns against worrying too much about the number.

“Everybody calls this the lottery,” she said. “It’s not a lottery. It’s a match.”

Though the random number can be consequential, at many schools it is just one of many factors, Szuflita said. At some schools that require applicants to write essays, for example, the number is less likely to play a major role. And at the city’s eight specialized high schools, the number isn’t considered at all, Szuflita added.

“Your random number in this process is a tiebreaker,” she said. “When there are candidates of equal priority, then the random number comes into play.”

Ultimately, admissions consultants and counselors say to take a deep breath and trust that your student will land somewhere they can be successful.

“Be fluid, be calm, because everything will come in good time,” Szuflita said. “It will all be fine. There are so many great schools. There are so many worthy programs.”

Are you applying to high school this year? We want to hear from you.

If you are a NYC parent whose child is applying to high school this year, Chalkbeat wants to hear from you.

We’re interested in hearing about any concerns you may have as you embark on this process, and what kind of information would be helpful for your family in making decisions.

Please fill out the form below to let us know what’s on your mind as this year’s admissions season approaches.

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Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Under new science of reading law, the future of a once-popular literacy program is murky

2023-09-19T11:00:00+00:00

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A reading intervention once hailed as a “phenomenal success” for Indiana’s first graders may be one of the first phased out from schools this year as the state pushes to align elementary literacy instruction with the science of reading.

Reading Recovery, an intervention which pairs first graders with trained teachers for 30 minutes of one-on-one reading help each week, was used to instruct thousands of Indiana students beginning in the 1990s and found champions at Purdue University.

But its status going forward is murky as Indiana joins other states in banning one of its core teaching methods, known as three-cueing. The program has already met skepticism in its home state of Ohio, which has also banned the practice.

Mirroring the “reading wars” that are causing districts nationwide to rethink literacy instruction, educators in Indiana disagree over whether there’s a place for the program in Indiana schools. One district says it will add science of reading-focused training in addition to existing Reading Recovery programs.

The final call will come from the Indiana Department of Education, which is in the midst of a curricular review process to create a list of approved materials.

Education leaders are hoping for clarity in the guidance and flexibility to make local decisions as they prepare to adopt new curriculum and retrain their staff. It’s a potentially contentious process after decades of highly charged opinions about — and experience with — reading instruction.

“You’re training on three levels — beliefs, knowledge, and skill. It’s a lot simpler to help people develop new skills, rather than change what they believe,” said Anne Olson, curriculum director at Wayne schools.

Meanwhile, researchers say it’s critical for schools and teachers to quickly get on board with programs based in the science of how people learn to read as Indiana faces stagnating literacy rates. What makes today’s push for literacy different is its grounding in decades-old brain science research, said Karen Betz, assistant professor of literacy at Marian University in Indianapolis.

“The problem with education is that we tend to get on bandwagons,” Betz said. “The science of reading isn’t a bandwagon.”

The beginning and end of Reading Recovery

Reading Recovery is based in part on the three-cueing model that asks students to infer words based on context clues — a teaching method now banned in Indiana. The program came to the U.S. from New Zealand in the 1980s, with a base at Ohio State University. (The Reading Recovery Council of North America did not return a request for an interview.)

Betz, who taught in Ohio schools for 18 years, said Reading Recovery was one of the first one-on-one interventions at a time when teachers were teaching primarily to the whole class. Research on reading science had yet to percolate into classrooms, she said, and many teachers were grateful for any extra help for their struggling readers.

“If it sounded like how you might teach reading, we gravitated towards it,” Betz said.

In practice, the program gave children texts that weren’t decodable, she said. It asked them to memorize sight words and figure out other words based on pictures on the page, rather than focus on sounding out the word in front of them.

“I wouldn’t give them a text that says ‘see’ if they didn’t know ‘ee’ for example,” she said of an approach grounded in the science of reading.

Still, studies throughout the years showed that the program improved reading test scores in the short term. In Indiana, Purdue University’s Center for Literacy Education and Research became a training center for Reading Recovery, and the program reached 24,000 children in 166 of around 400 school districts in Indiana by 2000, according to a Purdue News Service article.

But the program’s ascent masked issues.

For one, Reading Recovery was expensive, said Aaron Churchill, Ohio research director for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank, because it relied on individual tutoring. Many programs in Indiana ended in the early 2000s after state and federal funding dried up.

Over time, experts also found evidence that its benefits didn’t last long. In 2022, research showed that the boost in student performance measured among first graders who participated in Reading Recovery faded by third and fourth grade. In fact, students who were enrolled in Reading Recovery performed worse than those who never received the program.

“The theory is that students were not building the background in decoding and phonics,” Churchill said. “The skills from Reading Recovery were not sticking.”

This year, both Ohio and Indiana joined an aggressive nationwide push to teach reading through research-backed methods known as the science of reading, which relies on five pillars of literacy instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension. A new Indiana law, enacted this year, gives schools until the 2024-25 school year to adopt curriculum aligned with those teaching methods, and bans methods based on three-cueing.

That raises questions about the intervention in Indiana districts that still use it, like Vigo schools — the 10th largest district in Indiana — where teachers have used the intervention with over 5,000 students over two decades.

In response to questions from Chalkbeat, representatives said the district will be adding training that’s aligned with the science of reading in addition to Reading Recovery.

“New materials and strategies will be implemented as our Title I teachers continue to focus support on our early reading interventions in the coming years. We look forward to seeing even greater gains as we develop stronger reading skills yielding success all the way to greater graduation rates,” a statement said.

The district employs 25 Title I/Reading Recovery teachers who provide the intervention to first graders, as well as other interventions in older grades. Their salaries are paid with Title I grant money.

The program has been well-received: In 2019, the Vigo County school board recognized Reading Recovery teachers, and in the same year, the district linked Reading Recovery to its higher-than-average literacy scores as measured by the state’s IREAD test for third graders.

Around 91% of Vigo’s third graders tested proficient in reading in 2019. But like in many other districts, scores dropped after the pandemic to as low as 81% in 2022, before a slight recovery this year to 84%.

It’s not clear how many other districts use Reading Recovery or similar interventions — the state department of education does not collect information on local curriculum. Betz, the Marian University professor, said it’s more common in Indiana schools to find Fountas and Pinnell’s Leveled Literacy Intervention, which has faced similar criticisms for teaching cueing. (Representatives of Fountas and Pinnell also did not respond to a request for comment.)

A Purdue representative said the university ended its affiliation with Reading Recovery in 2013.

The university has recently relaunched its literacy center to also focus on the English language, said the center’s director, Christy Wessel-Powell.

It’s one of the state’s colleges using a grant from the Lilly Endowment to align its courses and professional development to the science of reading, Wessel-Powell said.

‘The key is teacher autonomy’

What exactly comes next — and whether Reading Recovery has a future in schools — is still being debated.

The Indiana Department of Education said the list of recommended reading curriculum that it’s required to compile by the new state law is not yet available.

Reading Recovery has evolved from its inception, said Karen Wohlwend, professor of Literacy, Culture, and Language Education at Indiana University, adding that many reading specialists incorporate phonics and word recognition in their daily lessons.

“There is no simple formula for reading instruction, no one-size-fits-all approach. It takes a skilled and responsive teacher (the heart of RR) who can teach strategies matched to learners’ unique needs,” Wohlwend said.

Wessel-Powell of Purdue said educators have long agreed on the importance of the science of reading’s five key elements, although the names of the programs and emphasis on each skill has changed over the years.

But one-on-one or small group models — like the kind used in Reading Recovery — that incorporate the science of reading can still offer important support to students, she said.

“The thing I would hate as a researcher to see is decision-making taken away from teachers, to limit the options they have for what programs they can use,” she said. “No one program gives kids everything they need. The key is teacher autonomy and the ability to have a variety of tools.”

Wayne Township schools never adopted Reading Recovery wholesale. But Olson, the district’s curriculum director, said that a group of Reading Recovery trainers led small group interventions at the district in the early 2000s, and that this strategy led to progress in students’ reading scores.

Wayne began adopting phonics and phonemic awareness-based curriculum around 2019, which Olson said aligns well with the state’s new mandate. District teachers haven’t just studied the curriculum; they’ve also learned about the reasoning behind it through books, online courses, and other professional development.

“Our efforts have gone into helping people understand what’s happening in the brain as people learn to read,” she said. “It doesn’t stay in the world of theory, it moves into practical application.”

What’s needed next is clarity on the science of reading requirements from the state, she said, along with enough flexibility to meet the needs of students who might be multilingual, or from diverse cultural backgrounds, for example.

Betz said she hopes that under the new state law, teachers and schools get more funding and support to implement the programs that work.

“We know the science of not only reading, but the science of teaching reading,” Betz said. “You need to give teachers the tools to deliver the instruction, because you can’t wait any longer.”

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Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Families have their students’ state test scores. But NYC will have to wait for overall numbers.

2023-09-13T21:42:38+00:00

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New York City families can now see their students’ state test scores from the last school year, though broader data has yet to be released.

The individual scores, released Wednesday as the first full week of school is underway, come later than usual. A change to the state’s learning standards, which required an overhaul of the exams and scoring, delayed the results.

Every spring, schools administer standardized exams in reading and math to third through eighth grade students. The test scores offer one look at how students are faring.

The 2023 exams followed the “Next Generation Learning Standards,” which were established after revisions from the controversial Common Core. The new standards sought to clarify previously vague language, such as outlining specific theorems students had to learn in geometry.

Since it was the first time the new standards were used, state education officials had to develop new “cut scores,” or metrics used to measure student proficiency.

State officials have yet to release overall data for kids across the city or state. But schools Chancellor David Banks said the city’s test scores were up in both reading and math during an appearance on ABC7.

State officials warned against interpreting the scores that were distributed Wednesday. They did not specify when they expect to release more comprehensive data, though noted teachers and principals had received reports over the summer on how their students performed on each test question.

The state’s Department of Education provided individual student test scores to districts and families for “programming and instructional services, as well as parent engagement,” Commissioner Betty Rosa said in a statement.

“After ensuring that all student results are accounted for and final data quality checks, the Department will release the aggregate data statewide by district, school, and other subgroups,” Rosa said. “As such, accurate inferences about how districts and the state are doing overall cannot be made until the data is finalized.”

The state Education Department also urged against making comparisons to prior years because the exams were changed to match the new learning standards.

“You wouldn’t compare your U.S. history class to your physics class, because it’s measuring something different,” said Zachary Warner, assistant commissioner of the department’s Office of State Assessment, in an interview last week.

“But with that said,” he added, “we do want people to look and say, ‘Are kids meeting the expectations of the learning standards?’ So you could look backwards and say, ‘Okay, on those standards, here’s how kids were doing. On the new standards, here’s how kids are doing.’”

Families can view their students’ test scores in their NYC Schools Accounts. (To set up their accounts, families need their child’s student identification number as well as an account creation code from their child’s school.)

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org

Detroit students show slight gains on Michigan’s standardized test

2023-09-01T17:56:32+00:00

Detroit students across charter and traditional public schools performed slightly better on Michigan’s standardized test this spring than a year ago, a reassuring sign for school officials eager to see academic achievement recover after the pandemic.

But local results remained well below the statewide numbers in math and reading, a gap that community advocates said highlights the need to redress historical disinvestment in Detroit education.

The results also spotlight the challenges the Detroit Public Schools Community District faces now that it has run through its federal COVID relief funding. The district received $1.27 billion in aid, and that money has helped pay for academic recovery work such as expanded tutoring, summer school, and after-school programming. Only some of those initiatives will continue when the federal aid runs out.

Results of the 2023 Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, known as M-STEP, were released Thursday.

In reading, DPSCD students made small improvements across grade levels, in most cases exceeding pre-pandemic results. In third grade, 12.4% of DPSCD students scored proficient or higher in 2022-23, compared with just 9% the previous year, and 11.9% in 2018-19. Fifth grade reading results remain below pre-pandemic levels, but improved a bit from last year.

On math tests, DPSCD students improved on last year’s results, and topped pre-pandemic results in fourth and sixth grades.

Wide as they are, the gaps in performance between DPSCD and the state appear to be narrowing, particularly among Black, Hispanic, and economically disadvantaged students, who are moving toward the statewide average faster than those demographics across the whole state.

“We are not surprised by this improvement,” Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said. “The significant investments made in our staffing, curriculum, professional development, and school student resources over the years are reflected in these results. We have more work to do, and I want our community to know that the formula we have at DPSCD is working. Results do not lie.”

The results, however, cannot mask how much progress needs to be made to bring Detroit students in line with surrounding districts. Statewide, 43.9% of students scored proficient or higher in reading, and 35% did so in math.

Among charter schools in Detroit, results were mixed.

Detroit Edison Public School Academy saw year-to-year gains in both math and reading, but was still below 2019 results. Math results for grades 4 through 7 declined, while third grade saw an increase.

Detroit Enterprise Academy surged above its pre-pandemic results in math: The biggest gain was for seventh grade, where 32.9% of students were proficient in math, compared with 15.3% in 2019. However, reading results in many grades lagged behind pre-pandemic levels.

At Detroit Innovation Academy, fourth and seventh graders made improvements in math, with proficiency rates of 6.8% and 11.1%, respectively. Reading results for grades 3 through 6 were all below 2019 results.

Local education advocates said that despite the improvements, the 2023 results signal that more investment is needed to close gaps in Detroit and accelerate the recovery from the pandemic.

“I think we should be grateful that these scores were not lower, said Christine Bell, executive director of Urban Neighborhood Initiatives, adding that “it’s criminal that before the pandemic less than 50% of our kids were reading at grade level.”

Peri Stone-Palmquist, executive director of the Student Advocacy Center of Michigan, said Thursday’s results were a call for state legislators to pass literacy bills and “invest more deeply in equity, high quality tutoring, and special education supports.”

Education Trust-Midwest, an education research and advocacy organization, said the results pointed to “persistent opportunity gaps for our most underserved students, including Black and Latino students, students with disabilities and students from low-income backgrounds.”

There is more money coming, even with the loss of federal COVID relief aid, which districts have a year left to spend.

Michigan’s new school aid budget includes funding for early literacy and expansion of pre-K programming, and increased funding for special education students and at-risk students.

Districts can also apply for a share of a new $150 million state program to fund tutoring and other academic support initiatives. The funding is based on how many students are considered to not be proficient on statewide assessments.

Among the measures DPSCD has budgeted for is the placement of academic interventionists at select schools. Those educators will work closely with students struggling in reading and math, and are funded in part by a $20 million donation DPSCD received from billionaire MacKenzie Scott last fall. Individual schools also had the option going into this school year of using their Title I dollars to fund after-school tutoring.

The biggest boost for DPSCD will be the $94.4 million it received from the state to settle a 2016 lawsuit that claimed the state denied Detroit schoolchildren proper instruction in reading. The funds are dedicated to programs that support literacy.

Vitti has said he would like to use the money to hire more interventionists, increase literacy support for high school students, and expand teacher training on how to help students who are several grades below reading level.

Ethan Bakuli is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit covering Detroit Public Schools Community District. Contact Ethan at ebakuli@chalkbeat.org.

Micah Walker is a reporter for BridgeDetroit, where she covers arts, culture, and education. Contact Micah at mwalker@bridgedetroit.com.

Michigan students gain on M-STEP, but results are still down from pre-pandemic levels

2023-08-31T14:00:14+00:00

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Michigan standardized test results for grades 3 through 7 last year remained below pre-pandemic levels in math and English language arts, but there were also some year-to-year gains.

Results on the spring’s Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, known as the M-STEP, were released Thursday. The data underscore continuing challenges that reverberate beyond Michigan, as U.S. schools attempt to steer students back on track after years of disruption tied to COVID.

The M-STEP is an important marker of academic progress, affecting everything from the amount of aid districts receive for tutoring, to teacher evaluations and, potentially, which low-performing districts are targeted for state intervention.

State and district leaders will examine the results closely as they make decisions about how to most effectively distribute what remains of the $6 billion in federal COVID relief funding that Michigan received, before that money runs out this year.

“If these scores show stalling, then we really essentially have between now and the end of this school year to figure it out for kids. Otherwise their lives will be permanently impacted,” said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab and research professor at Georgetown University. “It’s sort of now or never.”

Key takeaways from the results released Thursday:

Of the 20 assessments given to students across grades, results in 15 areas improved in 2023 from spring 2022 testing. Results fell in four others and remained the same on one test.
Michigan students in grades 3 through 7 showed slight improvements in math during 2022-23 from the previous year.
But students still have far to go to reach pre-pandemic levels. The drop in the proficiency levels when compared with 2018-19 was widespread. That was true for low-income students and for students from more affluent families.
In almost every grade and in both English language arts and mathematics, proficiency rates fell between 2018-19 and 2022-23, with a persistently wide gap between poor children and those from more affluent families.
In third grade, 27.6% of students from low-income families were proficient in English language arts in 2022-23, a drop of 3.7 percentage points from 2018-19. Among the non-poor, 59.2% were proficient, a drop of 3.6 percentage points.
The drops were steeper in sixth and seventh grades for students of different income levels in English language arts and math. For instance, 15.7% of low-income sixth graders were proficient in math in 2022-23, down 4.4 percentage points. More affluent sixth graders saw a bigger drop, from 52.1% in 2018-19 to 46.8% this year.

The M-STEP is given each spring to students in grades 3 through 7 in English language arts and math. Fifth grade students also take the science and social studies M-STEP. (Eighth graders take the PSAT 8/9 test for English language arts and math, and 11th graders take the SAT for English language arts and math.)

In typical years, schools would be able to compare M-STEP results year by year to measure student progress. But the pandemic upended that rhythm — with the annual test being canceled in 2020 as COVID-19 ended the school year early. Disruptions continued through 2020-21, when the test was optional, resulting in fewer than 75% of Michigan students taking the exam.

That has left educators to compare this year’s results with scores dating back to 2018-19, the last year of full testing before the pandemic, to gauge learning loss.

Third graders had big setbacks

Just 36.9% of Michigan seventh graders were deemed proficient in English language arts this year, compared with 42.7% in 2018-19, a 5.8 percentage-point drop.
Among sixth graders, 29.6% were proficient in math this year, down from 35.1% in 2018-19.
Some populations of at-risk students showed even greater learning loss than the overall student populations. In Detroit public schools, for example, English language learners dropped from an 18% pass rate in English language arts during 2018-19 to 14% in 2022-23. In math, the same group dropped from a 16% pass rate to 11%.

Michigan third graders, who were in kindergarten when the pandemic hit, took state standardized tests for the first time this spring as third graders. Just 40.9% of these students were deemed proficient in English language arts, compared with 45.1% during 2018-19. The latest results were also below the 41.6% level for third graders in 2021-22.

“This past year’s third graders were perhaps the most adversely affected of any age cohort, as they had pandemic-influenced school years during grades kindergarten through second grade, a challenge that was particularly noticeable in reading,” State Superintendent Michael Rice said in a statement. “Kindergarten, first grade, and second grade are pivotal in early literacy efforts, which may help explain the slight decline in the third grade ELA proficiency rate.”

Sen. Dayna Polehanki, D-Livonia, chair of the Senate Education Committee, said the third grade reading scores “reflect the unfinished learning during the COVID and post-COVID years.”

She highlighted several investments contained in the new state school budget, including tutoring expansion, funding for early literacy, expansion of pre-K programming, and increased funding for special education students and at-risk students. But she also said she wants her committee to take a closer look at what research says about reading instruction.

“I would like to see education professionals take a closer look at word recognition or phonics versus the whole language comprehension,” she said.

How test results are being interpreted

Nikki Snyder, Republican member of the State Board of Education and a U.S. Senate candidate, said the M-STEP results underscore the importance of getting funds to parents through education savings accounts to help them pay for literacy services for their children.

“We can’t let the slowness of the implementation or the political argument about not having enough money get in the way,” she said.

“Anything slight right now does not match the huge gaping hole and need that the pandemic created.”

But Pamela Pugh, the Democratic president of the state board who is also running for U.S. Senate, said recovery efforts are paying off.

“Michigan’s students and educators are working hard to emerge from the disruption of the pandemic, and it’s making a difference,” she said. “We need to continue to invest in our schools and educators and provide the supports needed to help our kids continue to grow academically, socially, and personally.”

Niles Community Schools Superintendent Dan Applegate said his district uses M-STEP to assess whether the district curriculum is working. The district is now in its second year of implementing a new elementary English language arts curriculum.

To address learning loss, Applegate said, the district has taken some high-quality teachers out of the classroom to work as academic interventionists and classroom consultants. They lead small group instruction, coordinate academic interventions, and help other teachers ensure they are following the curriculum correctly.

Jasen Witt, superintendent of Redford Union Schools, noted that M-STEP results are only one measure of student achievement, and the district also gives students periodic assessments throughout the school year to make more timely interventions. Witt said it is clear the district still has more work to do to improve literacy and math skills across the board.

“Students are making gains … but we still have a long way to go as a district,” he said. “That period of time they lost during the pandemic, we are still working all the time to overcome those gaps.”

Ypsilanti Community Schools Superintendent Alena Zachery-Ross said the district uses other assessments throughout the year to get real-time feedback and will look to see if M-STEP results align with results from those tests.

At the national level, policy experts are concerned that academic recovery has stalled and is not on pace to get students back on track to pre-pandemic achievement.

“I don’t think there was as much urgency around academic recovery as there could have been, given how far kids were behind,” said Roza, the Georgetown professor.

Because districts across the country did not receive much guidance on how to use federal COVID relief funding, Roza said there were vast differences in the way school leaders chose to use the money.

“We’re seeing a lot of different things at once,” she said. “Some districts are seeing more progress than others, and there really are no uniform patterns.”

In Michigan, M-STEP results have ramifications for students, teachers and school districts. Districts can apply for a new $150 million state program to fund tutoring and other academic support initiatives. Districts will receive funding based on how many students are considered to not be proficient on statewide assessments.

Beth DeShone, executive director of the Great Lakes Education Project, a group focused on school choice, said she has “little faith that (the) bureaucracy is going to find its way to getting the money direct into the kids’ hands or direct into teachers’ classrooms to make an impact on the kids that are struggling.”

Jennifer Mrozowski, senior director of The Education Trust-Midwest, an education and advocacy organization, praised the most recent state education budget but said Michigan must invest in “evidence-based interventions” and have a clear system “to monitor if dollars are indeed reaching the classrooms of the students for whom the funding is intended” and if the interventions are speeding up learning.

Under Michigan law, standardized test results play a major role in teacher evaluations. School districts must base 40% of a teacher’s evaluation on student growth as determined by testing data. For teachers who teach subjects and grades that are assessed by state standardized testing, at least half of that 40% must be based on the state assessment. (Democratic lawmakers are aiming to remove student growth data as a factor in future teacher evaluations.)

Ron Koehler, superintendent at Kent ISD, which services about 20 traditional school districts and 25 charter schools, said one area of focus will be seventh grade English language arts, where his team’s analysis of local students showed 42.8% of students are proficient, compared with 46% before the pandemic. He said member districts showed gains in fifth and eighth grade social studies compared with pre-pandemic levels, but 11th grade social studies is significantly down from spring 2019.

Koehler said districts also will be working with community groups to emphasize the importance of consistently attending school.

“Attendance has a direct relationship to student performance in many ways,” he said.

Isabel Lohman covers K-12 and higher education for Bridge Michigan. You can reach her at ilohman@bridgemi.com.

Hannah Dellinger covers K-12 education and state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

Mike Wilkinson is a data reporter for Bridge Michigan. You can reach him at mwilkinson@bridgemi.com.

Chicago’s first day of school is almost here. Here are five things we’re watching this year.

2023-08-18T20:42:43+00:00

Chicago Public Schools’ estimated 320,000 students will head back to class Monday for a school year that will be marked by old issues — and some new concerns.

The district’s enrollment has been dwindling for at least a decade, raising questions about how to best fund schools still recovering from the effects of the pandemic.

Funding overall has become more complicated as the city’s federal COVID relief dollars dry up. Much of that money has been used for supporting existing and additional staff, many of them providing extra academic support for students.

As the district decides on how, if at all, to continue funding some of those programs, it must also contend with the continued enrollment of incoming immigrant students.

Here are five issues Chalkbeat Chicago will be watching this school year:

A fiscal cliff is approaching

This is the last full school year before Chicago must earmark how to spend what’s left of nearly $3 billion it received in COVID relief aid from the federal government. The deadline is September 2024.

That means the district will soon be staring down a financial hole that has been filled by that influx of federal funds since the pandemic.

The district spent a large share of pandemic relief money on staff salaries and benefits. The district also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on academic recovery efforts, including after-school programs, an in-house tutor corps, and more counselors, social workers, and other support staff.

District officials have projected a budget shortfall of $628 million by the 2025-26 school year, raising questions about how Chicago will sustain any programs and services supported by the federal dollars.

A financial analysis released under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot noted that CPS “will not have a funding source” to keep up these academic recovery and social-emotional learning efforts.

As the district’s financial picture is becoming more precarious, Mayor Brandon Johnson has shared lofty plans for schools, including expanding the Community Schools model — leaving complicated financial decisions ahead.

The district’s state funding could also be in jeopardy if it fails to comply with a state law requiring that at least two staffers at each school are trained on the use of student restraint and timeout. The deadline for that, coincidentally, is the first day of school.

Student academic needs persist

Three years since the onset of the COVID pandemic, there are still signs Chicago students need extra help in the classroom. Students appear to be improving in reading achievement, but they’re gaining less ground in math, according to recent state test scores obtained by Chalkbeat.

As the district’s COVID dollars fade out, questions remain about how district officials will approach academic recovery, and whether there will be efforts to keep any of the extra support CPS has funded with the federal dollars.

Some of those COVID dollars went toward the creation of a $135 million universal curriculum called Skyline, which has received mixed reviews. The district has pressed schools not yet using the curriculum to prove they’re using another high-quality option, so it’s possible more campuses will use Skyline this year.

Additionally, Illinois’ General Assembly passed a new law requiring the State Board of Education to create a literacy plan for schools, which is due by the end of January 2024.

District grapples with continued dipping enrollment

Chicago’s public school enrollment has dipped by 9% since the pandemic began — a trend also seen among other big-city school districts — and is almost one-fifth smaller than it was a decade ago. Last year’s enrollment dip of 9,000 students was enough to push the district’s ranking from the country’s third largest public school system to the number 4 spot.

This year’s enrollment figures won’t be publicly released until later this fall.

As the district’s student body has thinned out, funding has grown — to $9.4 billion for the upcoming school year. Still, as the district has logged fewer students — including those from low-income families — CPS has in recent years received less state funding than it has projected. And with COVID aid running out, officials must grapple with how to fund schools serving a fraction of the kids they used to. (There is a citywide moratorium on school closures until 2025.)

Some advocacy and interest groups, including the teachers union, believe funding should be divorced from enrollment, in part because investing fewer dollars will only encourage more families to leave or to never enroll in public schools. Just over 40% of new budgets for schools this year was determined by student enrollment, with the rest accounting for other factors, such as student demographics.

Still, CPS CEO Pedro Martinez has emphasized that the district can’t factor out enrollment.

“In a large school district where schools serve 40 students, 400 students, and even 4,000 students, enrollment simply has to play a role in our funding formula,” Martinez previously told reporters.

Increase in migrant students poses new challenges

Last year, Texas officials began busing newly arrived migrants to Democratic-led cities, including Chicago. Since then, an estimated 12,000 migrants, many of whom are fleeing economic and political turmoil from South and Central American countries, have arrived in Chicago, While the district won’t say how many such students have enrolled, CPS saw roughly 5,400 new English learners last school year, Chalkbeat found.

Most Chicago schools have previously struggled with providing adequate language instruction for English learners. And with the city expecting more newcomers, educators and immigrant advocates recently told Chalkbeat that schools are not adequately resourced to serve these new students.

Some of these children may arrive without years of formal education and, if they’re learning English as a new language, are legally required to receive extra support.

The district’s number of bilingual teachers has dropped since 2015 even as the English learner population has grown, according to a Chalkbeat analysis. More teachers have earned bilingual education endorsements, which allows them to teach, but it’s unclear whether any of those educators are using those endorsements in the classroom.

District officials will be tasked with how to properly support these students. Officials had previously promised to release a formal plan by the first day of school but have not done so yet.

No district maps yet for the elected school board

As Chicago prepares to begin electing school board members next fall over the next two years, lawmakers have yet to approve maps that would designate which districts each board member would be elected from in the first round of elections. Ten members will be elected in November 2024, while the rest will be elected in November 2026, for a total of 21 members.

Illinois state lawmakers are in charge of approving those maps. In May, they extended their deadline to April 1, 2024, after concerns over whether the maps would match the makeup of the district’s student body or the city’s overall demographics.

Some observers cheered the extension. However, the delay presents new complications. If maps are not approved until April, the campaign season for the first set of districts would last just seven months, making it potentially challenging for candidates to prepare and for voters to have enough information ahead of Election Day.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado 2023 CMAS results show slow academic recovery, red flags for some students

2023-08-17T17:00:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat Colorado’s free daily newsletter to keep up with education news from Denver and around the state.

State test scores released Thursday show signs that Colorado students are recovering from pandemic learning disruption, as 2023 scores approached 2019 levels in some grades and subjects.

But worrying signs remain that many students are still struggling.

The share of fourth and eighth graders who could read and write at or above grade level on CMAS tests taken this past spring remains more than 4 percentage points behind the share who could in 2019. Seventh and eighth graders are similarly behind in math. Each percentage point represents thousands of students who are not meeting expectations and who are less prepared for the next grade.

At the same time, fifth and sixth graders are posting similar scores in reading and writing to their peers four years ago, and in math, all elementary students are. At nearly every grade level, more students met or exceeded expectations in both language arts and math in 2023 than did in 2022, with fifth and seventh graders improving several percentage points in reading.

State education officials attribute the progress to a more normal school year, with fewer disruptions due to illness and safety protocols, as well as to school districts’ investments in new curriculum and tutoring to help students catch up. At the same time, staff shortages meant educators had less time to help struggling students, and many schools reported increases in students missing class.

The uneven recovery may be due to differences in where students were developmentally when COVID hit and school moved online — and how critical the material they missed during disrupted schooling was to the next grade level. Students who were in eighth grade in spring 2023 were in fifth grade when schools shut down in March 2020.

“There are some key learnings that typically occur in some grade levels that have impact down the road,” Joyce Zurkowski, chief assessment officer for the Colorado Department of Education, said on a call with reporters this week.

She said education officials consider “what typically is covered (in) fifth grade, second semester — and how that could be impacting our students in seventh and eighth grade.”

All Colorado students in grades three through eight take reading, writing, and math tests every spring. The tests are known as the Colorado Measures of Academic Success, or CMAS. Some students also take tests in science and social studies. High schoolers take the PSAT and SAT.

Scores for English learners raise concerns

Test scores for English learners and students who took the reading and writing tests in Spanish raise major concerns about how well these children are faring in school.

Just 18.7% of third graders who took the test in Spanish met or exceeded expectations, down 8.8 percentage points from 2019 — by far the biggest lag in student recovery. And just 14.2% of fourth graders who took the Spanish test met or exceeded expectations, down almost 5 percentage points from 2019.

State education officials said the trend calls for more attention to these students. Some of that will have to come from state lawmakers, who have set aside money and crafted new rules to support reading and math instruction, but not bilingual learners.

Floyd Cobb, the associate commissioner of student learning, made that clear this week. Asked what the state education department will do to close the gap between bilingual learners and English-speaking students, he said, “that’ll need to be answered by the General Assembly.”

“Our job here at the department is to make sure that we go about implementing the laws that the General Assembly passes, and in the event that someone writes a bill, and that bill makes it through, we’ll engage in our work to be able to support,” Cobb said.

Colorado’s Latino communities suffered a heavy toll during the pandemic, experiencing more illness and death, more job losses, and more economic instability than white Coloradans. Hispanic families are also less likely to have reliable internet access, and have been affected by rising rents and home prices that have pushed many of them out of their neighborhoods.

Colorado education officials are also watching with concern the test scores of middle school girls. Girls typically do better than boys in language arts, while boys do better in math. That hasn’t changed, but in some cases, gender gaps have narrowed because girls are doing worse. The number of eighth grade girls meeting or exceeding expectations in language arts is down 7.7 percentage points since 2019, and down more than 3 points just since last year.

“When we look at the national level, there’s been significant research that suggests young women have struggled more during the pandemic with depression and anxiety,” Colorado Commissioner of Education Susana Córdova said.

“It’s hard to say if that’s the reason why we’re seeing lower performance with young women than we are with young men,” Córdova said. “But I think it’s going to be important for us to continue to monitor and look at and to focus supports on young women.”

Colorado continues to have major gaps in proficiency rates based on student race and economic status. The share of white and Asian students scoring at grade level is 24 to 30 points higher than for Black and Hispanic students. The gaps between students living in poverty — as measured by eligibility for free- or reduced-price lunch — and their more affluent peers is more than 30 points in most grades and subjects.

These are longstanding problems, but Colorado education officials said they demand urgent attention.

How state officials, schools, teachers, and families use CMAS results

Critics of standardized tests say they are a better measure of the effects of poverty than of academic performance, but state education officials point out that they are the only statewide measure of how well students meet the state’s academic standards.

The state uses the test results to rate schools and districts, and to direct help to schools with lower scores and issue state improvement orders.

Parents can use their children’s individual test results to discuss strengths and weaknesses with teachers, and they can use state data to see how their school and district perform compared with others.

Schools and teachers can use the test scores to determine the subjects where students are furthest behind and find ways to help them improve.

In addition to the raw test scores, Colorado also calculates growth scores. Those scores measure how much progress students made compared with students who scored similarly to them the year before and are generally considered a better measure of the work educators do than raw test scores.

Because of the way the growth scores are calculated, the state average is always around 50 on a 100-point scale. Students who are behind need growth scores above 50 to catch up.

In the aftermath of the pandemic, Colorado students would need growth scores of 55 or higher to catch up to 2019 achievement levels, said Lisa Medler, the executive director of accountability and continuous improvement for the Colorado Department of Education.

Among districts with more than 1,000 students that serve a large portion of students of color, only Denver edged above 50 in growth in both language arts and math, and many districts had below-average growth scores.

Statewide, district growth scores for grades three through eight ranged from a high of 79 in math in Hinsdale County RE-1, a small district in southwest Colorado, to a low of 23, also in math, in Agate School District #300, a tiny district in the east.

Denver scores rebound, but big gaps remain

In Denver Public Schools, Colorado’s largest school district with nearly 88,000 students, test scores for most grades and subjects rebounded, but not quite to pre-pandemic levels.

There were a few exceptions. Third graders scored higher this past spring than four years ago: 40% met or exceeded expectations in 2023, compared with 39% in 2019.

The troubling trend of English learners falling further behind showed up in Denver’s test scores, too. Most English learners in Denver speak Spanish, and more than 1,600 Denver students took the state literacy test in Spanish. But only 21% met or exceeded expectations on the Spanish literacy test, down from 29% in 2019.

While English-speaking students are catching up from pandemic learning loss, students who are still learning the English language are not, the test data shows. The test score gap between English learners and English speakers is growing.

Denver has other gaps, too. Last year, Denver’s test score gaps between white and Black students, and between white and Hispanic students, were the biggest in Colorado. The gaps did not shrink this year. In fact, the gap grew in math between white and Hispanic students.

Denver Superintendent Alex Marrero has said he wants to see the number of students scoring at grade level go up by 10 percentage points in reading and math by 2026 — a goal he included in the district’s strategic plan. The plan says test scores should improve even more for “some student groups,” an acknowledgement that Denver has big gaps to close.

This year’s test scores show only slight progress toward that goal. Proficiency rates in grades three through seven rose between 0.2 and 2.4 percentage points, depending on the grade. Eighth graders declined slightly in language arts.

On both the PSAT and SAT, fewer Denver students scored at or above a benchmark meant to indicate college readiness this past spring in literacy and math than did in 2019.

Adams 14 test scores remain low

The Adams 14 school district, which received state orders to reorganize after years of chronic low student performance, continued to see low scores.

At the high school level, students in every grade level tested had lower average combined scores than in 2019. The trend is similar statewide, but Adams 14’s scores are lower than the state’s average.

In grades three through eight, Adams 14 saw significantly lower scores districtwide compared with 2019, nearly across the board.

The biggest decrease was among fifth graders taking English language arts tests, only 12.7% of whom met or exceeded expectations. The only districtwide improvement was very small: just a 0.1 percentage point increase among sixth graders in math. Only 4.3% of those students met or exceeded expectations.

Looking at growth among Adams 14 students, the district and most of its schools had growth scores of less than 50. The two highest growth scores were for math at Dupont, with a 57.5, and language arts at Rose Hill Elementary which had a growth score of 58.

The test where Adams 14 had its highest percentage of students meeting expectations was on the language arts tests given in Spanish. Among third graders taking that test, for instance, 19.2% of students met or exceeded expectations, compared with 17.6% of third graders taking that test in English.

Adams 14 has one of the state’s highest proportions of students learning English as a second language, and historically has had trouble educating those students and complying with their civil rights. In more recent years, the district has implemented bilingual programming and created a plan that finally got federal approval for how to educate English learners.

Third graders still recovering in reading

Elementary students are still not yet up to pre-pandemic reading proficiency levels, despite big changes in how Colorado schools teach reading.

Statewide, 39.9% of the spring’s third graders met or exceeded expectations on reading tests. That percentage is lower than last year, and down from 41.3% in 2019.

Sheridan, Douglas County, Jeffco, and St. Vrain districts in the metro area showed significant improvements in third grade reading.

In Sheridan, the district went from having just over 10% of students meet expectations for reading in 2019 to 26.8% this spring. In the Douglas County school district, 58% of third graders met expectations in reading, up from 52% in 2019. The score put the Dougco district above most metro area districts.

The Jeffco school district also had increases, with 48.2% of third graders meeting reading standards, up from 46.3% in 2019.

Mapleton and Pueblo 60 districts have not been able to bring the percentage of students meeting expectations back up to 2019 levels. In Mapleton, 17.8% of third grade students met or exceeded reading expectations this spring, down from 28.1% in 2019. In Pueblo 60, 22.9% of third grade students met or exceeded reading expectations, down from 27.6% in 2019.

Among 10 districts that serve the highest percentages of students of color and have more than 1,000 students, all saw a decrease in the percentage of students meeting expectations in math. Westminster and East Otero in southeast Colorado had the smallest decreases in overall math scores. Among Westminster students 15.5% met or exceeded expectations in math this year, down from 16.4% of students in 2019.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Melanie Asmar is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado, covering Denver Public Schools. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado CMAS 2023 test scores are out: Look up your school or district here

2023-08-17T17:00:00+00:00

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Colorado released test results Thursday from this spring’s round of standardized tests given to public school students in third through eighth grades.

Overall, scores have improved slightly over last year, but still, fewer students are meeting expectations in 2023 than in 2019. The trend is similar to 2022.

The number of fourth and eighth graders who could read and write at or above grade level this past spring remains more than 4 percentage points behind the share who could do so in 2019. Seventh and eighth graders are similarly behind in math. Each percentage point represents thousands of students not meeting expectations and less prepared for the next grade.

At the same time, fifth and sixth graders are posting similar scores in reading and writing to their peers five years ago, and in math, all elementary students are.

When broken down by grade level, only one group of students did better than their counterparts in 2019: fifth graders in math. This year, 36.5% of fifth graders met or exceeded expectations in math, up from 35.7% who did in 2019.

Gaps remain large and persistent. Multilingual learners seem to be among the students state officials say could be falling farther behind.

Our searchable table below allows you to search for your school or district, and compare it to the state averages for both math and English language arts. The table shows the percentage of tested students who met or exceeded expectations in each subject.

The results will be used in school and district ratings which could be released later this month.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

IREAD scores rise slightly for most Indianapolis districts but remain below pre-COVID levels

2023-08-17T11:00:00+00:00

The share of third graders passing the state’s IREAD literacy test rose slightly in most Marion County school districts this year, although none have returned to pre-pandemic rates.

The majority of Marion County districts and charter schools also remain well below the statewide pass rate of 81% for public school students.

Passing rates for Indianapolis Public Schools, the city’s largest district, declined from 62.8% last year to 60.6% this year. The rates for schools in Speedway, Perry and Franklin Townships also fell. Meanwhile, scores rose in seven other township districts, including Decatur, Warren, and Washington.

Proficiency rates for independent charter schools within or near Indianapolis Public School borders rose slightly as a whole, but are still far below their pre-pandemic pass rate of about 84% in 2019.

And charters within the IPS Innovation Network — which are run independently but are considered part of the district — also showed slight improvement overall.

The results for Indianapolis schools show the pandemic’s ongoing disruption to students in the early grades, which educators and others consider crucial for building students’ literacy skills.

In a statement, IPS said the district’s drop “further reinforces the need for the investments we have made to date, as well as new investments we will make in literacy throughout the district that are critical for student achievement.”

Districts and individual schools that improved significantly from last year highlighted efforts like a local summer learning initiative, state-funded coaching for teachers, and embracing training in the science of reading, which emphasizes phonetic instruction and science-backed ways of learning.

“We really leaned heavily into the science of reading, given the number of second-language learners we have,” said Alicia Hervey, founder and executive director of the Path School at Stephen Foster School 67, an Innovation charter school where the IREAD passing rate jumped more than 13 points from last year to 35.8%.

Warren Township schools see biggest growth on IREAD

IREAD scores for school districts across Marion County showed only slight increases or decreases, mirroring a stagnation in both the latest statewide IREAD and ILEARN results.

Among township school districts and IPS, Warren Township schools improved the most since 2022, increasing from 64.7% to 69.8%.

Ryan Russell, associate superintendent for Warren Township schools, said the district made K-3 literacy a priority last school year, focusing on training K-3 staff on the science of reading over the past three years.

All nine of the district’s elementary schools also participated in the state’s literacy coaching program, which guided the district’s own literacy coaches and teacher leaders.

But like all other school districts, Warren Township schools still have significant gains to make before reaching the district’s 78% passing rate of 2019. The biggest such gap is in Perry Township schools, where the gap between 2019 and 2023 IREAD scores is approximately 12 percentage points.

Russell said the district’s goal is to grow by 10% every year, reaching pre-pandemic levels at the end of this school year.

“We’re certainly celebrating our growth and we are happy to experience that growth, but at the same time we realize how critical of a measuring stick this is for our students and their future,” he said.

Independent charter schools outperform IPS

Independent charter schools in or near IPS boundaries continue to perform better than IPS as a whole, but also remain well below the statewide average.

The K-5 Ace Preparatory Academy, where the proficiency rate rose more than 14 percentage points to 76.3%, also participated in the state’s literacy coaching program to provide guidance for the school’s literacy coach.

Principal Amanda Liles also attributes the growth to the school’s small class sizes, its focus on student data, the skill and consistency of the school’s teachers, and an extended literacy-focused teaching period of 90 minutes.

“We’ve really been intentional about how we interpret our student data and how we help our scholars understand what that means for them as far as their growth,” she said.

Black students in independent charters for which disaggregated data was available had higher pass rates as a whole compared to Black students in IPS, with 67% of students passing. Data for some schools, however, wasn’t publicly reported by the state due to the small number of Black students taking the test.

The number of Hispanic and white students in many independent and Innovation charters was also too small to reach a firm conclusion about their success compared to their peers in traditional school districts.

Among all Marion County districts, IPS had the highest gap in the passing rate between white and Black students, with 52.6% of Black students passing compared to 83.9% of white students. The gap in IPS between white and Hispanic students is also the greatest of all the Marion County school districts, with 50.7% of Hispanic students passing the test.

But the IPS statement pointed to some “bright spots” from this year’s data, noting that eight schools outperformed the state average for Black students.

The district’s Emerging Schools, which are a set of low-performing schools, made gains that on average outpaced state gains, the district said.

Restart charters had significant score increases and decreases

The passing rate at IPS Innovation charters, meanwhile, increased as a whole from roughly 46% to nearly 51%. But at Innovation Restart schools, which are chronically underperforming schools that charter operators are trying to improve, there was significant variation.

Four schools’ scores dropped from last year’s passing rates: Global Prep, Phalen Leadership Academy (PLA) at Francis Scott Key 103, Adelante Schools at Emma Donnan Elementary, and Liberty Grove Schools at Elder Diggs School 42.

But there was sufficient improvement at the remaining four — the Path School, Urban Act Academy at Washington Irving School 14, Matchbook Learning at Wendell Phillips School 63, and PLA at Louis B. Russell School 48 — for the overall passing rate at Innovation Restart schools to rise.

The Path School required students who did not pass the IREAD in the spring to attend an Indy Summer Learning Lab that helped a few more students pass the test over the summer, Hervey said. The school also did after-school tutoring twice a week, she said.

Still, the school’s 35.8% pass rate is well below the 61.3% rate from 2018-19, two years before School 67 became a charter school. Hervey said the school’s goal is to reach a 95% pass rate.

“I do expect we’ll be around 80% over the next few years,” she said.

Amelia Pak-Harvey covers Indianapolis and Marion County schools for Chalkbeat Indiana. Contact Amelia at apak-harvey@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana students’ reading scores have barely changed in three years, new IREAD results show

2023-08-16T19:21:56+00:00

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Indiana students’ reading scores have been virtually unchanged for three years, according to new test data, underscoring fears about students’ struggles to recover from the pandemic

More than four out of five third graders — just under 82% — passed the Indiana reading exam, the IREAD, in 2023. Yet that’s approximately the same rate as in 2021 and 2022, and several percentage points below the passing rate from 2019, when 87.3% of all students passed the test.

The results, released by the state on Wednesday, tell a similar story to scores released last month from the statewide assessment for grades 3-8, the ILEARN. Both exams showed student performance has stagnated in reading over the last three years.

The IREAD scores come as the state undertakes an overhaul of literacy instruction to implement the science of reading — a body of research that emphasizes five pillars of literacy that help students decode words — in an effort to improve students’ reading skills.

Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said at Wednesday’s State Board of Education meeting that the increase in IREAD scores of 0.7 percentage points since 2021 is not insignificant.

“If we increase that small amount, year over year, it will be years and years and thousands and thousands of kids,” Jenner said. “So, you’re going to hear it over and over, the sense of urgency that we feel in supporting our schools and supporting our parents and families who we need at the table with us in order to make sure all kids can read.”

Nearly 15,000 third graders didn’t pass the exam and will need additional support to meet reading standards, per the Indiana Department of Education.

IREAD scores for most student groups changed by less than one percentage point this year, with a few notable exceptions.

Black students’ scores appear to be recovering faster than many other groups, with their proficiency rates rising by 1.5 percentage points from 2022 to 2023. Scores for students in special education also rose by 2 percentage points.

Scores for Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander students — a group of around 86 students total — rose 7.5 points in 2023. The group is the only student demographic or socioeconomic category to have recovered to pre-pandemic proficiency rates.

No student groups posted precipitous drops this year, though scores for both Hispanic and American Indian students declined by just under one percentage point each.

Last year, English learners’ IREAD proficiency rates dropped 8.5 percentage points from 2021, prompting Department of Education officials to raise the alarm about their performance. The group’s scores showed virtually no change this year, and remain around 20 percentage points below their non-English learner peers.

Charity Flores, the state education department’s chief academic officer, told Chalkbeat that schools will need to reflect on and discuss their IREAD data, especially regarding English learners. This process includes program evaluations and in-depth collaboration between general education teachers and English language instructors regarding the science of reading.

“That can unify some of those conversations that happen locally between educators to make sure whether they’re students in the general education classroom, or receiving specific services in another classroom, they’re using the same strategies in both of those environments,” Flores said.

Look up scores for your school in the table below.

In Indianapolis Public Schools, the state’s largest district, 60.6% of students tested proficient this year, a decline of 2.2 percentage points from last year. The district had rolled out its own tutoring programs to focus on math and reading skills in 2022, including offering free virtual tutoring for all students.

That decline reinforces the need for continued investments in literacy by IPS, said district spokesperson Marc Ransford. Those include in “curriculum, educator training, and professional development programs,” he said.

Science of reading push informs curriculum, teaching shifts

The state has this year pushed to align its curriculum and teacher training methods to the science of reading.

As part of that effort, a pilot program placed literacy instructional coaches in 54 schools during the 2022-2023 school year, in order to help teachers train on reading science principles.

The pass rate among those schools was 71.8% — approximately a 1.8 percentage point increase from 2022.

One of the first districts to adopt the instructional coaching model, Anderson Community Schools, showed a 1.4 point increase in proficiency rates over 2022; however, there were fewer students tested in 2023. (That was due to a drop in student enrollment, said Brad Meadows, director of district and community engagement for the district.)

Meadows said the district was “very encouraged by the higher pass rates this year” and that it expects scores to continue rising in future years.

Anderson Schools has literacy instructional coaches at all its elementary schools. The coaches focus on working with students in kindergarten to second grade, but are also helping to bring the science of reading to all elementary school students, Meadows said.

The state education department said 200 schools have opted to work with those literacy coaches via the Indiana Literacy Cadre for this academic year. For the 2024-25 academic year, Jenner said all schools with an IREAD passing rate of 70% or lower will join the cadre. By 2025, she said the goal is to have 600 schools in the cadre that receive support from coaches.

The department is also partnering with the Center for Vibrant Schools at Marian University to offer a new course for teachers across the state to receive science of reading instruction, announced Wednesday.

These different efforts to improve literacy instruction follow recently released rules for teacher prep programs that would require new teachers to be capable of implementing science of reading practices by 2025. Jenner said the department and the Indiana Commission for Higher Education will communicate their expectations on this requirement to college and university leadership across the state.

Chalkbeat reporter Amelia Pak-Harvey contributed to this article.

Jade Thomas is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact Jade at jthomas@chalkbeat.org.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana expands tutoring grants to more students and increases the maximum state funding

2023-08-11T19:35:25+00:00

Indiana is expanding its grant program for tutoring that it launched last fall to cover middle school students, as well as more elementary schoolers, the state education department announced Thursday.

In addition, the maximum grant award for Indiana Learns, which provides grants to students to use for tutoring and academic programs that meet “learning partner” requirements, is increasing to $1,000. The new maximum award of $1,000 is available to students who are new to the program and those who signed up earlier.

The state first rolled out Indiana Learns last fall in response to learning loss in the wake of the pandemic. Originally geared towards students in fourth and fifth grades, the program is now open to any student in third through eighth grade who qualifies for free or reduced-price lunch, and whose scores on state math or English language arts tests were below proficiency.

The expansion comes as 2023 state ILEARN scores demonstrated a small improvement in math but a slight dip in English. In 2022, 41.2% of Indiana students scored at or above proficiency in English, compared to 40.7% of students this year. Meanwhile, math proficiency rose from 39.4% in 2022 to 40.9% this year.

“We know from our 2023 ILEARN proficiency results, and the ongoing academic impact/recovery analysis, that our middle school students in particular need strategic learning support and interventions,” Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said in a press release.

Families can find out if their student is eligible for a grant by going to indianalearns.org and entering their student test number, or STN, and birthday. The STN can be obtained from their student’s school or their ILEARN scores if the family has access to that.

If a student is eligible, families can immediately view the funds available to them. On the same website, they can also browse tutoring partners and schedule services.

Prior to this expansion, in addition to the initial state grant of $500, districts could choose to provide an additional $250 per student for Indiana Learns that the state would match. But the state education department said that with the maximum Indiana Learns state award increasing to $1,000, there’s no longer a matching component of the program.

Molly Williams, a spokesperson for the Indiana Department of Education, said that when families use the grants and their remaining funding drops to $200, money will automatically reload if they still have grant funding available.

The state also said that the grants can now support tutoring during the day at schools.

“This will allow parents and families, who may not otherwise be able to pay for high-dosage tutoring, to access these opportunities for their students and provide them the additional support they need,” Jenner said.

Jade Thomas is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact Jade at jthomas@chalkbeat.org.

Debate over NYC high school admissions heats up at parent meeting

2023-08-10T02:55:39+00:00

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Debate over how selective New York City high schools choose their students erupted Wednesday night, as members of a parent advisory group called on the city to adopt more stringent academic screening.

The Citywide Council on High Schools, a group of parent representatives from across the five boroughs, considered a slate of recommendations on the city’s admissions process, including reinstating the use of seventh grade state test scores at selective schools such as Eleanor Roosevelt or the Clinton School in Manhattan and allowing such schools to once again set their own admissions criteria.

But some members of the public who spoke at the meeting protested the resolution proposing the changes — arguing the old system was confusing and opaque for families, and that the recommendations could stifle integration efforts in a school system that has consistently been among the most segregated in the nation.

The Wednesday night debate followed an especially divisive parent council election cycle. Earlier this year, candidates endorsed by Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, won all of the elected seats on the citywide high school council. The controversial group staunchly advocates for screened school admissions. (One council member was appointed by the public advocate.)

The board, composed primarily of parents whose children attend selective or specialized high schools, passed the resolution 7-1, with the no-vote from the public advocate’s appointee. Though the board lacks the power to enact the changes, its recommendations come as the latest sign of continued debate over high school admissions. (Admissions to specialized schools, like Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, are regulated by state law and were not part of Wednesday’s discussion.)

Schools have not used state tests in the admissions process for the past three years — and that change and others spurred by the pandemic moved the needle toward more diverse student bodies at selective schools.

For this fall’s incoming freshman class, students were sorted into different priority groups based on their seventh grade GPAs in core subjects. In cases where there were more applicants in a priority group than seats, selections were made on a lottery basis. More than 40 selective schools also participate in a diversity initiative, setting aside a certain number of seats to students who are low-income, English language learners, or live in temporary housing. There was a separate lottery for these seats.

The recommendations passed by the council call for the city to allow students to qualify for priority groups based on their grades or state test scores.

Parent arguments over admissions get heated

Tensions rose to a fever pitch during the meeting, as some parents who joined virtually argued with one another in the chat, and members of the public voiced contrasting views. In one particularly heated moment, council member Deborah Kross accused a public speaker opposing the resolution of “running a consultancy for districts.”

Kemala Karmen, the speaker, denied the allegation and said she was a parent and member of NYC Opt Out, a grassroots organization boycotting state tests. During her comment, Karmen said council members were elected amid low turnout and were not representative of NYC public school families.

“This message is for the chancellor, deputy chancellor, and whoever else it may concern: Do not mistake this vote and their resolution as representative of the wishes of families of New York school children,” she said.

Katrina Motch, a parent who said her two children had experienced the high school admissions process in 2019 and 2022, also opposed the resolution, noting the prior system had been particularly confusing and burdensome for parents.

“In 2019, every single school had a different criteria, a different interview, a different thing,” she said, adding it created “incredible stress for parents.”

Others spoke in favor of the resolution, complaining that using lottery numbers within priority groups was unfair and that school grades were too subjective a metric.

Chien Kwok, co-president of PLACE, called the use of a lottery “entirely demotivating for children.”

He added: “Grades are subjective and outright fraudulent, used to hide the failures of the DOE to teach our children.”

High school admissions process remains in flux

The high school admissions system in New York City is notoriously complicated. It saw multiple pandemic-related overhauls, as COVID-19 upended many of the metrics used to screen and sort students. Prior to the pandemic, schools could set their own screening processes, meaning students and families had to search for the criteria at each school. Admissions requirements ranged from essays and tests to interviews — and information about how decisions were made was sometimes difficult to locate or unavailable.

About 20 of the most coveted selective schools — like Beacon High School and Bard Early College — continued to use their own assessments like essays or school-based tests during the last admissions cycle.

Council members said the city should reduce the use of lotteries in making admissions decisions by allowing the roughly 100 other selective schools to once again set their own criteria — stating that thousands of applicants were left with “unsatisfactory placements.” The last admissions cycle saw just under half of eighth graders admitted to their top choice school, with roughly 75% admitted to one of their top three schools, and 95% offered a spot at a school they listed in their application.

Integration advocates and families in favor of the recent changes have said the standardizing of admissions criteria and other pandemic changes helped make the process more accessible and removed barriers for students.

Those gains held fairly steady for this year’s incoming ninth graders. Roughly 32% of offers at selective schools went to Latino students, followed by 25% to Asian American students, 19% to Black students, and 17% to white students. Roughly 66% of the offers went to students from low-income families.

Citywide, roughly 41% of students are Latino, 20% are Black, 19% are Asian American, and 16% are white, according to enrollment data from last school year. About 72% are from low-income families.

To Nyah Berg, executive director of New York Appleseed, an organization that advocates for integrated schools, the aims of the resolution represent a step backwards.

“We’re talking about access to public schools, and I think people forget that,” she said. “To think that we need to stop having this lottery so we can make the schools more selective — they’re public schools. People should have as much access and opportunity as possible.”

Berg also questioned whether the board’s decision reflected the broader sentiment of New York City families.

“The majority of parents that sit on the [council] are parents of students at specialized high schools,” Berg said. “An overwhelming majority of students are not going to specialized high schools.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Five key issues facing Memphis-Shelby County Schools as the new year begins

2023-08-07T02:00:00+00:00

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Memphis-Shelby County Schools students return to class Monday for the 2023-24 school year.

This one could be less turbulent than recent years, but no less consequential, as the district confronts key decisions about its next leader, the future of its school buildings, its strategy for improving student academic performance and wellness, and its budget for the post-pandemic era.

Here’s a closer look at five key issues that the district will face this school year:

Search for a superintendent is on — again

MSCS is still seeking applicants for its superintendent job, nearly a year after Joris Ray resigned amid a scandal.

The first attempt to find a leader unraveled, exposing disagreements on the board, fueling public doubts about whether the body could execute a search successfully, and forcing a hard reset.

The board remains committed to the national search it promised Memphians last year. Interim Superintendent Toni Williams, who had once been a finalist for the permanent job, won’t be a candidate. She agreed to drop out of the search under the terms of a new contract she signed to continue as interim leader through another school year.

So far, Take 2 of the search has been consistent with the parameters and the that timeline board members set out in their discussions: The new job posting, which went up at the start of August, reflects the leadership qualities board members collectively decided on, and all applicants will be evaluated against the board’s policy on minimum qualifications.

If the second attempt goes according to plan, applications will close by November, and a new superintendent will be selected by February, with a start date of July 1, 2024. By that schedule, the new superintendent would have a chance to ease into the leadership role during a transition period with Williams, who by that point will have led the district for close to two years.

School building projects will keep students moving

District officials will introduce a new facilities plan this school year that will propose ways to address a backlog of costly maintenance issues. A mix of construction projects, closures, and consolidations will likely affect thousands of students, requiring that some move out of their school buildings and into others.

MSCS is working with More for Memphis, a consortium spearheaded by nonprofit Seeding Success, to develop the plans and establish funding sources.

The plan will describe 110 school investments over the next decade, and officials say they are seeking millions of dollars in private funds for the first five years of facility upgrades and academic improvements. In addition to schools, the district may also consolidate administrative offices, reviving efforts started years ago with the purchase of the old Bayer Building.

Some school communities are already preparing for changes, separate from the new districtwide plan. Under agreements between MSCS and neighboring districts to comply with a new state law, Germantown High School is due to be replaced by a new building in Cordova, mostly paid for through local tax increases. Germantown Elementary and Middle schools will also close in coming years, as will Lucy Elementary School in Millington.

Meanwhile, LaRose Elementary will continue to accommodate students from Cummings K-8, where falling ceiling tiles forced the building to close for repairs just weeks into the 2022-23 school year.

And in Frayser, students at Trezevant High and at MLK College Prep High, which is part of the state’s Achievement School District for low-performing schools, can expect a new high school building in the coming years. Hanley, a K-8 school that was also in the ASD, is returning to MSCS.

The district’s broader plan is likely to address other Memphis schools that are currently in the ASD or expected to exit in coming years.

Academic needs will get a closer look

MSCS will remain focused on improving academic performance for individual students, but changes are also happening at the school and district levels to improve accountability for academics.

While MSCS students are making progress in their recovery from learning losses during the pandemic, math scores still lag, especially for middle schoolers.

And in reading, scores on state standardized tests have rebounded, but proficiency rates for the district have historically been among the lowest in the state. The reading test scores are particularly consequential for third graders, who face the risk of being held back if they don’t successfully complete certain intervention programs.

Interim Superintendent Williams has supported a review of district academic departments and initiatives with a focus on literacy. The review would look at where the district is spending funds for academic programming and assess how effective those programs have been. That assessment would inform the development of an academic plan that board members would monitor each month for progress.

At the school level, the district has expanded its own turnaround program, called the Innovation Zone, or iZone, to include several more schools, including four schools that have returned from the ASD. Schools in the iZone have a longer school day to provide more instruction for students and help the schools perform better overall.

The iZone expansion comes as new accountability measures take effect in Tennessee. The Tennessee Department of Education is expected to begin assigning letter grades to public schools this fall, after years of delays.

District will have to adapt to end of some federal funding

MSCS bolstered its budget over the last several years with some $775 million in one-time federal funds to help schools deal with the pandemic and support their recovery efforts. The dollars come from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund and are commonly referred to as ESSER funds.

Districts have until September 2024 to spend their funds, so officials have to wrap up the spending this school year.

MSCS has already budgeted funds for academic recovery programs, salaries for educational assistants in early grades, and improvements to schools’ heating and air systems. Early rounds of funding were used to buy computers and tablets so students could learn from home online. (Actual spending in the district has been difficult for the public to track.)

As the federal funds run out, Memphis and other districts across the country will have to decide which programs they can sustain with other funding sources, and which ones they will cut.

But the adjustment will be less harsh for Tennessee school districts, thanks to the state’s new school funding formula, which came alongside a $1 billion increase in education spending. Memphis was projected to receive about $114 million more in recurring funds through the new formula, which takes effect this school year.

City’s crises challenge student health, academic success

MSCS has spent more on social emotional learning and support for students, including new wellness centers as some schools. Mental health employees will get the salary schedule they sought last school year.

Factors outside of the district, though, continue to create obstacles. Youth homelessness in MSCS, for instance, has climbed to its highest measured count in four years, to 2,880 students at the end of the last school year.

Support services for Memphis students and families outside of the classroom have grown in importance since the start of the pandemic.

How Memphis and Shelby County tackle persistent social issues such as violence, policing, justice, and poverty will be a critical factor for student wellness and academic success in the district. Candidates in October’s crowded mayoral election have offered many ideas, including some that mirror existing MSCS programs.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Chicago public schools run by principals given more independence saw better student achievement: study

2023-08-03T21:55:39+00:00

Eight years ago, Chicago Public Schools launched a program that gave certain principals more control, such as more flexibility over budgets and being freed of extra oversight from district leaders. It was an effort to reward effective veteran school leaders with “more leadership and professional development opportunities.”

Now, a new study by a Northwestern University professor shows that the initiative — known as the Independent School Principals program, or ISP — resulted in better test scores and school climates and could be a cost-effective way to improve schools.

The analysis looked at 44 elementary schools that joined ISP between 2016 and 2018. Those schools saw pass rates for state reading and math tests grow, on average, by about 4 percentage points more than similar schools that weren’t part of ISP, according to the study. (Comparison schools were chosen based on things like demographics and test scores.)

The findings suggest that schools can benefit from more empowered principals, who are “closer to the ground” and may have a better sense than district leaders of what their students need, said C. Kirabo Jackson, an education and social policy professor at Northwestern who conducted the study.

But there are some caveats, Jackson said. The ISP schools with the best test score results were also run by principals who are considered “highly effective,” as determined by teacher ratings and other evaluations. Less effective principals saw test scores grow at a slower rate. Other studies have found mixed results when giving schools more autonomy, Jackson noted in his study.

The benefits of such a policy depend on “the capacity of the leaders to manage on their own,” said Jackson.

Test scores don’t show the full picture of how well students are doing, Jackson said, and his study found mixed results in other areas. For example, ISP schools on average had better ratings for school climate. But he found no evidence that these schools saw better student or teacher attendance.

The ISP initiative was launched under former Mayor Rahm Emanuel as part of an effort to pair principals with “more leadership and professional development opportunities,” according to the district.

Currently, district leaders identify veteran principals to apply for the program and then evaluate them based on several criteria, including their school’s test scores, their “five essentials” survey data and a series of interviews, according to the district.

A spokesperson did not respond in time for publication on whether there were minimum test scores that schools had to meet in order to be eligible.

Jackson noted that nearly all of the elementary schools he evaluated were highly rated by the state. In all, 86% of the city’s current 63 ISP schools — which also include middle and high schools and one early childhood education center — were rated either commendable or exemplary by the state, according to the most recently available Illinois Report Card information.

In addition to less oversight and more budget flexibility, ISP school leaders also have more power over professional learning for their staff and more flexibility over principal evaluations. In exchange, principals must meet several requirements, including maintaining or improving school performance, remaining compliant with district wide policies, and remaining as the school’s principal for at least two years.

Having more power over professional learning was among the biggest boons for Patricia Brekke, principal of Back of the Yards High School, who joined the ISP program in 2016. Her school, like others, used to spend time addressing student needs in ways that district leaders recommended.

While she considered those good strategies, her staff didn’t have extra time to focus on other issues they believed to be important, such as drilling down on students’ analytical and essay writing skills.

For the past seven years, she and other teachers have created their own professional development sessions to, in part, improve kids’ analytical skills. Her team draws on good examples from their own classrooms, including taking videos during the school day, so that teachers can see how their own colleagues are approaching instruction, Brekke said.

“I’ve got a lot of brilliant teachers, and their ideas really pushed me, I think, to be a better principal, you know?” Brekke said. “And it was really important for me to have them around the table and identify our problems of practice.”

Jackson only studied elementary schools, so he doesn’t know the program’s impact on high schools.

SAT scores at Brekke’s school were within five percentage points of the district’s. But Brekke said she’s noticed her students demonstrating “elevated” writing skills that go beyond a classic five-paragraph essay response.

“They’re really starting to think more deeply about text,” Brekke said.

Jackson found another bonus of the program: Principals “tend to remain in their schools” even after the two-year requirement. That is by design, said Jerry Travlos, a former ISP principal who now works as a district leader.

Travlos conducted a study, which Jackson cites, and found that ISP principals largely preferred the autonomy they got under the program. Extending more power to veteran principals is also a “retention strategy,” he said, at a time when school leaders are heading for the door.

Brekke, who has been an educator for 32 years, said she sometimes misses the camaraderie that comes along with a traditional network like most of Chicago’s public schools. But she loves being able to “geek out” and customize instruction for her students.

“Having those kinds of conversations are really just so refreshing and encouraging and motivating,” Brekke said. She paused and added, “Maybe it’s contributed to why I’m still here.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

In Chicago’s early state test results, encouraging gains and some areas of concern

2023-08-03T11:00:00+00:00

Chicago Public Schools students made encouraging gains on the Illinois state test this year, with reading proficiency almost back to pre-pandemic levels and a more modest recovery in math scores, according to preliminary, unofficial scores obtained by Chalkbeat.

The portion of Chicago students in grades three through eighth who met or exceeded state standards based on the required Illinois Assessment of Readiness, which was administered this past spring, dipped in both subjects during the pandemic. This year’s rebounding on the English language arts test extended to all racial groups in the district, even as the gaping pre-pandemic disparities in proficiency Black and Latino students face persisted.

Overall, 26% of students who took the reading test this year met or exceeded state standards — just two percentage points lower than results on the 2019 test, the last one before COVID upended learning. In math, 17% of students scored proficient, compared with 24% in 2019.

The results were obtained by Chalkbeat ahead of the state’s formal release of district-level and statewide results in late fall and could shift as officials vet them.

Some experts who reviewed the scores said the gains are heartening, particularly against the backdrop of testing data nationally that has pointed to a slow or stalling recovery from the pandemic’s profound academic damage. They voiced concern about lower reading scores for Chicago’s third graders — a year considered a crucial predictor of later academic success — and for the district’s English language learners, a student group hit particularly hard by the shift to remote learning.

Experts caution that the results do not offer an apples-to-apples comparison to the eve of the pandemic. Based on participation data, many fewer students took the test this year in Chicago, which saw major enrollment drops during the pandemic. Experts note it’s possible that the district lost some of its most vulnerable students amid COVID’s upheaval.

District officials said this spring that they were encouraged by various academic data and feedback from campuses suggesting that the 2022-23 year saw more momentum in the district’s efforts to help students bounce back academically. They have credited new programs, including an in-house tutoring corps and intervention teachers who work with struggling students one-on-one or in small groups, as well as a push to roll out quality curriculums and teacher professional development on all its campuses.

“Now, early signs in our state assessment data are also showing positive results that our community can be proud of,” the district said in a statement. “While assessment results will not be finalized until later this year, preliminary data show that our investments in intentional supports for educators and students are yielding results.”

The district noted it considers helping students recover from the pandemic’s social and emotional fallout just as important as supporting their academic recovery, and it touted $35 million it is spending this coming school year on a social-emotional learning curriculum, mental health services, and additional social workers and counselors.

The state test score gains come after a challenging 2021-22 school year, when COVID surges, staffing shortages, and other disruptions hampered recovery efforts. In 2022, Illinois proficiency levels in the district dropped to 15% in reading and about 20% in math, amid statewide dips in the portion of students meeting standards.

Experts such as Marianne Perie, the director of assessment, research, and innovation at the nonprofit WestEd, say that across the country, the pandemic damage has been deeper and the recovery slower in math than in reading. That’s not surprising, Perie said.

“If you are a parent at home with your kids, it’s easier to sit down and read a book,” she said. “It’s much harder to do math with them.”

On National Assessment of Educational Progress results released last year, Chicago Public Schools saw a decade of math gains on the test vanish, even as scores dipped only slightly in reading — a change not considered statistically significant. The makers of that exam, known as the “the nation’s report card,” work with a sample of students designed to minimize the effect of demographic and enrollment shifts.

On this year’s Illinois Assessment of Readiness, 17% of Black students scored proficient in reading and 7% in math — compared with 54% in reading and 52% in math among Asian American students, the district’s highest-performing group on the state test.

Among students with disabilities, proficiency levels looked comparable to those pre-COVID: Only 4% met state expectations in math and in reading. Among English language learners, 9% met reading standards and 6% did so in math — proficiency levels that remained farthest behind from pre-pandemic results among student groups.

The portion of students who scored in the lowest of five categories — “did not yet meet expectations” — remained markedly higher in both subjects compared to pre-pandemic results, with 27% of students in reading and 30% in math falling in that group.

Officials at the Illinois State Board of Education have previously cautioned against publicizing local state test results, which it shares with districts in the spring, ahead of their formal release in late fall. They have noted that these results are still subject to vetting, and lack important context without statewide data. Last year, preliminary Chicago Public Schools results Chalkbeat obtained and published were identical to data the state eventually released.

Perie noted that few states have released 2023 achievement data, so it’s hard to say if Chicago’s results signal a broader uptick in recovery, or if the district is something of an outlier. Overall, national data so far has been troubling, suggesting the country is years away from helping students recover academically.

“These results are encouraging,” she said. “It’s great news that Chicago students appear to be recovering.”

Paul Zavitkovsky, an assessment specialist at the Center for Urban Education Leadership at the University of Illinois Chicago, also said the district’s scores show bracing gains across most grades. But like Perie, he flagged third grade scores, where both reading and math proficiency remained significantly lower than pre-pandemic. For this year’s third graders, the years when the bulk of reading skills are normally acquired were upended by the pandemic.

“The one really worrisome thing is the slowness of recovery efforts in grade 3,” he said. “Rising achievement levels in the primary grades are historically what’s driven overall achievement gains in grades 4 through 8 and beyond.”

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s 5th and 8th graders must take spring’s state tests on computers. Are schools ready?

2023-07-26T21:34:08+00:00

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New York City’s fifth and eighth graders will have to take this spring’s state tests — for English, math, and science — on computers, giving schools a nine-month runway to prepare 140,000 students to make the switch from pen and paper.

A substantial amount of work may be ahead to ensure the transition goes smoothly. Of the third to eighth grade students, only 16,300 took computer-based tests last year, according to state data obtained by Chalkbeat. Though a big jump from the year before, when about 1,070 kids took the tests via computer, it’s still a fraction of the number of kids expected to take the tests on computers this school year.

In the 2024-2025 school year, all fourth and sixth graders will be required to take the tests on computers, and by spring 2026, third and seventh graders will join the mix, completing the shift to computer-based testing for all students. (There will be accommodations for students with disabilities who need to use paper, officials said.)

The New York State Education Department last year proposed spending $21 million to support the transition to computer-based testing for grades 3-8 for English and math and science for fifth and eighth graders, but the state’s final budget did not include the funding. Forty-eight states, including New York, have already started using computer assessments.

“It’s time we join the 21st century, and computer-based testing is how we do it,” Zachary Warner, assistant commissioner to the Office of State Assessment, said.

But some New York City teachers don’t think their schools or students are ready for the transition.

Teachers fear that without resources, such as updates to their building infrastructure, computer labs, and computer lab teachers, they won’t have the bandwidth in their academic day to support the needs their students will have as a result of the switch. Teachers also fear that students won’t perform as well on computers.

Officials from New York City’s education department declined to comment on the transition.

Computer-based testing will be more efficient, officials say

Warner said computer-based testing will be more efficient for teachers, allowing teachers to grade exams faster. Schools will also have more flexible and expanded testing schedules, which could avoid previous problems with tests being scheduled during Muslim holidays. (This year, for instance, Eid al-Fitr conflicts with the reading test.)

Eventually, computer-based testing could lead to computer-adaptive testing, which is where a test adapts to the student’s level of work and will produce harder or easier questions based on the student’s performance.

“With computer adaptive testing, we could meet students where they’re at, it would help those that are struggling and challenge those that are performing higher. This could make a real difference for all students,” Warner said.

NY’s computer-based testing has seen some glitches

The state’s move to computerized testing experienced a setback in 2019 with technical glitches that ultimately led to nearly 7,000 students’ exams not being properly completed. (New York City only had a limited number of schools affected at the time.)

The state acknowledged those problems in a 2022 memo, saying that changes have been made. The state is switching to cloud-based servers using Amazon Web Services. More than 230,000 students from over 1,000 schools statewide took computer tests in 2022 with no significant technical concerns while using the new cloud-based servers, officials said.

Studies also have shown that students tend to do worse on exams taken on a computer or a tablet than on one taken with pencil and paper. In one study, students in elementary and middle school performed worse on tests done by computer, though it varied by age and subject. Students from low-income families did worse in all subjects after transitioning to computer-based testing. But more practice with technology can lessen the impact.

Warner said the state will ensure students and teachers receive training as they prepare for the switch. “A kid will never sit down on the day of a test and [have] it be their first time in front of a computer,” he said.

Some NYC teachers fear schools aren’t ready for transition

The city bought 725,000 devices during the pandemic for remote learning, and many of those devices have since been used in classrooms across the city for some local periodic assessments. But some teachers see problems ahead for widespread computer-based testing.

Martina Meijer, a fourth grade teacher in Brooklyn’s District 22, said the experience they’ve had so far with iReady assessments her school administers has been “a complete disaster.” Only 16 of her 26 students have functioning devices, even though some students received devices from the city and the school has 20 computers available to fourth graders at the school.

“It takes about seven to nine school days to get all 26 students through one assessment test,” said Meijer.

Samantha Revells, a third grade teacher at Brooklyn’s New Lots School, said it takes about 45 minutes just to get her 25 students logged into their accounts in order to begin the testing process — that’s with the assistance of a paraprofessional and student helper.

Both Revells and Meijer said students tend to rush through computer-based tests versus paper tests.

“We have to monitor them so closely when they do computer-based exams, because if not they’ll just click and click because they become so impatient,” said Revells.

Meijer said computer testing also doesn’t work as well for some subjects. “Having students complete math problems on a computer versus paper discourages them from doing the annotation that we’ve taught them to do when working out a problem,” she said.

Meijer said her school’s electrical wiring also isn’t equipped to handle computer-based testing.

She said she was told that devices such as a Corsi–Rosenthal Box, a handmade air purifier, and a miniature refrigerator required too much power to use in her classroom. However, she’s expected to charge more than 30 devices.

She spent $100 on surge-protected power cords for her classroom because she feared cheaper cords could cause a fire.

“This switch isn’t helping teachers. It’s inefficient and it’s adding more work for us,” said Meijer.

Correction: This story initially said the state Education Department would allocate $21 million to support the move to computer-based learning. Ultimately, that money was not included in the state’s final budget.

Eliana Perozo is a reporting intern at Chalkbeat New York. You can reach her at eperozo@chalkbeat.org.

New York’s reading and math scores are delayed, state officials say. Here’s why it matters.

2023-07-18T23:13:05+00:00

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New York schools are expected to receive state assessment results late this year — a delay that may change how schools decide which students need additional academic support.

Each spring, schools across the state administer standardized exams in reading and math for third through eighth grade students. The results offer one look at how students are faring. For instance, they showed a steep decline in math scores in the city in 2022 as students faced severe pandemic disruptions, even as reading scores rose.

Under state regulations, schools must consider students who fall below certain scores for academic intervention services, but make final determinations based on a variety of factors and assessments.

The scores can also be one helpful measure for families and schools to identify ahead of the school year when students are struggling — arming parents with additional information as they may advocate for more resources. The scores can also help schools in making course and programming decisions.

This past spring, however, students took exams that followed new learning standards. The “Next Generation Learning Standards” were established after revisions from the controversial Common Core. Intended to clarify previously vague language, the new standards, for example, outlined specific theorems students had to learn in geometry, while the old standards stated only that students must be able to “prove theorems about triangles.”

State officials said more time is needed to analyze the results and develop “cut scores,” or thresholds for student proficiency, because it’s the first time the new standards were used.

The state department of education said results are expected to be released in the fall, but declined to provide a specific timeline. Last year, individual student scores were available to families and schools in August, though the broader, citywide figures weren’t publicly released until late September. (About 38% of third through eighth graders passed the 2022 math exams, while about half passed the reading tests.)

As a result of the expected delay, the state’s Board of Regents Monday adopted an amendment to state regulations allowing schools to bypass the required use of the scores to determine which students should be considered for academic interventions.

Those services are intended to help students who aren’t meeting the state’s learning standards with extra instructional time and support services.

Schools previously had to follow a two-step process to identify students in need of services. The first step involved considering all students who fell below an established threshold on the state reading or math tests. The second step required schools follow a locally-developed procedure to determine which students would receive academic intervention services.

Now, schools can opt out of the two-step process, instead relying solely on the locally-developed procedure.

According to state guidance, schools should consider multiple measures of student performance, including other assessments and psychoeducational evaluations — but must apply the same standards uniformly at each grade level.

It’s not the first time that schools will have flexibility to make such determinations without state assessment scores. The state previously gave such leeway to schools in the 2020-21 and 2021-22 school years, as the pandemic saw state testing canceled or disrupted, according to state regulations.

When reached for comment, DOE officials said they would review the amendment.

The amendment was adopted as an emergency rule, with a proposal for permanent adoption expected in November after a 60-day public comment period.

Additionally, when state assessment scores are released this fall, the new standards will once again make it difficult to compare results to prior years. Changes to the exams over the past decade have made it impossible to track trends over time, as officials have warned not to compare results to prior years when aspects of the tests are modified.

If screened admissions remain the same as last year, the test results should not affect fifth and eighth graders as they head into admissions season. In New York City, public middle and high schools that screen students from admission did not consider state test scores for this year’s rising sixth and ninth graders.

“While we do not anticipate major changes to school admissions, we are in the midst of engaging with schools and families and want to hear their thoughts about improvements to our process,” education department spokesperson Chyann Tull said in a statement.

Correction: This story initially said that test scores will not be considered for middle and high school admissions this year. The education department has not yet made its final determinations.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools TCAP scores show modest gains

2023-07-18T21:20:24+00:00

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Memphis-Shelby County Schools students gained some ground on state math tests, newly released test scores show, but they have yet to rebound to pre-pandemic proficiency levels.

In English language arts, where the district recouped pandemic era losses last year, scores stagnated.

Officials released the district-level results of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, known as TCAP, Tuesday afternoon.

The gains for Memphis were much more modest than the previous year, when officials trumpeted a district “trending up” following devastating academic declines during the pandemic. Overall, scores on the tests students took in the spring approached 2019 levels but have yet to completely return for all students and subject areas.

MSCS Deputy Superintendent Angela Whitelaw acknowledged in a statement that the district had “continued work to do this year.”

Statewide, math scores followed a similar trajectory as in Memphis, although scores for MSCS students were lower than statewide averages. In MSCS, 15% of students were on track for their grade in math compared with 23% in 2019. The 2021 low was 7%.

But while Tennessee students in general continued to see literacy gains, Memphis did not see much growth after last year’s rebound.

Students in grades 3-8 take the state assessments each year, and high school students take subject-area tests at the end of their courses.

“One key takeaway for me is the momentum we saw in our high schools,” Whitelaw said. “With the exception of English 1, we saw gains across the board.”

The score reports do not reflect the progress of students as they move from one grade to the next. For now, they can be used only to compare, say, this year’s sixth graders to last year’s sixth graders.

So they don’t capture how much this year’s third graders in Memphis improved from when they were in second grade. Those improvements showed up in an analysis MSCS shared earlier this summer in connection with Tennessee’s new reading law. This past year’s third graders were the first class subject to the new state law, which uses students’ TCAP scores in English language arts to determine whether they need more intervention to avoid being held back.

MSCS’ recovery efforts have helped students who are the farthest behind, the data shows. In both ELA and math, the share of students who scored “below” proficiency on the test — the lowest performance level — continued to shrink. But for both subjects, that share is still larger than in 2019, and the divide is more pronounced in math.

“Having visited these classrooms this morning, it helps me to remain hopeful and optimistic,” Bill White, a top MSCS academic leader, said after a tour of summer class at Shelby Oaks Elementary. “Because the data nationwide shows me that coming out of those learning losses is going to be tough, and it’s going to be slow, and it’s going to require extra time and instruction.”

The testing data reflects achievements from the most normal school year the district’s students have had since classrooms shuttered in March 2020 as a precaution against the spread of COVID-19. The 2021-21 school year was online for most Memphis students. They returned to classrooms in 2021-22, but spikes in COVID-19 infections led to waves of absences and disruptions to learning.

Students didn’t have those kinds of disruptions this past school year, but the district did have a turbulent year, starting off with transitions in top leadership and ending with the fallout of a stalled superintendent search.

For the coming school year, the board plans to order a review of the district’s academic programs, which interim Superintendent Toni Williams has started preparing. The results are expected to also inform spending decisions as federal COVID relief funds run out.

“We know the district is doing something right,” board member Kevin Woods said about the academic review. “And I think the better way we frame that is why so many of our students struggle, with all the investments that we make.”

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Reach her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Thomas Wilburn is the senior data editor for Chalkbeat. Reach Thomas at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

TCAP scores are in for Tennessee school districts. Look up how your district did.

2023-07-18T21:14:52+00:00

Most Tennessee school systems increased their students’ proficiency rates in math and English language arts last school year, according to district-level test scores released Tuesday by the state.

The latest scores generally mirrored statewide data released last month that showed gains across all core subjects and grades, even exceeding pre-pandemic proficiency rates in English language arts and social studies.

But large learning gaps remain, especially for historically underserved students including children with disabilities, those from low-income families, and students of color.

The results are an important marker as school systems work to recover from steep learning losses in 2021, when the first test scores from the pandemic period declined dramatically across Tennessee and the rest of the nation.

The scores also give a localized snapshot of how school districts are doing with tutoring, summer school, and other programs designed to accelerate learning after the pandemic.

Below, you can look up how your school district performed in English language arts and math in 2022-23 under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

You also can delve further into local results, including scores in science and social studies, via Tennessee’s new online dashboard on its State Report Card.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent covering the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Thomas Wilburn is Chalkbeat’s senior data editor. Contact him at twilburn@chalkbeat.org.

2023 ILEARN scores: See test results from your school

2023-07-12T13:05:44+00:00

ILEARN scores for 2023 were released Wednesday, with Indiana students doing slightly better than last year on their overall scores.

In 2023, about 30.6% of students in grades 3-8 statewide scored proficient or better in both the English and math sections of the ILEARN state test — only a fraction of a percentage point above the 30.2% last year.

By subject, 40.7% of students were proficient in English, and 40.9% were proficient in math. That’s a drop of half a percentage point in English and a 1.5 percentage point increase over last year in math.

See how students at your school did on the ILEARN test using the table below:

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

2023 ILEARN scores show Indiana students improving in math, but stagnating in reading

2023-07-12T13:00:00+00:00

Indiana’s statewide testing scores stagnated this year as students faced an uneven academic recovery, with gains in math proficiency and declines in English.

Around 30.6% of students in grades 3-8 statewide scored proficient or better in both the English and math sections of the ILEARN state test — only a fraction of a percentage point above the 30.2% last year.

Even though overall math scores rose 1.5 percentage points over last year, English scores dropped half a percentage point despite a statewide effort to boost literacy. In 2023, 40.7% of students were proficient in English, and 40.9% were proficient in math.

Reading proficiency rates have dropped back to 2021 levels after gains in 2022, with several student groups showing a percentage-point decline this year.

Overall scores still remain far below pre-pandemic levels: In 2019, around 37% of students scored proficient in both English and math. Around 48% of students scored proficient in at least one of the sections.

“When we set our standards in 2019, compared to the data we’re seeing now, we’re still about 6% below where we were in 2019,” said Charity Flores, chief academic officer at the Indiana Department of Education.

The department acknowledged in a presentation to the State Board of Education that more targeted support is needed in English, especially for English learner students and middle schoolers. Seventh grade English scores dropped nearly 3 percentage points.

The state launched several initiatives in the last year to improve reading skills, including increasing funding for English learners.

New laws also require schools and teacher preparation programs to align their literacy instruction with research-backed methods known collectively as the science of reading. The state also recently reduced the number of standards required of students in order to allow teachers to focus on the most essential skills.

Students will take a brand-new statewide test by 2025-26, as the department undertakes a redesign of the assessment.

The goal of the redesign is to make the results clearer to families and teachers with more frequent data, Flores said, as well as to shorten the final assessment. Students will take informal, check-in assessment throughout the year.

2023 ILEARN results by school and student group

Some student groups showed signs of improvement on the 2023 ILEARN. For the second year in a row, Black students posted at least a percentage point increase in both math and English.

Sixth graders posted a 2.8 percentage-point increase in math proficiency and a 1.8 percentage-point increase in English.

Additionally, around 53% of third graders scored proficient or better in math, making them once again the only grade where more than half of students were proficient in either subject. Those students have only known school during the pandemic.

At Indianapolis Public Schools, proficiency rates for English stayed flat from last year, while math scores climbed 1.6 percentage points. Overall, 14.8% of students were proficient in both math and English.

Meanwhile, Brownsburg schools in neighboring Hendricks County had the highest percentage of students who tested proficient, 63.4%.

Below, look up scores at your school.

Academic recovery is stabilizing for most students

At a Wednesday State Board of Education meeting, Department of Education officials also presented the results of a multiyear study on the impact of the pandemic on students’ academics.

This year’s analysis showed that nearly all students are stabilizing in both English and math, with no further declines. But students are not accelerating their learning at the rates needed to return to their pre-pandemic performance, according to the presentation.

Notably, English performance among English learner students is still declining.

Flores said the data indicates that the education system is returning to a pre-pandemic normal, but specific student groups — including English learners, middle schoolers, and students who were below proficiency before the pandemic — have yet to recover.

“Specific conversations and concerted efforts are needed to best support their learning,” she said.

SAT scores also show a decline

In addition to scores for students in grades 3-8, the Department of Education on Wednesday released SAT proficiency rates for Indiana juniors, who take the test as a graduation requirement.

The percentage of students who tested as college ready declined in both math, and reading and writing from last year.

Around 31% of juniors met the benchmark in the spring compared with 33% in 2022, the first year the test was required.

In reading and writing, around 50% of students met the benchmark this year, compared with 52% in 2023.

The department is also considering new graduation requirements to align with Indiana’s push for more work-based learning, though it’s unclear whether the SAT requirement would be affected.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Recent school year saw little academic recovery, new study finds

2023-07-11T04:01:00+00:00

There’s been little, if any, progress making up large learning gaps that have emerged since the onset of the pandemic, according to a new analysis of data from the testing group NWEA.

In the 2022-23 school year, students learned at a similar or slower rate compared to a typical pre-pandemic school year, the analysis found. This left intact the substantial learning losses, which have barely budged since the spring of 2021.

NWEA offers only one data point based on a subset of American students, and more data from other exams will be needed to produce a clearer picture of academic progress during this last school year. Still, NWEA’s analysis is a concerning indication that the steep learning losses seen since the pandemic have proven difficult to ameliorate and could have lasting consequences for students and the country.

The results are “somber and sobering,” said NWEA researcher Karyn Lewis. “Whatever we’re doing, it’s not enough,” she said. “The magnitude of the crisis is out of alignment with the scope and scale of the response and we need to do more.”

Since the onset of the COVID pandemic, NWEA, which develops and sells tests to schools, has been measuring students’ progress on math and reading exams in grades three through eight. By the spring of 2021 — according to NWEA and a string of other tests — the typical student was far behind where they would normally be. Test score gaps by race and family income, already yawning, had grown in many cases. This coincided with dramatic disruptions outside and inside schools, including extended virtual instruction. Students were learning during that time — but much more slowly than usual.

By the end of the 2021-22 school year, NWEA offered some reason for optimism. Gaps were still there, but students in many grades had started to slowly make up ground. Learning during the school year was back to normal, perhaps even a bit better than normal. State tests also indicated that students were starting to catch up.

But NWEA’s results from the most recent school year are more pessimistic. For reasons that aren’t clear, progress stalled out, even reversed. In most grades and subjects, students actually learned at a slightly slower rate than usual. Growth in middle school reading was particularly sluggish.

In no grade or subject was there evidence of substantial catch-up this year. Instead, the learning gap this spring was not much different than in the spring of 2021, according to NWEA. Students of all types remain behind, but NWEA shows that Black and Hispanic students have been hurt somewhat more than white and Asian American students.

“This is not what we were hoping to see and it’s not the message we want to be sharing at this time,” said Lewis. “But the data are what they are.”

Frustratingly, though, the data does not come with a clear explanation.

Schools were beset with challenges this past year: Chronic absenteeism remained at an alarmingly high level in many places. More teachers left the classroom than usual. Educators reported difficulties managing students’ behavior and supporting their mental health.

But it’s not clear why there was more progress in the 2021-22 school year, which was also an unusually taxing year in many ways, according to teachers. Lewis said this was puzzling, but speculated that an initial burst of motivation upon returning to school buildings had fizzled.

Learning loss recovery efforts have also run into hurdles. Tutoring has reached only a small subset of students. Few districts have extended the school day or year to guarantee all students more learning time.

But NWEA researchers cautioned that their data cannot speak directly to the effectiveness or particular recovery efforts or to the federal COVID relief money more generally. “We have no access to the counterfactual of what life would be like right now absent those funds — I think it would be much more dire,” said Lewis.

It’s also possible that some combination of out-of-school factors may be driving trends in student learning. Researchers have long noted that a complex array of variables outside of schools’ control matters a great deal for student learning.

What the NWEA study does suggest is that students are not on track to catch up to where they would have been if not for the pandemic. Lewis says the takeaway is that policymakers and schools simply aren’t doing enough. “If you give someone half a Tylenol for a migraine and expect them to feel better, that’s just not reality,” she said.

NWEA’s analysis is based on data from millions of students in thousands of public schools. Outcomes may not be representative of all students or schools, though, since the exam’s administration is voluntary.

NWEA researchers say other data would be helpful to confirm the results. That could come soon: State test results from this year are beginning to emerge and other testing companies will be releasing their own data.

Matt Barnum is a national reporter covering education policy, politics, and research. Contact him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s TCAP test scores climb for second straight year after pandemic

2023-06-29T19:00:00+00:00

Tennessee’s third set of test scores from the pandemic era improved again across all core subjects and grades, even exceeding pre-pandemic proficiency rates in English language arts and social studies.

State-level results released Thursday showed an overall increase in proficiency since last year for public school students, and a surge since 2021, when the first test scores from the pandemic period declined dramatically across the nation.

But the performance of historically underserved students — including children with disabilities, those from low-income families, and students of color — still lags. Those groups of students, who already trailed their peers before disruptions to schooling began in 2020, also spent the longest time learning remotely during the public health emergency caused by COVID-19.

The latest scores continue the state’s upward trend of pandemic recovery, based on standardized tests under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, also known as TCAP.

The academic snapshot suggests that Tennessee’s early investments in summer learning camps and intensive tutoring are paying off to counter three straight years of COVID-related disruptions.

Gov. Bill Lee called the results “encouraging,” while interim Education Commissioner Sam Pearcy praised educators, students, and their families for their hard work.

“These gains signal that we’re focused on the right work to advance student learning,” Pearcy told reporters during a morning call. “And as a result of that, we know that we will all continue to keep our foot on the gas to keep this momentum rolling.”

Beginning in the third grade, Tennessee students take TCAPs in four core subjects. This year’s students exceeded pre-pandemic levels in English language arts and social studies, while improving in math and science.

As previously reported, Tennessee’s third-grade proficiency rate jumped by over 4 percentage points to more than 40% on tests given this spring. Many of the other 60% have to participate in learning intervention programs to avoid being held back a year under a new state law.

Results for historically underserved student groups reflected both good and bad news.

The good news: Improvement for students of color, children from low-income families, those with disabilities, and those learning to speak English mostly paralleled the gains of their more affluent, white, or nondisabled peers.

The bad news: Tennessee isn’t closing those persistent gaps. Our analysis below focused on overall performance in English language arts.

The statewide data is available online by clicking “2023 State Assessment” on a new dashboard of the Tennessee Report Card.

District-level results, which are being reviewed by district leaders, are scheduled to be released in July.

And for the first time under a long-delayed change to the state’s accountability policies, this year’s TCAP results will be used to help calculate A-to-F grades this fall for Tennessee’s 1,700-plus public schools. The state has deferred the new accountability measure for five years because of testing and data disruptions, most recently caused by the pandemic.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated with graphics and analysis.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Kae Petrin is a data and graphics reporter for Chalkbeat. Contact Kae at kpetrin@chalkbeat.org.

New York wants to revamp how schools are evaluated. Here’s what could change for now.

2023-06-22T16:45:25+00:00

How does the state determine whether schools are doing well or if they are struggling and need extra support?

Before the pandemic, state officials relied on standardized tests and high school Regents exams to figure out how well students were doing, along with other factors, such as graduation rates. But the public health crisis paused state testing and affected school performance metrics in other ways.

Now, education department officials are seeking a new, temporary evaluation system for the next two school years, with the hopes of creating something more permanent for the 2025-26 school year.

If a school is found to be struggling, it is required to develop an improvement plan that must be approved by local and state officials. Schools that don’t make progress for five years could face state takeover or closure — but it’s a route that state officials rarely took even before developing the current accountability system, which is meant to be less punitive for schools.

In the short term, over the next two years, state officials want to exclude certain science and social studies exams, as well as measures for student growth and college and career readiness, when deciding which schools need improvement. These changes are necessary, officials say, because schools are still missing a trove of data, such as enough student participation in state tests, because of the pandemic.

Already, the conversation is sparking some controversy. Some groups focused on education reform believe the move represents a step backward just as schools need more help as they recover from the pandemic. Other observers believe the state’s proposed plan is reasonable.

Ultimately, the federal government must sign off on these proposed changes, since the state’s accountability system is required by federal law and is written into New York’s federally required Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, plan.

“They’re doing a decent job of balancing what’s of interest in the state and the federal ESSA requirements, and incorporating all the instability and uncertainty that came with the slowdown of testing during the pandemic,” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Teachers College and an expert in testing.

But Education-Trust New York, an advocacy organization focused on equity issues, worried that several of the proposed changes could mean masking “bright spots and disparities,” according to their written public feedback to the state.

“I think these next two school years are incredibly important for kids coming out of the pandemic,” said Jeff Smink, the group’s deputy director, in an interview with Chalkbeat. “We have to both give them all the support they need but also hold them to high standards, and I just don’t feel like we’re doing that right now.”

What metrics would still be used?

Under the state’s proposal, schools will still be measured on English language proficiency (based on a state language exam for English learners), graduation rates, how well students are doing in core subjects based on Regents and state test scores, and chronic absenteeism. In New York City, chronic absenteeism has been a pressing issue, with 41% of students last school year absent for at least 10 school days.

What do state officials want to ditch (for now)?

The state wants to put a pause on measuring academic progress based on certain goals for student scores on state English and math tests.

State officials say they want to update these goals — first set in the 2017-18 school year — before they use them to determine whether schools are struggling.

The state’s proposed plan would also pause the use of “Measures of Interim Progress,” which more broadly measures whether schools are meeting goals for academics and other things, like their graduation rates.

For elementary and middle schools, officials want to pause how they’ve been measuring student growth, largely because of the lack of testing data. Typically, they calculated student growth using three years of testing data, but the pandemic caused big disruptions: For example, just one in five New York City children took state exams in the 2020-21 school year, when most children chose to learn from home.

For high schools, officials won’t consider college, career, and civic readiness metrics, which include advanced coursework or extra credentials in specialized jobs-based courses. That’s because the pandemic may have hampered students’ access to some of these programs or courses, officials said. They also worried that the pandemic’s impact on learning may have caused students to perform worse academically than they otherwise would have, such as on AP exams.

What will the state do with data, even if it’s not being used to evaluate schools?

State officials still plan to provide all of this data to schools for “informational purposes only” for the next two school years, they said.

Why do state officials want to exclude elementary school science exams and high school social studies assessments?

Science tests would be excluded because the state has changed who must take those exams. Traditionally, students in fourth and eighth grades take the state science test. However, only eighth graders took the test this school year, as the state prepares to offer the exam next year to fifth graders instead of fourth graders. That means they won’t be able to compare results equitably across elementary and middle schools that have different grade configurations.

Fifth graders will take the exam next spring. Asked why those scores won’t be taken into account for the 2024-25 school year, a spokesperson said that it allows districts to have “consistency and predictability” for now, as they attempt to rebuild the accountability system.

While calling it a “logical” move, Ed-Trust argued that excluding science tests “undermines the importance of science education” and worried schools will have less reason to focus on it. The organization suggested that the state should instead work with local districts to “ensure a smooth transition” to the new science assessments without entirely removing it as one way to measure student performance.

On the high school level, officials want to pause using social studies tests because of multiple exam cancellations in recent years. The state looks at cohorts of students, such as the graduating class of 2023, when considering how they performed on these tests, namely the Regents exams for Global History and Geography and U.S. History and Government.

But students who will graduate this year couldn’t take Regents exams in 2021, when they were in 10th grade, because of the pandemic. U.S. History and Government exams were also canceled last year, when these students were juniors, in the wake of a mass shooting in Buffalo, with the state education department claiming there was material on the exam that could “compound student trauma.”

State officials have emphasized that this plan “in no way diminishes” the importance of science or social studies instruction.

How will schools be labeled if they need support?

The lowest performing schools are known as schools in need of Comprehensive Support and Improvement, or CSI. But the state won’t list new CSI schools until the 2025-26 school year because they identified a group of such schools this year under a tweaked system, and that process only happens every three years, officials said.

A total of 139 New York City schools were identified this year as in need of some level of improvement, with 83% of them listed as CSI schools, according to state data.

However, New York will identify schools for Targeted Support and Intervention, or TSI, next year, which must happen annually per federal law. Those are schools that aren’t meeting goals set for specific student groups, such as by race, economic status, and those with disabilities.

In one recent — and perhaps confusing — change, schools that are meeting or exceeding their goals are no longer called “Schools in Good Standing” and instead are now labeled by the state as schools identified for Local Support and Improvement, or LSI.

What will happen for the 2025-26 school year?

State officials plan to revamp the accountability system for the 2025-26 school year after collecting feedback from the public. The new plan will also incorporate any changes to the state’s graduation requirements, which could come as soon as the end of this year. The education department is rethinking the role of Regents exams in graduation, among other considerations.

Pallas said that the plan for the 2025-26 school year and beyond would still have to meet federal ESSA requirements and earn the buy-in of school district leaders — meaning that it likely won’t be “a dramatic break from the past.”

“It’s gotta be something that feels progressive but also comfortable,” Pallas said.

Thomas Wilburn contributed.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

New Jersey advances bill banning high school graduation test requirement

2023-06-08T10:36:00+00:00

A bill to repeal a state mandate that 11th graders in New Jersey pass a statewide proficiency test to graduate high school got another green light from lawmakers Monday.

Critics of the exit exam argue that research shows standardized testing is not an accurate way to measure a student’s knowledge. They point to studies showing graduation exit testing isn’t a good predictor of how ready a student is for college, and say the testing unfairly hurts students of color and children from low-income families.

“I would agree we need some sort of measure, but we — as the legislative body, as a state, as administrators and representatives — should ensure that this measure truly tells us the quality of the educational program that the student is receiving, not the wealth or poverty or where they’re coming from,” said Jamil Maroun, Manville’s schools superintendent.

The Assembly Community Development and Affairs advanced the bill unanimously, and it now heads to the full chamber for a vote. An identical bill in the Senate awaits a committee hearing.

At Monday’s committee meeting, school administrators and education advocates wondered why schools are still required to administer the test as more states lift the requirement — and as New Jersey itself has not counted the exam since 2019.

New Jersey has required students to pass a standardized test to graduate high school since 1980, and is one of only a handful of states that still require it. New Jersey called off the test in 2020 and 2021 because of the pandemic, and last year juniors took the exam but did not have to pass it to graduate this year.

If students don’t pass it, they can still graduate by submitting a portfolio with their grade point average and results from another qualifying test, like the PSAT.

Education officials testified that students who have passed another test may not put in the effort to pass the proficiency exam, leading to hours of lost educational time in the classroom. Meanwhile, students who will not pass the exam are still forced to sit for hours to take it just to fail, they said.

Krista Whitaker spoke of her two sons, both of whom have Individualized Education Programs. Whitaker said her oldest son excels on regular classroom tests when provided with modifications like extra time and verbal guidance, but that help is not allowed for the high school proficiency exam, effectively forcing him to take a test he doesn’t understand and can’t pass.

“As of right now, my son cannot graduate next year,” Whitaker said.

According to the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, students from communities of color disproportionately fail high school graduation exams, creating hurdles for students seeking scholarships or shutting them out of college admissions entirely, contributing to the racial gap in high school graduation rates and college enrollment.

Opponents of the measure passed Monday say the test is even more critical in light of school disruptions during the pandemic. Althea Ford of the New Jersey Business and Industry Association said the test provides data to “assess the impact that the pandemic is having on our schools and children.”

Ford said weakening testing requirements could lead to a diminished workforce in the future because of lower standards to graduate. The state’s consistently high ranking for education is what attracts businesses to the Garden State, she said.

Paula White, executive director of education advocacy group JerseyCAN, also emphasized how testing offers a standardized way to measure proficiency in 11th grade. It would be a “detriment” to underserved students to do away with a data point that keeps school districts and teachers accountable, she said.

“Information is not an indictment … we have to stop putting our heads in the sand regarding information that we simply do not want to know,” she said.

Sophie Nieto-Muñoz is a reporter for New Jersey Monitor, where this story was first published. Sophie speaks Spanish and is proud to connect to the Latinx community through her reporting.

Reading retests whittle down number of MSCS, Tennessee 3rd graders facing retention

2023-06-08T21:48:22+00:00

Update: June 8, 2023: This story has been updated with statewide results for the retest, provided to Chalkbeat by the Tennessee Department of Education on Thursday.

About 1 in 5 Memphis Shelby-County Schools third graders who took a state retest in reading last month succeeded in earning an easier path to fourth grade — about 1,200 students in all.

Roughly 500 students in the district did well enough on the retest to be able to go straight to fourth grade, without summer school or tutoring, according to results released Wednesday by the Tennessee Department of Education. The other 700 improved enough that they can choose either summer school or tutoring to advance, rather than having to attend both.

That still leaves large numbers of MSCS third graders — along with thousands more across the state — who may have to participate in both interventions to avoid being held back under the state’s strict new retention law for struggling readers.

Statewide, about 3,300 third graders scored proficient on the retest, and can head straight to fourth grade, according to updated data shared with Chalkbeat Thursday. That’s nearly 13% of third graders who took the test across the state. About 60% of third graders who didn’t score proficient in the spring tried the test a second time.

The district-level retest results released Wednesday give district and state officials a fuller picture of the impact of the 2021 law, which took effect with this year’s third graders.

The results didn’t account for students who successfully appeal their scores, and the ones who are exempt from the law because they have limited English proficiency or reading disabilities, or have been retained before.

But in MSCS, the state’s largest district, the retest made a difference for hundreds of students who were initially identified as being at risk for retention, based on their English language arts scores on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program. About three-quarters of MSCS third graders didn’t score proficient on the initial test administered in the spring, one of the worst rates in the state.

Critics of the test have said it does not specifically measure reading skills, making it a poor criterion for determining whether third graders can be promoted.

Statewide, some 44,000 students, or 60% of third graders, did not demonstrate proficiency on the initial TCAP English language arts test.

But unlike most other Tennessee districts, MSCS got almost all the students who didn’t pass the first test to take a similar retest during the final weeks of school.

“We are proud of students who participated in the retake for exploring this pathway,” interim state Education Commissioner Sam Pearcy said in a statement about the scores.

Clay County Schools, a small district in north central Tennessee, reaped significant benefits from the retest. While only half the third graders eligible for a retest participated, three-fifths of them did well enough to score proficient and move automatically to fourth grade.

For most school districts, though, improvements from the retest were more modest.

Here are key takeaways from a review of the district-level results:

Half of Tennessee districts had between 10% and 20% of their students achieve proficiency on the retest.
A third of Tennessee districts had between 10% and 20% of students improve from the lowest performance level — “below” proficiency — to the next-highest level, “approaching” proficiency.
Just under half of Tennessee districts had fewer than 10% of students improve from “below” to “approaching.”
A little more than half of Tennessee districts had a retest participation rate of 50% or more.

Results for each district are in the chart below.

Correction: June 8, 2023: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of students who did not score proficient on the spring English language arts tests. It is 44,000, not 74,000.

Thomas Wilburn and Nadia Bey contributed data analysis.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana cuts number of academic standards with a new statewide test coming soon

2023-06-07T15:47:39+00:00

Knowledge is power — but knowledge of idioms is no longer required for Hoosier students.

That’s because the Indiana state school board on Wednesday approved a major cut to the number of state academic standards in order to prioritize what students must know in every grade level.

The goal of trimming back the standards — mandated by a 2022 state law — is to help prepare more students who are ready for college and career when they graduate. The Indiana Department of Education will next work on creating a new version of the statewide assessment, the ILEARN, that matches the revised standards and may include informal “checkpoint” tests throughout the year.

Department officials, working with focus groups, were charged with cutting 25% of standards, and then designating one-third of the remaining standards as “essential.”

Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner

The changes, which the board approved in a 9-2 vote, affect four core academic areas: language arts, math, social studies, and science. They go into effect for the 2023-24 school year.

The reduced standards received a mostly warm welcome from members of the board and the public, who said the move would allow teachers to focus on the most important skills.

“We’ve been wrestling with the myriad of standards that sometimes can be a mile wide and an inch deep,” said Steve Baker, principal at Bluffton High School in northwest Indiana. “This enormity of standards has overwhelmed my teachers … to guess which ones were the most important, and which ones we have to eliminate.”

But some board members said the cuts didn’t go far enough, especially in the earliest grades.

“We have to be more prescriptive about what we want our kids to know,” said board member Pat Mapes, who voted against the slimmed-down standards.

Indiana Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said across all grade levels, the board’s review reduced the number of standards by more than what the law required. Kindergarten standards were reduced by 35%, while high school standards were reduced by 29%.

For example, the number of language arts standards for third grade — a critical year for literacy — has been nearly halved from 62 to 34. Many of the standards cut are those that students should have covered in previous years, such as recognizing alphabetical order or the parts of a sentence.

The review also merged three sections on reading literature, nonfiction, and vocabulary into a single new section on reading comprehension, with standards on idioms and using reference materials like dictionaries left on the cutting room floor.

Along with pruning the standards, state officials also approved new STEM standards, as well as updates to standards in early learning, health, and fine arts.

Jenner said the department will now turn its attention to aligning the statewide assessment in math and reading — the ILEARN — to the new standards. That process must be complete by March 2025.

One proposal for the revised test from the department would create short “checkpoint” tests throughout the year. These scores would be reported only to teachers and students and their parents, with an opportunity for students to retake the assessments if needed. Schools would still give a final, summative assessment at the end of the year for statewide reporting purposes.

“What we currently do is just kind of an autopsy,” said Mapes of the current state test. “It’s too late, and those kids move on to the next grade.”

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

For Memphis 3rd graders, threat of retention has hovered since kindergarten

2023-06-05T02:00:00+00:00

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With only a few days left in third grade, LaQuencher Sanders’ 8-year-old daughter, Kamryn, just wanted to be done with school.

She had been in the class of kindergartners who were sent home in March 2020 because of COVID. She was among the first-graders who had spent a year learning online as the pandemic raged. In second grade, her reading test scores got her flagged for retention under a new policy at Memphis-Shelby County Schools. To avoid being held back a grade, she had to attend summer school, and then tutoring throughout third grade.

This year, as the end of the year approached, she had a sense that her reading scores on the test she took in the spring may not be high enough for her to move on to fourth grade automatically. That meant that to avoid having to repeat the grade, she would likely face more summer school and another year of tutoring.

On the day her teacher was going to give her those scores, Kamryn arrived at school early, as usual. But at some point that morning, she walked out the front doors of her elementary school — and kept going. She walked a mile away, all by herself, before she stopped and asked for help. Police picked her up just before a major intersection and took her back to Kate Bond Elementary School.

All of it was just too much, she later explained to her mom.

“She told me that she was tired of school,” Sanders said.

Many third-graders across Tennessee found out in May that after a turbulent start to their education, they could be in for more testing, summer school, and tutoring, because they didn’t meet state requirements on a standardized reading test this spring. The interventions are dictated by a state law that took effect this year to improve literacy and deal with the legacy of learning loss during the pandemic.

LaQuencher Sanders’ daughter, Kamryn, usually loves school. But the stress of the third grade reading retention law prompted her to walk out of class — and keep walking.

Statewide, about 60% of third-graders did not meet the standard for proficiency. In MSCS alone, more than 6,000 students missed the mark.

It was the second time that this same cohort of MSCS students faced the threat of being held back over their reading scores. The district briefly had its own retention policy aimed at improving lagging performance in reading and targeted at last year’s second graders.

While the MSCS policy was based on a composite of 12 different scores, the new state law hinges on the results of a single test: the English language arts section of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

When those scores came out in May, some families were caught by surprise. Others, like Kamryn’s, knew what was coming — more school days, and less break time.

But that didn’t make the reality any less difficult.

Local school boards opposed focus on a single test

Lauren Giovannetti was one of the surprised ones. Her 9-year-old son, Anders, recently got tested to join the district’s gifted-education program. He scored at or above grade level on four benchmark tests throughout the school year.

But on the TCAP test — the only one that matters for this year’s third graders under the retention law — he scored “approaching” proficiency, one step below proficient on the state’s four-level scale.

To avoid being held back, students in that level have to attend summer school or tutoring, unless they do well enough on a retest, successfully appeal their result, or qualify for an exemption. (Students with reading disabilities and a limited time learning English are exempt, as are students who have been held back before.)

Anders was sick and crying over the results, Giovannetti said. He went back to Grahamwood Elementary School to take the test again. By then, peers knew which students scored well enough to move on to fourth grade automatically, and which ones didn’t, Giovannetti explained, because the students who had to take the test again were pulled out of class.

“I just don’t understand why this is the only factor that they’re looking at for something that’s such a big deal,” said Giovannetti.

Local officials had expected the TCAP results, combined with the fresh threat of retention, to be jarring for some families. “Even third graders who are performing at grade level could be subject to retention,” school board members for MSCS and suburban districts wrote to lawmakers about the new legislation in 2021. Testing as proficient on the state test, they argued, is not the same as grade-level mastery.

They implored lawmakers to seek a “comprehensive assessment” of third graders’ performance, rather than using a single state test to flag students for retention, which they said could have “possible negative life-long effects.”

“It’s not appropriate to put this much pressure on a 9-year-old,” Giovannetti said.

Families in Memphis and across the state have united over their frustrations with the law, and lawmakers responded by accepting some proposed amendments, including one that expands the criteria by one test for certain students. But the changes won’t take effect until next school year.

Giovannetti’s son got the results of his retest on his last day of third grade. He was one correct answer shy of scoring “proficient” and heading straight to fourth grade.

Giovannetti submitted an appeal, based on Anders’ results from an earlier benchmark test. It was approved within days, she told Chalkbeat, leaving her to wonder why the earlier score couldn’t have been counted in the first place.

“There’s something off here, and I don’t think it’s 6,000 kids,” she said. “I think we need to look into this test, and make sure it’s really measuring what we want it to measure.”

Students went through two years with threat of retention

MSCS officials say they have tried to convey to students that they are more than just a test score. But the state law makes clear that the one score on the TCAP may determine how these students will spend their summer, and possibly their next year in school.

The district sought a more accurate assessment of a student’s reading capabilities by introducing its own retention policy for second graders. Other states were already implementing reading retention policies, and there was one on the books in Tennessee that allowed schools the option to retain students based on third grade reading scores.

The board approved the policy in 2019, as the district was staring down a lofty literacy goal and stagnant reading scores. At the time, this year’s third graders were entering kindergarten, and school officials were stressing the importance of literacy as a gateway to advanced learning.

District officials considered delaying implementation of the policy because of the pandemic, but decided not to, on the basis that third grade would be too late to intervene. So the threat of retention trailed students into their second grade classrooms as they returned from a year of online school.

Giovannetti recalls second grade being intense, as teachers prepared students for third grade. Her son made it through to third grade without having to attend summer school. This year, she said, the state’s retention law for third graders was “kind of all we heard about.”

The district’s retention policy doesn’t exist anymore. MSCS revoked it in August without much discussion.

But by then, the learning setbacks caused by online schooling, which continued in MSCS well after other Tennessee districts resumed in-person school instruction, had already prompted Tennessee lawmakers to enact a statewide policy, but based on just the one test. So the retention threat followed these students into third grade.

“We were ahead of the game,” Angela Whitelaw, then one of two MSCS acting superintendents, told board members in an August committee meeting. “But now we need to align all of our resources and all of our work along with the state.”

Facing more school, student ‘wanted to go home’

Sanders, Kamryn’s mother, said she’s been keeping up with parent meetings and all the online communication from school that her daughter brings home.

Even before the scores arrived, third grade teachers had been talking about retests, and some students, including Kamryn, had already been signed up for summer school, based on anticipated results.

The walkout incident was shocking, Sanders said, because her daughter has always seemed to love school.

She had to attend summer school last year and tutoring throughout the year for reading. But that hadn’t stopped her from enjoying other subjects, like art and music. And in math, she helped her classmates learn their multiplication tables, her mom said.

On that day, “she just said she wanted to go home,” Sanders said.

In a statement about the girl’s experience, the district said counseling and other emotional supports are available to students, and that her school still had fun end-of-year activities.

“Districtwide, we’re working hard to uplift and celebrate our third graders,” the district said, “because we know the state-mandated reading retention law has deeply affected these little learners.”

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

NYC school admission offers are out. Here’s what the numbers show.

2023-06-02T00:41:43+00:00

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Despite the stress of applying to New York City public schools, more children received offers to their top-choice schools across all grade levels, education department officials said Thursday.

New York City schools have long relied on the practice of sorting and screening many kids, leading to a Hunger Games-like mindset for many families. It has also resulted in one of the nation’s most segregated school systems.

This year’s offer data shows little change in terms of racial and economic diversity compared to last year.

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing,” said Nyah Berg, of the integration advocacy nonprofit New York Appleseed, who previously expressed concerns that changes to this year’s admissions cycle could lead to less diverse schools. “We have made a lot of progress over the past two years.”

As the pandemic forced many schools to drop or shift their admissions criteria, some schools have become more diverse. Though integration advocates had long been pushing for such changes, it only happened by necessity because attendance could no longer be held against students, and standardized tests were not administered as they typically were. Neither Mayor Eric Adams nor Chancellor David Banks has made integration a top priority.

“If we really want to create and foster diverse schools there’s a lot more to be done than tinkering here and there,” Berg said.

Still, she believed this year’s changes centralizing admissions for high school, in particular, made the process more transparent, and she’s hopeful the city will continue to ditch standardized test scores and attendance in screening applicants.

Here’s a snapshot of what offers looked like for different grades.

Status quo for specialized high schools

Once again, few Black and Latino students were admitted to New York City’s eight prestigious specialized high schools, which accept students based solely on a single admissions test.

Black and Latino students made up nearly 10% of offers for next year’s class, according to education department data released Thursday.

That’s about the same as the previous year and the year before that. Just seven Black students were admitted to Stuyvesant based on the admissions exam — and that number was higher than three other specialized high schools.

Black and Latino students make up about 66% of students citywide.

The small number of Black and Latino students at the city’s specialized high schools has long been the subject of fierce debate, with many blaming the disparity on the reliance of a single test for admissions. (The admissions method is governed by state law.) The Adams administration has made little indication that it plans to change the way students are admitted to these schools, largely considered the Ivy League of New York City high schools.

About 26,000 eighth graders took the Specialized High School Admissions test this year, down about 2,000 from last year, according to city data.

Little change at selective high schools

For admissions to other selective New York City high schools, little changed. The education department created a tiered system for the city’s selective schools — like Beacon, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Townsend Harris — based on seventh grade scores in core subjects. The changes were aimed to simplify the process but also raised the bar for scores needed to qualify for the top group, narrowing the group of kids with priority access to these coveted schools.

Banks stirred up controversy when discussing the shift: “If a young person is working their tail off every single day and they get a 99% average … that should be honored,” he said at the time. “You should not be thrown in a lottery with just everybody.”

There were some concerns that the changes would reverse some of the pandemic-era diversity gains seen when competitive schools could no longer rely as heavily on grades and other screening measures, like state tests scores and attendance. But more than 40 of these schools have programs that set aside a certain percentage of their seats for students from low-income families or in temporary housing, for instance. That meant if there were not enough students with top grades for “group 1” who met the eligibility requirements for a school’s diversity targets, such as a certain percentage of students from low-income families, then those seats went to applicants in the next tier.

Despite these shifts in selection criteria, the offers reveal that little changed in racial and economic demographics compared to last year when an 85 grade point average was the cutoff for the top tier instead of this year’s 90 GPA. Roughly 32% of offers at these schools went to Latino students, followed by 25% to Asian American students, 19% to Black students, and 17% to white students. Roughly 66% of the offers went to students from low-income families.

Overall, of the roughly 73,000 eighth graders across the city receiving offers this year, about 48% percent got into their top choice. That isn’t far from last year, when about 50% got their first choice or the previous year when 46% got their No. 1 pick.

About 75% applicants got into one of their top three choices, up two percentage points from last year.

The city extended offers three months earlier than last year. The goal, city officials said, was to let families know before private school deposit deadlines.

Number of screened programs drops dramatically at middle school

Following two years without selective admissions for New York City middle schools — as the pandemic upended state test scores and other screening criteria — Banks let each district’s superintendent decide whether to reinstate competitive middle school admissions.

Some families lobbied to bring back screens, while others pushed to ditch them, saying it was unfair to sort the city’s 10-year olds based on their academic performance from fourth grade.

After superintendents spent about a month deliberating with their communities, nearly all opted for fewer or the same number of screened middle schools as before the pandemic. Nearly 60 of 478 middle schools ended up reinstating screens for at least some segment of their incoming sixth graders based on their fourth grade marks; 24 of these programs used selective criteria for all incoming sixth graders.

That dramatically reduced the number of kids in screened middle school programs from about 16,510 getting such offers in 2020 to about 5,100 with offers for the coming school year, according to the data.

The breakdown of students by income in screened programs remained fairly steady, with about 60% coming from low-income families. The share of Asian American students jumped to 35%, up from 21% in 2020, likely based on the demographics of which districts opted for screened programs.

Overall, 74% of the city’s fifth graders received an offer for their top choice, and 92% got one of their top three choices.

Kindergarten offers slightly up

City data also reflected a slight increase in kindergarten applicants, with about 1,200 more children applying. Those figures included applications for spots in the city’s coveted “gifted and talented” program, which used teacher evaluations instead of the prepandemic exams to select preschoolers.

About 95% of families saw their children admitted to one of their top three choices this year — up 4% from last year — as more seats were available and as the city said it extended more offers to families interested in schools outside of their zone or district.

This year, applications to the gifted and talented program were included with general kindergarten admission. Officials did not release admissions data for the gifted and talented program Thursday.

In the past, the program has faced criticism for admitting small numbers of Black and Hispanic students.

The application process underwent multiple changes during the pandemic, with Adams and Banks reversing a plan to phase out the program and choosing instead to expand the track by 100 seats in kindergarten last year.

Applications up slightly for 3-K and pre-K

For the city’s youngest students, admissions data showed a slight uptick as the city saw more applicants and more children set to receive 3-K and pre-K offers.

Admissions to 3-K programs rose by 8% this year, as the number of applicants rose to roughly 41,600. That was up from just under 40,000 in 2022.

For families applying, 68% were admitted to their first-choice program, up 5% from 2022.

Nearly 61,000 children received offers to pre-K programs this year — a jump of 3% from the year prior. That came as applications were up more than 3,000 from 2022, though still well below pre-pandemic figures.

Among applicants, 84% were admitted to their first-choice program.

The numbers come as a consulting firm’s report found the city’s early childhood system — including 3K, pre-K, as well as infants and toddlers — currently had roughly 30,000 empty seats — many of which were not in areas where demand is high, according to officials. That meant some parts of the city would see waitlists for spots, while others had thousands of empty seats, officials said.

The city did not release the complete findings of the report Thursday, which it paid the firm Accenture more than $760,000 to conduct. But its prognosis echoes a common criticism from the Adams administration — that the supply and demand of seats have been misaligned in areas across the city.

Officials said that the findings pointed toward a need to look at enrollment projections and available seats within zip codes, redistributing seats to areas with higher demand.

Of the approximately 140,000 seats across the city’s early childhood system, between roughly 119,000 and 127,000 were projected to be filled in 2024-25, according to the report.

“The city is focused on matching seats to parent demand—and that’s not a bad thing—but they should also be working to increase parent demand, particularly among underserved communities where children currently have the least access to quality early education programs,” said Halley Potter, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. “The Adams administration has not provided the needed investments in outreach, and that, combined with the lagging effects of the pandemic disruption to early childhood settings, is a recipe for inequity.”

The city’s free prekindergarten program has struggled this year, as delayed payments have caused some providers to shutter. Some officials and advocates, including City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, have criticized the administration for its handling of the early education system.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Over 25,000 Tennessee 3rd graders retook reading test this week to try to meet new promotion policy

2023-05-26T21:44:49+00:00

More than half of Tennessee third graders at risk of being held back because of their reading test scores took another test this week to try to advance to fourth grade without summer school or tutoring.

The state began offering the retest on Monday. By Friday, 25,304 third graders had submitted a second reading assessment, said Brian Blackley, a spokesman for the state education department.

Preliminary scores from the initial test in the spring indicated that about 60% of Tennessee’s 74,000 third-graders could be at risk of being held back under a new state retention policy for third graders who struggle with reading. But that number is before factoring in exemptions under the law.

The testing do-over marks the end of a pivotal school year for third graders, who were kindergartners in 2020 when the pandemic shuttered school buildings and caused unprecedented learning disruptions.

A 2021 law enacted a tough new retention policy starting this school year for students who don’t test as proficient readers by the end of third grade. The law also created several learning intervention programs to help students catch up.

Since the 2022-23 retention policy is based on the results of a single test under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, retesting using a similar “TCAP-style test” was part of the state’s plan for giving third graders another opportunity to improve their score.

The retesting window continues through June 5, but schools were expected to complete most of the do-overs this week so families can get their students’ results back sooner.

State officials have pledged that test vendor Pearson will return new scores within 48 hours after submission.

To get promoted to the fourth grade, third graders who who score as “approaching” reading proficiency must either attend a summer program with a 90% attendance rate, then show adequate growth on a test administered at the end of the program; or they must take advantage of state-funded tutoring throughout the 2023-24 school year.

Third graders who score in the bottom category of readers known as “below” must participate in both intervention programs to get promoted to fourth grade.

Summer learning camps start as soon as next week at some schools, although the schedule varies by district. For instance, Nashville’s program starts on June 1, while Memphis-Shelby County Schools launches its summer learning academies on June 20.

This week’s retests, via the state’s online Schoolnet platform, started off bumpy in some districts due to technical issues but smoothed out after the first day, Blackley said.

There were “isolated tech issues” on Monday in some districts that were “fully resolved,” Blackley said. “Our testing vendor, Pearson, has been troubleshooting effectively to manage and will continue to do so throughout the entire window,” he said.

Blackley added that technical problems will not delay the return of scores.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis 3rd graders improved in reading from 2nd grade, but thousands could still be held back

2023-05-24T17:49:02+00:00

Early state test results show Memphis third graders improved in reading this year, and more students in the cohort are mastering state reading goals.

But about three-quarters of third graders in Memphis-Shelby County Schools are still not meeting expectations, which means they could face more tests, tutoring, and summer school this year. Unless they hit certain marks along the way, they could be held back.

That’s because of the new reading retention law that took effect across Tennessee for this year’s third-graders, bringing the high stakes of standardized testing felt by school districts and teachers down to the student level.

The process won’t be totally unfamiliar to the students and families in Memphis-Shelby County Schools. The district briefly had its own retention policy for struggling readers, focused on second graders. That policy, suspended in August, looked at a dozen test scores from throughout the year to determine whether students needed to be held back. Last year, most second graders were required to attend summer school to be able to advance to third grade.

District officials said this year’s preliminary results pointed to progress, as well as the need for continued interventions.

“We have to move further faster, but because of their resilience and our interventions, the class of 2032 is making gains,” interim Superintendent Toni Williams wrote of the district’s third graders in an email to board members sharing the early scores. Chalkbeat obtained a copy of the email.

According to the preliminary results, 76% of students in that class, or about 6,500, fell below the state’s reading expectations.

“You’re going to be receiving, as third grade parents, a lot of communication,” said Shawn Page, the district’s chief of academic operations and school support. “So what we’ve got to make sure is that your address is correct, your phone number is correct, your email is correct.”

Not all those students will need to go to summer school or face retention, since some will qualify for exemptions. Those include third graders with a disability or suspected disability that affects reading; students who have been previously retained; and English language learners with less than two years of instruction in English language arts.

“Every case has to be looked at individually,” said Shawn Page, the district’s chief of academic operations and school support. “It’s not just one size fits all.”

Academic officials said Wednesday that the district had yet to calculate all of its exemptions, but expected them to be done this week, adding that families had been informed about the exemptions earlier this school year.

“It’s a tedious process that has to be done at the school level,” said Bill White, the district’s director of planning and accountability.

Williams praised the gains for this year’s third graders, who were kindergarteners when the pandemic began and who spent first grade learning online from home. When these students were in second grade, just 16.5% scored as proficient on state reading tests. This year, 23.6% did.

But comparing this year’s third graders to last year’s third graders, the scores showed virtually no improvement, and most students scored “below proficient,” the lowest of the four performance categories.

Across Tennessee, about 40% of third graders scored proficient in reading, according to the preliminary data released by the state on Monday.

What comes next? Retests and new results.

MSCS schools sent letters home with third graders Monday and Tuesday, notifying families whether their students scored proficient or not. For students who were below the threshold, the last days of the school year this week will include a retest on the computer.

Students who have to take the retest “didn’t do anything wrong,” Jaron Carson, the chief academic officer for the district, said Tuesday. Rather, he said, the state is “excluding what the child has done the entire school year.”

Families will receive new communication after the testing do-over, and the district expects to have these scores by May 29. Instead of sending report cards home with students at the end of the school year, the district is mailing them home on Friday, June 2.

“You’re going to be receiving, as third grade parents, a lot of communication,” Page said. “So what we’ve got to make sure is that your address is correct, your phone number is correct, your email is correct.”

Students who scored proficient on the retest can move on to fourth grade as usual.

For those who didn’t, the next steps depend on whether they scored “below” or “approaching” proficiency.

Students who scored “below” have to go to summer school, with a 90% attendance rate, meaning they can’t miss more than two days of the four-week program. Then, they have to participate in tutoring throughout fourth grade. If they don’t meet the new requirements, they have to repeat the third grade.

Students who scored “approaching” have a different set of options. They can appeal the scores, academic officials explained Tuesday, to bypass the retention requirements. Students can be eligible for appeals for two reasons: if they scored a 40% on the district’s spring iReady test, or, if they experienced “extenuating circumstances” during testing, like a death in the family, illness, or housing instability, White explained.

“By submitting an appeal form,” the district says on its website, “a family will waive a student’s right to receive free tutoring and/or summer school programming to support their academic success.”

White clarified Wednesday that if the state denies a family’s appeal, the student will still have the chance to participate in tutoring throughout fourth grade.

Students who don’t seek appeals have to decide between participating in tutoring throughout fourth grade or attending the summer learning academy. In order to move on to fourth grade after summer school alone, students have to meet the 90% attendance rate, and take a test showing improvement of 5 percentage points compared with an earlier test.

Laura Testino covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Laura at LTestino@chalkbeat.org.

More Tennessee 3rd graders tested proficient in reading this year, but 60% face risk of retention

2023-05-22T21:20:36+00:00

Tennessee’s third-grade reading proficiency rate jumped by more than 4 percentage points to 40% on this year’s state tests.

But that means up to 60% of its third graders could be at risk of being held back under the state’s tough new retention law.

The results, based on preliminary scores, showed some level of improvement in all four of the state’s reading performance categories. The percentage of third graders who scored as advanced readers, the state’s top performance category, rose 3 percentage points to 13%, the largest figure in over a decade.

Tennessee released the statewide data Monday as families began receiving news about whether their third graders scored well enough on spring tests to move on to fourth grade.

While the state won’t release the final scores until this summer, the preliminary scores offer the first statewide glimpse at the effects of a controversial 2021 law passed in an effort to stem pandemic learning loss and boost Tennessee’s long-lagging scores for reading.

Gov. Bill Lee, who championed the 2021 law, called the gains “historic.”

And Penny Schwinn, the state’s outgoing education commissioner, pointed to Tennessee’s new investments and strategies for literacy, including an array of programs to train teachers on phonics-based reading instruction.

“While we still have a long way to go before we reach the goals laid out in legislation,” Schwinn said, “I appreciate the ongoing efforts of Tennessee schools as they implement summer and tutoring programs to provide students not yet on grade level with the supports they need to thrive.”

Scores set students on varying pathways to promotion

Tennessee has about 74,000 third graders. The early data showed 35% scored as “approaching” proficiency, down 1 percentage point from last year; and 25% scored “below” proficiency, down by 3 percentage points last year in the state’s bottom category. Another 27% were deemed to have met the state’s threshold for reading, up 2 percentage points from last year.

Those who weren’t deemed proficient readers may retake the test this week to try to improve their score, or may have to attend learning camps this summer or tutoring sessions this fall to be eligible to advance to fourth grade.

But the state’s numbers do not factor in students who are automatically exempt under the law. Those include third graders with a disability or suspected disability that affects reading; students who have been previously retained; and English language learners with less than two years of instruction in English language arts.

“Exemption decisions will be dealt with at the local level, in compliance with the law,” said Brian Blackley, a state education department spokesman.

District officials spent the weekend analyzing preliminary scores that the department shared with school leaders late Friday afternoon.

Knox County Schools was among the first school systems to report district-level results, with more than a third of its third graders at risk of retention. The district shared scores with families on Friday night and gave them until Sunday to sign up their child to retest this week. More than 1,200 Knox County third graders retook the test on Monday, said spokeswoman Carly Harrington.

About 38% of Nashville students face possible retention based on an analysis of performance and exemptions by Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools.

Chattanooga-based Hamilton County Schools reported that more than one-fifth of its third graders either did not score proficient in reading, or did not meet the state’s exemption criteria. “We are in the process of notifying families right now,” spokesman Steve Doremus said Monday.

In Rutherford County Schools, a large suburban district south of Nashville, about 30% of third graders may have to satisfy additional learning requirements to be eligible to advance to fourth grade.

School officials in Memphis did not immediately answer Chalkbeat’s questions about third-grade performance.

“We’re working to support the families of our third-grade students over the next few days as they prepare for retests, appeals, our MSCS Summer Learning Academy, and end-of-year celebrations,” Memphis-Shelby County Schools said in a statement.

In releasing statewide data on Monday, the department reversed course from its stance last week.

Historically, the state has not publicly released data from preliminary student-level scores, which are protected by federal confidentiality laws. Blackley said Friday that would continue to be the case. On Monday, however, he said the public release of some statewide results was an attempt to increase transparency because of the high stakes for third graders.

“We understand there’s a lot of interest,” he said, “so we wanted to give a comprehensive view of third-grade data for English language arts as soon as possible.”

Critics of retention law step up their criticisms

This year’s third graders were the youngest students affected by school disruptions during the pandemic. Their kindergarten year was shortened by three months when Gov. Bill Lee urged public school officials to close their buildings in March 2020 to prevent the spread of the COVID-19 virus.

Lee later called the legislature in for a special 2021 session to address ongoing learning disruptions. Lawmakers authorized the creation of summer programs and tutoring during the school year for elementary and middle school grades, while also approving new reading proficiency requirements for third graders to advance, beginning this school year.

The resulting state-funded learning interventions have proven popular, but the retention policy has received widespread criticism.

It’s “worth remembering this broken 3rd grade retention policy was rushed into law during a 4-day special session without any input from educators or families,” state Sen. Jeff Yarbro tweeted over the weekend.

The Nashville Democrat questioned the adequacy of the state’s financial investment in education, its interpretation of scores from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, and the law’s focus on third graders.

“Maybe, just maybe, our efforts should focus on instruction & interventions in K-2 (if not earlier),” Yarbro wrote.

In Memphis, Sen. Raumesh Akbari said the possibility of holding back thousands of third graders based on a single test score was “manufactured chaos.”

“There are so many student interventions we could be supporting to improve reading comprehension. High-stakes testing, with the threat of failing third grade, is not one of them,” said Akbari, who chairs the Senate Democratic Caucus.

Many school officials also question whether TCAP is the best measure of a child’s ability to read.

“The promotion requirements around one TCAP data point don’t portray simple ‘reading ability,’” Rutherford County Schools Superintendent James Sullivan said in a statement.

“Instead,” he said, “the TCAP third grade English Language Arts assessment is a measure of a student’s performance on all Tennessee Academic ELA Standards including the ability to interact, decipher, comprehend, and analyze comprehensive text.”

Adrienne Battle, director of schools in Nashville, said her district did not agree with the law’s retention policy, but is working with its families to navigate the law’s impacts.

“It is important for children, parents, and the community to understand that if a student didn’t score proficient on this one test, it does not mean they failed, that they cannot read, or that they are not making learning progress,” Battle said. “Tennessee has some of the highest standards in the nation for student expectations.”

Local pushback caused legislators to revisit the law during their most recent legislative session. Among other things, lawmakers widened criteria for determining which third graders are at risk of being held back, but the changes won’t take effect until next school year.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino contributed to this report from Memphis. Contact her at ltestino@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee’s 3rd-grade retention law requires ‘adequate growth’ to advance. Here’s what that means.

2023-05-19T22:15:06+00:00

When Tennessee lawmakers passed a tough third-grade retention law in 2021, they ordered districts to provide academic interventions like summer learning camps to help struggling readers get promoted on time.

The law also says third graders who score just below reading proficiency must show “adequate growth” on a test given at the end of those camps in order to advance to fourth grade.

But the statute didn’t define “adequate growth,” and policymakers have debated ever since what that ambiguity means.

On Friday, the State Board of Education provided an answer: To get promoted, students who scored as “approaching” reading proficiency on their state test this spring must improve by at least 5 percentage points on another state test given at the end of their summer learning program.

“This definition is intended to capture a reasonable amount of growth a student could achieve during the four-week camp, relative to the student’s achievement during an entire school year,” said Sam Pearcy, Tennessee’s deputy education commissioner, while presenting his department’s recommendation to the board.

The definition was the most pressing question lingering over the controversial new retention policy outlined in the state’s 2021 learning acceleration law. That policy, which kicks in with this year’s third graders, is expected to cause thousands of students to attend summer school in the next few months or undergo tutoring next school year to avoid being held back.

Questions and complaints pick up as score data goes out

Members of the state board said they’ve received other questions daily about the law — everything from tutoring access to how to appeal to the state to get exempted from the policy. State-provided tutoring is Tennessee’s other intervention program for struggling readers under the 2021 law.

“We’re going to continue to work through the process,” board Chairman Bob Eby, of Oak Ridge, said Friday. “It’s not perfect, but the intent is right.”

Warren Wells, a board member from Shelbyville, said critics have called the retention law “ridiculous” and said that it “wasn’t thought through.” But he countered that it was the right response to unprecedented learning disruptions caused by the pandemic.

“This year is going to be hard,” Wells acknowledged, “but we are going to continue to look at it and make sure that we make the best decisions for the future of our children.”

Also late Friday afternoon, school districts received preliminary scores from the state tests taken this spring, kicking off a busy few days of analysis and communication with parents about what those results mean. Most families should have information by Monday or Tuesday about how their third grader performed, so that they can make decisions about whether their student should retest next week to try for a better result, or will have to enter learning intervention programs this summer or fall.

The preliminary testing information won’t be publicly released, however, said Brian Blackley, a spokesman for the education department.

Early reading scores for individual third graders are confidential, said Blackley, and “meant to give districts prompt, actionable data as quickly as possible to help students and families.”

Statewide and district-level results from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP, will be released publicly this summer, he added.

Board irons out a wrinkle in ‘adequate growth’ policy

Before approving the definition for “adequate growth,” the board made a late change to the department’s recommendation to address concerns that some third graders who scored “approaching” proficiency this spring could unwittingly be penalized for retaking their reading test next week.

If those students improve their baseline score on the do-over but still aren’t deemed proficient readers, they would have to score even higher on the summertime post-test to improve by 5 percentage points.

“Then there’s no incentive for the individual to take that retake test,” Eby said.

For such cases, the board set spring TCAPs, not the retake assessment, as the baseline test.

The “adequate growth” requirement will not apply to students who scored “below” proficiency, the state’s bottom category, on either the TCAP or retake tests. The law requires those students to participate in both a summer learning camp and state-funded tutoring throughout fourth grade to get promoted.

All rising fourth graders who participate in summer camps also must maintain a 90% attendance rate in those programs, as stipulated in the law.

School leaders welcome answers

The post-test won’t be the TCAP, but state officials say testing vendor Pearson is developing the assessment to be a “TCAP-style” test. Questions will align with state academic standards, and the test will not include the writing portion that TCAPs do.

“Post-test results are able to be returned immediately because they exclude a writing component which takes more time to score,” according to one state document. “Adequate growth calculations will be returned within five business days of the administration of the post-test.”

While third-grade TCAPs were conducted with pencil and paper, the post-test will be conducted on devices using Schoolnet, an online platform launched by the state in 2020 to provide free and optional assessments to school systems.

Districts must use Schoolnet to give retake tests next week, as well as tests at the end of summer camp. Many schools already use Schoolnet to give extra benchmark tests to third graders during the school year, and the state delivered last year’s summer post-test via the platform as well.

Several district leaders told Chalkbeat they were comfortable with the state’s newly set growth bar.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools already targets growth of 3 to 5 percentage points during each of its three tutoring terms during the school year.

“So 5 percentage points is pretty close to the gauge we’re using internally for tutoring,” said district spokeswoman Cathryn Stout. “It’s on the high end, but it’s in the realm of possibility.”

Breckan Duckworth, who oversees summer programming for Hamilton County Schools, said it’s difficult to gauge whether the state’s growth definition is reasonable because it depends on whether the post-test is as rigorous as TCAPs.

“I do know that our kids tend to show growth and do well on the assessments that are provided during summer programming,” Duckworth said.

“Would I be happier if it was a little lower than 5 percentage points? Absolutely,” she said. “But at this point, it’s not going to keep me up at night.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Reading test scores go out today in Tennessee. The stakes are higher than ever for third graders.

2023-05-19T10:00:00+00:00

The end of the school year — typically days of celebrations and send-offs — will be filled instead with more high-stakes testing and weighty decisions about summer school for thousands of third-grade students under Tennessee’s new learning and retention law.

On Friday, school districts are scheduled to receive preliminary scores from state tests given this spring, kicking off a busy few days of analysis and communication with parents about what those results mean.

Most families should have information by Monday or Tuesday about how their third grader performed.

Students scoring as proficient readers will advance to the fourth grade, as expected. And third graders who scored below proficiency can retake a reading test next week to try for a better result. Students who still score below proficiency on the retest must enter learning intervention programs as soon as this summer or fall to help them catch up, or they can present their case to the state on why they should be exempted.

The dizzying pace was set in motion by a 2021 law that drew a line in the sand on reading proficiency beginning with this year’s class of third graders. Those students were kindergarteners when the pandemic hit and ushered in unprecedented disruptions to learning.

Memphis mom Charmeal Neely-Alexander says the state’s new third-grade policy is the latest example of how school has been tough from the start for her daughter, now 9: The pandemic interruptions began in kindergarten, and now there’s the pressure of high-stakes testing.

“I’ve never seen anything so daunting,” Neely-Alexander said of the consequences attached to this year’s Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, known as TCAP.

Students ‘approaching’ proficiency have two options

While the precise number of third graders at risk won’t be known until after Friday’s data dump, 64% of last year’s third graders — almost 46,000 students — would have been identified as eligible for retention had the new policy been in place for them, according to a recent state comptroller’s report. That number, however, does not factor in exemptions or appeals that are expected to significantly decrease the actual number of students at risk for retention this year. (For instance, students who have a disability or suspected disability that affects reading are exempt from the new policy.)

In short, the law says third graders who score as “approaching” reading proficiency have two options to advance to the fourth grade: They must either attend a summer learning camp and maintain a 90% attendance rate, then show adequate growth on a test administered at the end of the program; or they must take advantage of state-funded tutoring throughout the 2023-24 school year.

Third graders who score in the bottom category of readers known as “below” must participate in both intervention programs to get promoted to fourth grade.

Most districts are strongly urging students who either scored in the bottom two categories or missed the spring TCAPs due to illness to test again during the state’s window for retesting between May 22 and June 5. Officials with the state education department say their testing vendor will return new scores within 48 hours after those tests are submitted.

But the state’s largest district, Memphis-Shelby County Schools, is making the testing do-over mandatory for third graders at risk of retention.

“It’s another opportunity for the child to score proficient,” said Chief Academic Officer Jaron Carson.

“We’re going to make the most of the time we have,” added district spokeswoman Cathryn Stout, noting that the school year doesn’t end in Memphis until May 26.

Thousands register for summer learning programs

Meanwhile, because of the tight timeline at the end of the school year, administrators have been encouraging families to register their third graders for summer learning camps before they know the test results. Many districts are beginning those programs in early June.

Memphis-Shelby County Schools expects about 2,700 third graders to participate in summer learning academies hosted by 21 schools June 20 to July 19. That’s out of about 6,000 third graders in the school system’s district-run schools.

Metropolitan Nashville Public Schools has 3,600-plus students — more than half of its third-grade class — signed up for its summer program that begins on June 1, while Knox County Schools has more than 1,500 of its 4,500 third graders registered for camps that start June 5. In Hamilton County, more than a third of its 3,300 third graders are signed up to participate, also beginning on June 5.

The numbers are expected to fluctuate significantly, however, in the next few weeks, depending on TCAP and retest results.

“We will keep registration open throughout the end of the school year to ensure every third-grade student who needs a seat has one,” said Sean Braisted, spokesman for Nashville’s district.

Flexibility is key to staffing this year’s summer camps

School leaders and teachers have been communicating with third-grade families throughout the school year about the new law and its significant implications for their students.

They’ve also been planning how to quickly scale up their summer programs for third graders, especially related to staffing, depending on how many students ultimately show up.

“We have to prioritize summer learning experiences for rising fourth graders because of the implications of law, and that has meant limiting the enrollment of other grade levels for the first time since these camps were offered,” said Erin Phillips, executive director of learning and literacy for Knox County Schools.

“That’s a challenge,” she continued, “because we want to do what’s best for every student. But we know we have to prioritize that rising fourth-grade group. We have to have enough staff.”

For Memphis-Shelby County Schools, staffing is already in place to accommodate an influx of third graders, says Stout, thanks in part to a $2,000 bonus being paid to those teachers, in addition to a $31-an-hour wage.

“We feel confident that we’ll be fully staffed,” she said. “It’s important to remember that 1 in 4 MSCS students attended some type of summer program with us last summer, so it’s given us a lot of experience and served almost as a preview of what to expect this year.”

Breckan Duckworth, who oversees summer programming for Hamilton County Schools, said many teachers have become accustomed to the extra pay after working in state-mandated summer programs the last three years.

“For the first time, we’ve not had any problem with staffing summer programs,” Duckworth said. “We’ve actually had to turn away a few classified staff and certified teachers because we don’t have a spot for them.”

Interventions are disruptive, but designed to help

For Neely-Alexander, the Memphis mom, all of the classroom focus on TCAP testing felt “rushed” this year. And she’s bothered that the summer camp could be mandatory. But she still views the learning interventions as a win-win for her daughter, who will spend the summer with other kids, since it will also provide her family with free summer child care.

Regardless of her daughter’s scores, “she’s going to go anyway to the summer learning academy,” Neely-Alexander said.

As for school leaders, their messaging about required interventions has focused on extra opportunities to support struggling readers, not judging them for needing extra support.

“We know that for some families, this will interrupt their summer plans and there’s a mix of emotions involved,” said Stout, with the Memphis district. “But we also know that 1 in 7 people in Shelby County struggles with literacy. I hope that, as a community, we really rally around these students.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Laura Testino contributed to this report from Memphis. Contact her at ltestino@chalkbeat.org.

New Jersey Board of Education sets lower high school exit exam passing score after narrow vote

2023-05-03T19:49:20+00:00

After months of deliberation and recommendations from New Jersey’s top education officials, the State Board of Education voted to lower the high school exit exam passing score, a requirement for graduation.

On Wednesday, board members voted 6-5 to lower the New Jersey Graduation Proficiency Assessment passing score in the English language arts and math portions of the test to 725, down from the original 750 scores. The new scores apply to the classes of 2024 and 2025 and will allow more students to meet graduation requirements next school year, according to analyses provided by department officials.

Board President Kathy Goldenberg had the final vote on the decision and paused before voting in favor of the resolution to lower the passing scores.

“To be clear, I am listening to the experts in the field that feel that 725 should be the cut score,” Goldenberg said.

Despite the new changes, state board officials remained split over the decision, citing concerns about ensuring students’ graduation and career readiness. The vote took nearly two hours as board members reignited discussions about the usefulness of the test, the rigor of New Jersey graduation requirements, and the state’s response to helping students post-pandemic.

“We should think to ourselves as to what do New Jersey students need to know, what kind of level of mastery should they have on a subject matter for us to say here’s your certificate, you have succeeded,” said board Vice President Andrew Mulvihill who voted against the resolution during Wednesday’s meeting.

Similar to April’s board meeting, the New Jersey Department of Education presented an analysis of the spring 2022 high school exit exam results and reiterated its recommendation to lower the passing scores by citing the negative mental health and wellness impacts of the COVID pandemic on students. Last year, high school juniors took the exam as a trial run after Gov. Phil Murphy waived the requirement for the graduating class of 2023 due to the pandemic.

Of the high school juniors who took the trial run version of the exit exam in 2022, when the passing score was set at 750, only 39% passed the English language arts portion, while 50% passed math, according to state data. If the passing score had been lowered to 725 last spring, 57% of students would have passed math while 81% would have passed English language arts, according to data presented on Wednesday.

Angelica Allen-McMillan, the acting commissioner for the state’s Department of Education, said the recommendation to lower the passing score to 725 came through the work of educational experts, teams, and multiple discussions among state leaders. They analyzed data, known as performance indicators, that demonstrate mastery of specific knowledge and skills students typically show at different performance levels.

Board member Joseph Ricca said the expectation to think “that a 17- or an 18-year-old graduating from a public high school in the state of New Jersey has finished learning or is a master in anything” is a “flawed premise.”

“I think what we really need to recognize is providing multiple pathways for students to demonstrate mastery in certain topics as they developmentally progress. But also leaving them a lot of runway to continue to grow,” Ricca added.

The board’s Wednesday vote also set lower passing scores for alternate assessments that students who don’t pass the high school exit exam can take to meet the graduation requirement. According to state data on Wednesday, approximately 60% of students fulfilled their graduation assessment requirements by using state assessments in 2022, one of several alternatives for students who do not pass their high school exit exam. Alternate assessments include the ACT, PSAT, and SAT, among others.

The state Department of Education also projected that if the board kept the 750 passing scores, the class of 2024 could have resulted in nearly 40,000 portfolio appeals for English language arts and 22,000 for the math portion of the test. Portfolio appeals are a process typically requiring help from a teacher or staff member for students who have not met the exit test requirement.

In some districts, students must give up an elective during their senior year to take a portfolio preparation course. In other districts, support for the portfolio process is not always available.

The new passing scores approved Wednesday take effect immediately.

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

National history scores continue to fall, while civics scores drop for first time

2023-05-03T04:01:00+00:00

Eighth graders scored lower on U.S. history and civics exams last spring than they did four years earlier, according to national data released Wednesday.

U.S. history scores fell by 5 points, on average, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, a test that’s considered to be “the nation’s report card” — continuing a nearly decade-long decline in that subject. Civics scores, meanwhile, dropped an average of 2 points. That marked the first decline in that subject since the NAEP civics test began in 1998.

Federal officials and educators said the declines were a cause for national concern and should prompt schools to put a heavier emphasis on social studies — at a time when many schools are laser-focused on reading and math recovery. But many educators are dealing with new restrictions that affect how they can teach about the nation’s history, particularly topics involving racism, sexism, and LGBTQ issues.

“Too many students are struggling to understand and explain the impact of civic participation, and how our government works, and the historical significance of events,” said Peggy Carr, the commissioner for the National Center on Education Statistics, which administered the history and civics tests to a nationally representative sample of nearly 16,000 eighth graders.

Of particular concern, Carr said, is the growing share of students who are scoring at the lowest level on these tests. Last spring, 40% of eighth graders fell into that category on the U.S. history test, for example, up from 34% in 2018. That means more students could not point out simple historical concepts in primary documents, such as being able to explain that soldiers died during the Civil War after reading the Gettysburg Address.

The history and civics declines follow a steep drop in math scores and a dip in reading scores last fall on those NAEP exams. Those declines were attributed in large part to disruptions caused by the pandemic and launched a national conversation about how schools should be working to get students caught up — and spending their pandemic relief funds to do it.

Federal officials said while COVID likely played some role in the history and civics declines — students may have been asked to focus more on other subjects, for example — there is likely something bigger at play. That’s especially true for U.S. history, in which student scores have dropped 9 points since 2014.

The U.S. history score declines last spring were pervasive: white, Black, and Hispanic students all saw drops, and all but the highest-achieving students saw their average scores fall compared with students from four years prior. (The NAEP history test is scored on a 500-point scale, while the civics test is on a 300-point scale.)

Patrick Kelly, a U.S. government teacher in South Carolina who sits on the governing board for the NAEP, said these history and civics results should spark “a national conversation around the need for urgency and supporting this group of learners” just as last fall’s math and reading scores did.

“The students who took this test are right now finishing up their freshman year of high school,” said Kelly, noting those ninth graders will be eligible to vote, run for office, and serve in the military in three years. “This isn’t something that we can say ‘well, our 20-year plan for this is…’ We need a right-now plan.”

Declines coincide with new limits on teaching U.S. history

The declines come as state lawmakers, teachers, and families across the U.S. are engaged in fraught debates about what and how students should learn about the history of the country — especially the more painful parts about it.

Over the last two years, nearly every state has considered a bill that would limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism in their classrooms, and 18 states have bans or other restrictions in place, according to a tracker compiled by Education Week.

About 1 in 4 teachers reported that they’d been told by a school or district leader to limit what they said about political and social issues in class, a RAND Corporation survey released last year found. Teachers in states with these bans have reported cutting short conversations about topics such as slavery, the genocide of Indigenous peoples, and women’s rights.

At the same time, some states have expanded what students are expected to learn about Black, Latino, Asian American, and Native American history and culture.

U.S. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona drew a connection between the history and civics score drops and the legislative efforts in many Republican-led states to restrict classroom conversations.

Those results indicate that it’s not “the time to limit what students learn in U.S. history and civics classes,” Cardona said in a written statement. “Banning history books and censoring educators from teaching these important subjects does our students a disservice.”

Federal officials don’t know whether efforts to restrict what students learn had an effect on the history and civics scores, Carr said. But Martin West, a professor of education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a member of NAEP’s governing board, said “one possible explanation here is that debates over how to teach history could be getting in the way of actually doing it.”

Schools that want to help high schoolers struggling in history and civics should focus on giving them more time with the subjects, Carr said. That could be in either a stand-alone social studies class or by weaving the material into other places in their schedule. In the long run, schools may also have to revisit how they teach history and government in younger grades, too.

“The history and civics content that students receive in elementary schools is often haphazard,” West said. “There are major gaps in coverage that make it harder for students to develop a systematic understanding of U.S. history.”

The NAEP U.S. history exam tests students’ knowledge of major periods, including colonization, the American Revolution, the Civil War, Reconstruction, and both World Wars. Students are expected to identify key ideas and differing perspectives from those times. The civics test, meanwhile, looks at students’ knowledge of the U.S. government and their ability to participate in civic activities.

Kalyn Belsha is a national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

City education council elections bring polarizing national issues to local school districts

2023-04-28T15:31:42+00:00

This story was originally published on April 28 by THE CITY.

Starting last Friday and running through May 9, the city’s Community Education Council elections now underway give public school parents a chance to vote on district panels that will represent their interests to their local superintendent.

Parents, local residents, and business owners, and even high school seniors are eligible to run for positions on the 11-member CECs, which can weigh in on topics ranging from academics and budgets to accessibility and diversity.

This is only the second time that public school parents will be able to choose who will represent district interests to the superintendent — prior to 2021, only Parent Teacher Associations nominated CEC members. But only 2% of eligible voters participated in the last election for the volunteer positions two years ago, according to the Department of Education — and in the absence of individual involvement, well-organized networks of parents have increasingly exerted influence.

One such group, Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education (PLACE), has become particularly powerful — and polarizing.

The group formed in 2019 in opposition to former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s efforts to widen access to honors programs and selective middle and high schools. Now some rival parent groups say PLACE is skewing rightward, with members using their platform to compare critical race theory to Nazi ideology and accusing the administration of being “woke” oppressors.

On April 21, the first day of voting, PLACE recommended 175 candidates across the city in an emailed newsletter the organization says reaches nearly 10,000 parents.

But reached by THE CITY, several of those candidates distanced themselves from PLACE’s agenda as it ventures into issues beyond testing. Some endorsed candidates said they had never even heard of the organization.

CECs are composed of 11 members: nine are parents elected by other parents, and two are appointed by the borough president. Decisions are entirely advisory, with the exception of binding decisions issued about school zoning.

“For most parents, this is an obscure election. They look at those names and they don’t really recognize them,” said Reyhan Mehran, a parent and member of a group in Brooklyn’s District 15 that opposes PLACE. “It makes those of us who are paying attention nervous that this very vocal, right-wing small group of people have had an undue influence on public school policy.”

PLACE is trying to replicate its success from the last elections — where 60% of the 86 candidates that they recommended are still district CEC members. In Manhattan’s largest public school districts, 2 and 3, PLACE candidates represent a majority or all of the members sitting on the councils, according to THE CITY’s review of district rosters.

The group regularly reaches approximately 15,000 parents citywide through a combination of Facebook, Twitter, a newsletter and group chats on the messaging app WeChat, according to both its leadership and public follower tallies.

“It’s very difficult to motivate your average parent to take part in [CEC elections],” said Yiatin Chu, a public school parent in District 1 and co-vice-president and co-founder of PLACE. “The most active parents are the ones who have been burned by the [school] lottery system. The ones that aren’t really engaging with us may know someone who is — it’s like what marketing people call influencers.”

As parents cast their ballots over the next two weeks, members of rival coalitions are expressing concerns about PLACE’s influence.

Mehran is a member of District 15 Parents for Middle School Equity, which was formed in 2014 to advocate for and implement the district’s diversity plans — including removing admissions screens and prioritizing low-income students and English-learners for admissions in middle schools. For the first time ever on Tuesday, the group released a list of endorsed candidates citywide — an explicit effort to counter PLACE’s sway, Mehran said.

“By just recommending these candidates, PLACE has had a lot of influence,” said Mehran. “And we just felt like maybe we should put something out there that gives people other names to consider.”

Organized outreach

In only four years, PLACE has emerged as the foremost group pushing local district superintendents to preserve and expand gifted and talented programs and to reinstate admissions testing in certain high schools and middle schools.

They’re fighting officials and other parents who have blamed those programs for contributing to racial and economic inequality across the city — which has some of the most segregated public schools across the country, according to a study conducted by UCLA.

But PLACE insists that dismantling testing and accelerated programs would worsen academic standards and unfairly punish Asian students, who tend to be “overrepresented” in selective schools, compared to the city’s general demographic mix. Instead, the group suggests that the DOE correct the factors that might be causing Black and Hispanic students to fall behind in the first place.

PLACE’s most notable success in the last election was in Manhattan’s four largest districts, where every candidate it recommended in Districts 1, 2 and 3 won a seat. In District 2, representing 60,000 students and 121 schools, all but one of the seats was held by a PLACE candidate. Similarly, PLACE won a majority on the Citywide Council on High Schools — a board that represents 300,000 students citywide.

And PLACE’s 15,000-member following dwarfs that of other groups that offered endorsements — who aren’t as active outside of CEC elections, and told THE CITY that their listservs and online followings reach around 1,000 people a piece.

Unlike former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration, which said it wanted to scrap the specialized high school tests open to students citywide, Mayor Eric Adams and Department of Education Chancellor David Banks have stressed that most admissions policies should be decided on by local superintendents — giving CECs a path to potentially influence these decisions.

CECs, for instance, made themselves heard on middle school admissions last year, after a two-year pause in academic-based screening for middle schools, related to both the pandemic and the de Blasio administration’s push to move away from grade- and test-based admissions.

In at least two districts, CECs recommended a return to screened middle school admissions. The results were mixed: over 100 schools have decided not to, according to an announcement made by Banks last October. But 60 middle schools have reinstated screened admissions based on course averages from the fourth grade.

Not ‘woke’ but awakened?

In addition to a robust parent network citywide, PLACE Co-president and co-founder Maud Maron attributed the organization’s success to a widespread “parent awakening” in the first year of the pandemic, at a time when the city’s school enrollment was rapidly declining, protests over racial injustice were spreading across the country, and parents debated about virtual schooling and mask mandates.

She suggested a correlation between declining reading and math scores and an increased focus on “social emotional learning” and an “ideological agenda” in schools — but acknowledged that the relationship wasn’t necessarily causal.

“Land acknowledgements don’t teach anybody more math,” Maron, a Manhattan mother of four, told THE CITY — referencing the practice of paying respect to the indigenous people who inhabited the land before European colonialism. “It’s just that this endless fixation on left-wing ideological indoctrination doesn’t do much to improve our nation’s report card.”

PLACE’s prominence in education politics has drawn local and national recognition, especially as a number of its members have aspired to higher office. That includes Maron, a former CEC member herself who ran in the crowded Democratic primary for a rare open seat in U.S. Congress District 10. That’s the area that covers much of school District 15 in Brooklyn, which led the way in removing middle school screenings in the de Blasio years. Maron won just under 1,000 votes, less than 1%.

Members of the Adams administration, including Banks himself, have consulted with PLACE directly, according to Chalkbeat and testimony from the Department of Education’s chief enrollment officer at a City Council hearing in January. Separately, a spokesperson for the DOE told THE CITY that the administration engages PLACE in the same way that it does with other groups representing parents, and continues to prioritize diversity in schools.

In District 2, the largest in Manhattan, PLACE candidates fill all but one elected CEC seat. Conversations about culturally sensitive curriculum and school diversity have caught the attention of national media outlets, while one CEC member there launched her own bid for state Senate.

And PLACE’s work has earned commendation from groups like Parents Defending Education, and leadership positions at the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism (FAIR), national organizations that largely advocate against what they describe as threats to free speech from the left. Chu and Maron made national news for founding FAIR’s New York City chapter.

PLACE leadership has leaned into national discourse online, comparing “critical race theory” (CRT) and “anti-Asian discrimination” in admissions to Nazi ideology, and warning parents of “poisonous” curriculum. In a tweet from March, Maron called city schools an “oppressor woke environment where DOE employees make them pledge allegiance to their LGBTQI+ religion.”

PLACE leadership echoes this in private discussion forums, according to screenshots from private discussion forums obtained by THE CITY, members have promoted local chapters of Mom’s for Liberty, a national group that decries “woke” education as an assault on parental control.

Guadalupe Hernandez, a mother of two who was appointed to District 2’s CEC by the Manhattan borough president and is running for re-election, was one of the candidates endorsed by D15 Parents for Middle School Equity. She said messaging from PLACE officials reminds her of red states.

“It’s so mind boggling,” Hernandez told THE CITY. “Sometimes even when I speak to residents that live in my building or just any New York City parents, and tell them what I’m going through, they’re just like, ‘We’re where? We’re not Alabama, we’re not Florida.’ They don’t believe me.”

Endorsement shuffle

PLACE’s leadership insists their official platform is solely about preserving selective admissions and gifted-and-talented programs.

“I tend to like to be vocal personally on all sorts of things,” Chu said. “But that’s not who I am when I’m advocating for PLACE.”

By and large, national hot-button topics didn’t feature in the 36 candidate forums hosted by the DOE. The vast majority of candidates spoke about supporting the district’s families, fighting school bullying, and promoting learning recovery after the pandemic.

But that hasn’t stopped endorsed candidates from putting distance between themselves and PLACE’s conservative affiliations.

Sarah Sharma, a CEC hopeful in Brooklyn’s District 14, is one of the 175 candidates that PLACE endorsed this year. Yet she says she had never heard of the group. After doing some research, Sharma asked to be removed from their list.

“When I found out about their endorsement, I poked around their website and realized I didn’t really want to be associated with them,” said Sharma, a former teacher and administrator in the district, which spans Williamsburg and Greenpoint. “Because I don’t feel like their views on education represent mine and who they’ve endorsed in the past for general elections.”

Sharma went on to specify that she was uncomfortable with PLACE’s endorsement of conservative candidates like Reps. George Santos (R-Queens/L.I.) and Nicole Maliotakis (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn), and gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin, who were among a bi-partisan slate of 18 statewide candidates PLACE endorsed last year.

Noah Harlan, a current CEC representative for District 1, was also endorsed by PLACE but emphasized that his agreement with organization’s leadership begins and ends with supporting selective admissions, rigorous testing, and gifted and talented programs.

“I think that I have more of a willingness than others to think about the systemic and structural issues that work against student achievement in various neighborhoods in New York, other PLACE candidates might be more dispassionate.” said Harlan, who added that he considers changes to admissions policies to be discriminatory against the Asian community.

Several other parents and CEC candidates who spoke with THE CITY and who favor preserving selective admissions said that they were not interested in national debates about race and gender — even those who have been endorsed by PLACE.

No magic bullet for parent engagement

Even with two years to drum up awareness, a high level of participation is far from guaranteed in this, the second round of parent-involved CEC elections.

Immediately after the 2021 elections, only five seats were unfilled across all CECs, after a 70% increase in the number of candidates from 2019. Today, however, 25% of seats are unfilled, as parents leave their elected positions.

Some districts in Brooklyn have gone months without the minimum six members required to reach quorum, and others have gone years without a designated English Language Learner representative, Bklyner reported.

In the past few months, the DOE has upped its outreach: sending postcards in the mail, making phone calls, emailing parents, hosting information sessions and virtual candidate forums for every district across the city.

But the engaged parents on the ground are still concerned.

“There isn’t a magic bullet,” said Stephen Stowe, president of the District 20 CEC and PLACE endorsed-candidate. “At the end of the day, you’re not gonna see the same kind of interest you do for City Council elections or state Assembly or state Senate because it doesn’t have a lot of power.”

Former CEC 20 president and PLACE co-founder Vito LaBella believes the issues that parents are concerned about don’t have anything to do with larger political discourse.

“Unfortunately is everybody inserting a political perspective in what should be a very simple market perspective: What is the demand for accelerated programs and what is the capacity?” said LaBella, who ran for State Senate in 2021 on a platform that prioritized protecting selective admissions and combatting critical race theory.

“And if we want to stop the bleeding of families leaving New York City, we need to increase capacity to meet demand, not get rid of it altogether.”

CMAS, PSAT, and SAT sticking around: Colorado won’t reduce testing requirements

2023-04-21T22:51:03+00:00

Colorado won’t seek to reduce standardized testing or get waivers from federal testing requirements anytime soon.

The sponsors of a bill that aimed to reduce the burden of standardized testing and encourage school districts to experiment with new ways to measure student achievement withdrew the legislation this week.

Groups that support education reform and test-based school accountability — ideas with which Gov. Jared Polis and many Democrats align — had opposed the bill. It’s also not clear how receptive the federal education department would have been to a waiver request.

State Rep. Eliza Hamrick, an Arapahoe County Democrat and retired teacher, said she brought the legislation because she’s seen pressures around testing have a negative impact on education. She’s also been impressed with the work of Colorado school districts that have participated in a pilot around innovative local accountability systems. She wanted to secure federal funding to continue that work and expand it to new districts.

Many school district leaders said they don’t oppose standardized tests, but the current testing regime takes up weeks of time without providing much actionable data.

House Bill 1239 would have required Colorado to reduce testing to the minimum required under federal law, seek waivers to reduce testing further, and apply for grants to promote local experimentation.

Colorado students take English language arts and math tests in third through eighth grades, the PSAT in ninth and 10th grade, and the SAT in 11th grade, as well as science tests in fifth, eighth, and 11th grades.

Other than the PSAT, these tests are required under federal law, though some educators question whether the tests need to be as long and involved as they are.

A social studies test given to a sampling of fourth and seventh graders — required by state but not federal law — already is set to be eliminated this year.

Colorado law also requires other assessments, such as tests to identify struggling readers in early elementary school, that the bill may have eliminated.

Co-sponsor state Rep. Jennifer Bacon, a Denver Democrat and former school board member and teacher, said she recognized the desire among many education advocates to keep certain tests that aren’t required by federal law, such as the early reading assessments and the PSAT.

The legislators said they have received assurances that a task force looking at potential changes to the school accountability system will consider how Colorado uses standardized testing and look closely at the results of the local accountability pilots.

The state system rates schools mostly based on test scores, as well as factors like graduation rates and college enrollment. The experimental local programs have incorporated other measures, such as school climate, the quality of instruction, and student engagement.

Education advocates say they support a more nuanced look at what makes a good school, but they want data that allows for consistent comparisons across schools and districts as well as across time.

House Bill 1241, which would create the school accountability task force, passed the House with broad bipartisan support. It’s due for a hearing in the Senate Education Committee Wednesday.

The task force would produce a final report in November 2024, and the legislature wouldn’t take up recommended changes until 2025.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Changes in Tennessee retention law will come too late for third graders this year

2023-04-14T20:08:03+00:00

Tennessee lawmakers are moving toward a consensus on how to improve the state’s controversial new third-grade retention policy for struggling readers, but whatever they decide won’t be in time for this year’s class of third graders.

Those students, who were in kindergarten when the pandemic began, face the highest stakes when the state’s testing window opens next week for grades 3-8 under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP.

In a Senate finance committee this week, Republicans quashed Sen. Jeff Yarbro’s proposal to delay implementation of the strict retention policy for one year.

“We are too late for this year,” said Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg of Bristol when Yarbro, a Nashville Democrat, asked if anything in the proposed changes for next year would alleviate concerns about this year’s launch.

“I have significant concerns that we are not ready,” Yarbro countered, “and that, even more importantly, our schools and our families are not ready for the disruptions that this is going to cause this year.”

But the GOP-controlled committee stuck with its plan and advanced a bill under which, beginning next year, Tennessee would widen criteria for determining which third graders are at risk of being held back if they aren’t deemed proficient readers.

Unless the full legislature intervenes before adjourning in the next few weeks, this year’s decisions on who gets held back or sent to remedial programs will be based solely on TCAP reading test results. That’s the current criterion under a 2021 law that lawmakers passed in response to pandemic learning losses.

If the proposed revisions are approved as expected, the state would widen criteria beginning with the 2023-24 school year to consider results from a second state-provided benchmark test, too — but only for third graders who score as “approaching” proficiency on their TCAP.

The full Senate is scheduled to vote on the measure next Tuesday.

The 2021 law also established summer learning and tutoring programs to help struggling students catch up.

This year’s third graders who score as “approaching” reading proficiency must attend a summer learning camp and demonstrate “adequate growth” on a test administered at the camp’s end, or they must participate in a tutoring program during fourth grade.

Third graders who score “below” proficiency, which is the bottom category of results, must participate in both intervention programs. (There are exemptions. To learn more about Tennessee’s current retention and remediation policy, visit the state education department’s answers to frequently asked questions.)

The existing policy is expected to affect thousands of students this year.

Last fall, when the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents examined TCAP data for the state’s 70,000 third graders in 2021-22, the group found that about 45% of them would have been affected if the new retention policy had applied to them, before any exemptions were considered.

And in Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest district, officials estimate that more than 2,700 third-graders are at risk of being held back.

Chalkbeat spoke recently with Dale Lynch, executive director of the superintendents group, about implications of the learning and retention law, both this year and next year. Here are five questions and answers:

What should Tennesseans understand about the status of the state’s third-grade reading and learning support law?

Dale Lynch is executive director of the Tennessee Organization of School Superintendents

There’s a lot of misunderstanding about what’s happening in the legislature with this law. A lot of people think that someone is going to wave a magic wand and all of this will go away. But there’s no chance the legislature will completely do away with the law they passed in their special session in 2021. And nothing’s going to happen this year to change third-grade retention policies for this year’s students. We’re talking about next year.

What about this year, though? What’s happening now with our third-grade students, their families, and their teachers?

There’s a lot of anxiety, especially as TCAPs approach. Parents are feeling a great deal of stress, and the pressure being put on third-grade teachers is at an all-time high. Meanwhile, our superintendents are trying to figure out how to staff an appropriate summer school program to provide these interventions for more students. How many kids will we have? We don’t know yet. Districts are supposed to get the raw score data from TCAPs by May 19th, and most of the camps are starting in May. So I think a lot of school districts will go ahead and encourage students to plan to come, even if they don’t know their test results yet. That’s not necessarily bad. But it would be nice if we had some time to figure this out.

It’s one thing to provide learning interventions like summer camps, but they also need to be effective. What’s the best way to do that?

First, I want to emphasize that our organization likes and supports the parts of the law that add these supports for our students. We like the summer programs and tutoring and additional learning opportunities. Our state needs to continue doing this.

The best way to make them effective is to have your most effective teachers in there. So for this summer, district leaders are trying to figure out how to get their most effective teachers to extend 200 days of instruction to 220 or 240 days. That’s a challenge.

Is there any collateral damage as we try to help students catch up from pandemic disruptions?

I worry that we’re at risk of hurting our best teachers at a time when we’re looking for ways to retain them. There’s nothing more important in education for a student than a high-quality teacher. The best teachers produce the best results. But we can’t keep pushing more and more on teachers without them reaching a breaking point.

What else should we know as district leaders try to plan for more third graders participating in summer learning programs?

For school system leaders, the amount of money they thought they’d be getting for summer school programs is lower than they were anticipating. They’re also trying to figure out the budgeting process under TISA [the state’s new student funding formula that stands for Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement], which starts with the new school year. It’s a lot of big things happening at once.

This year’s TCAP testing window runs from April 17 to May 5. You can learn more about the testing program on the state education department’s website.

You can track the bills to revise the retention law on the General Assembly’s website.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

New Jersey Board of Education continues to deliberate lower high school exit exam passing score

2023-04-06T10:30:00+00:00

New Jersey officials continue to weigh changes to the state’s high school exit exam roughly a month after students took the test as a graduation requirement for the first time in recent years.

The State Board of Education is considering a resolution to lower the New Jersey Graduation Proficiency Assessment passing score to 725 following an analysis of the spring 2022 test, which was taken by high school juniors as a trial run.

Currently, New Jersey students must get a 750 or higher in the English language arts and math portions of the test. High school juniors must pass the test to earn a high school diploma.

The New Jersey Department of Education presented an analysis of last year’s results on Wednesday and recommended the board lower the passing score. But some board members fear lowering state standards could result in students who are not college ready.

The board did not vote on the resolution, which would have gone into effect in early May and applied to the class of 2024 and 2025 and would likely have allowed more students to meet graduation requirements next school year.

The recommendations proposed Wednesday would also make it easier for students to pass the exam amid years of disruption and learning loss caused by COVID, as well as mental health challenges among school-age children. That could ultimately help boost the state’s graduation rate, which has remained relatively stable over the last five years despite the pandemic’s effects and suspension of graduation assessment requirements.

The state had a 90.9% four-year graduation rate for the class of 2022, according to state data presented on Wednesday.

In March, high school juniors took the exit exam as a graduation requirement for the first time in four years. The pandemic forced Gov. Phil Murphy to suspend the test in 2020 and 2021 along with other state standardized exams. Murphy also waived the requirement for the class of 2023 but reinstated it for the class of 2024 and 2025.

Of the high school juniors that took the trial run version of the exit exam last spring, only 39% passed the English language arts portion, while 50% passed math, according to state data. If the passing score had been lowered to 725 last spring, 57% of students would have passed math while 81% would have passed English language arts, according to data presented on Wednesday.

According to the Department’s Acting Commissioner Angelica Allen-McMillan, getting a 725 on the test is “just the right standard” while a 750 is “a more determined opportunity to further highlight what we want our students to know and do.” She also said the department had a responsibility to share “the adverse impacts” they believe keeping the score at 750 could have on students.

During Wednesday’s presentation, the department said its data found that a 750 passing score had an emotional effect on some students, especially students who have never missed a testing mark previously. It also limits the number of elective courses a student could participate in, since some might have to take a class senior year to prepare to retake the exit exam or an alternative test. Districts could also face additional burdens in paperwork and appeals to ensure students participate in graduation activities, the department added.

As board members weighed their options, some hinted at the redundancy in their discussion as it mirrored similar concerns raised during last year’s conversation on the topic.

Board member Elaine Bobrove said the board was “back to apples and oranges” in considering the differences between getting a 725 and a 750 on the test. Board member Nedd Johnson pointed to the department’s analysis and its expert opinion to lower the passing score.

“It’s pretty clear, from what I see, that the recommendation to the [passing] score going to 725 is based on the significant impact on student performance,” Johnson said.

Some members also called on the legislature to eliminate the exam altogether. Currently, New Jersey is one of nine states that requires a high school exit exam — that figure includes the state’s resumption of the requirement for the class of 2024. However, many states have ended exit test mandates in recent years due to concerns including unfair burdens they impose on some students and their effectiveness in determining college and career readiness.

Lawmakers are also considering a bill to eliminate the test requirement altogether. Last month, the assembly’s education committee unanimously approved Assembly Bill 4639, which would eliminate the exam as a requirement for New Jersey high schoolers. The bill is currently in the assembly’s community development and affairs committee.

“What we’re doing here is a fallacy,” said board member Ron Butcher. “We need to as a board go on the record recommending we get this removed.”

The board’s vice president, Andrew Mulvihill, disagreed and asked the board to consider the impact of “lowering the standards” in reaction to the learning loss experienced by students during the pandemic.

“I don’t think we should lower standards in reaction to COVID. I’m concerned about the approach we seem to be taking,” Mulvihill said. “I think our job is to say, what does a diploma in New Jersey mean and how do we know when kids are college and career ready?”

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Task force could revamp Colorado’s school accountability system

2023-03-31T12:15:00+00:00

Two bills before the Colorado legislature would spur changes to the system Colorado uses to measure school quality and improve performance. Both bills are in response to an audit of the school accountability system, despite that review finding the system to be “reasonable and appropriate.”

One bill, which enjoys broad bipartisan support, would create a task force to recommend changes to the system. A more controversial bill would seek to dramatically reduce the use of standardized testing.

While finding that Colorado’s school accountability system was working as designed, the audit also raised questions about whether the system lets schools serving mostly middle-class students earn high ratings despite failing their students in poverty or whether all schools have access to the same resources.

“I agree it’s doing what it is designed to do,” St. Vrain Valley School District Superintendent Don Haddad said of Colorado’s 13-year-old school accountability system. “I think what it’s designed to do is problematic.”

Colorado’s school accountability system, adopted in 2009, uses standardized test scores to rate schools and districts.

Students take English language arts and math tests in third through eighth grades, science tests in fifth, eighth, and 11th grade, the PSAT in ninth and 10th grade, and the SAT in 11th grade. Only the PSAT is a state requirement. The federal government requires that Colorado administer the other assessments.

High schools are also judged on graduation rates and measures of college and career readiness. Schools that have several years of low performance face state intervention.

Haddad is backing House Bill 1241, which would create a task force of superintendents, teachers, charter leaders, advocates, and parents to consider questions raised by the audit and recommend changes to the accountability system.

“My hope is that the task force will tackle some really significant structural issues uncovered in the audit,” he said.

Task force bill unites education groups, up to a point

Sponsored by state Rep. Shannon Bird, a Westminster Democrat, the task force bill has broad enough appeal that Republican state Rep. Rose Pugliese asked to be added as a co-sponsor. Groups like Democrats for Education Reform and Ready Colorado, a conservative advocacy group, testified alongside Colorado Education Association and the Colorado Association of School Executives in support of the bill.

Education reform groups initially feared the task force was an attempt to redo the audit and reach a different conclusion.

“The audit in our minds was very conclusive,” said Brenda Dickhoner, president and CEO of Ready Colorado. “It had pretty strong wording that the overall system was ‘reasonable and appropriate.’”

Jen Walmer, state director of Democrats for Education Reform, said after negotiations, she felt confident the task force would be more forward-looking.

“How to better serve students — that’s the lens,” she said.

The current system has its strengths, she said, but it hasn’t created enough urgency around narrowing opportunity gaps or enough sharing of promising practices.

Nicholas Martinez of Transform Education Now said parents want insights into how their children’s schools are working — for all students.

“Are you really a good school when your middle-class white kids are knocking it out of the park and your Black and brown kids are struggling?” he said. “That doesn’t meet my definition of a good school.”

The other proposed bill is likely to face more opposition. House Bill 1239 seeks to significantly scale back standardized testing and give more room to districts to use their own assessment systems. The bill calls on Colorado to reduce testing to the minimum required under federal law, seek waivers to reduce testing further, and apply for grants to promote local experimentation.

The bill’s legislative declaration notes that the audit uncovered inequities in Colorado’s education system but did not reach a conclusion about whether testing and the accountability system that relies on it “effectively addresses inequities or simply identifies inequities.”

Bill sponsor state Rep. Eliza Hamrick, an Arapahoe County Democrat and retired Cherry Creek teacher, said she saw test prep take up valuable learning time without providing enough useful information.

“It seems like some of the assessments we’re doing at the state level don’t really test or reflect what our kids can do,” she said. “I wanted to allow districts to see which tests they feel are most valuable to evaluate if learning is taking place.”

But education reform advocates fear the bill would take away the ability to make comparisons across schools and districts and identify what’s working and what isn’t.

The task force bill passed the House Education Committee unanimously on Wednesday. The testing bill is set for a hearing before the same committee April 13.

School quality is about more than test scores, critics say

St. Vrain Valley’s schools generally receive high marks, and Haddad is quick to say he doesn’t oppose standardized testing or holding schools to high standards. But the current system gives parents and the general public an overly negative view of school performance, he said, and encourages too much focus on test prep at the expense of other valuable opportunities, from art and music to career education.

Bird said she saw that firsthand when her children’s school canceled its participation in Young AmeriTowne, an immersive experience in which elementary children learn about different jobs and civic roles and then spend a day running their own pretend town.

“These kids would spend a week learning civics, business, and banking, and what it is to be involved in your community — someone got to be the mayor — and that was taken away,” she said. “Because our school needed time to prepare kids and to administer the tests, there was no longer time to take a week off of the calendar to engage in that.”

Critics say the system has to be designed to encourage a fuller set of learning experiences.

But Katie Zaback, vice president of policy at the business education partnership Colorado Succeeds, said she’s seen the accountability system do that. Her child attends a school on an improvement plan, and she’s seen a culture shift, with teachers and administrators working more closely with parents and the school adopting a social-emotional program that puts students in a better frame of mind for learning.

Bird said the task force can bridge these different perspectives.

“We’re making sure that all of these people who care about education are brought together to start talking to one another, come up, lay out your best ideas, and come to some agreement,” she said. “I’m hopeful that will generate ideas that have consensus built into them that really are the basis for good public policy.”

State Rep. Jennifer Bacon, a Denver Democrat, chuckled as she said the task force will be “fantastic.” She served on the Denver school board as that district shifted away from previous education reform policies and ditched its own school rating system. The district now uses state ratings and still hasn’t developed a more nuanced school information dashboard that parents and community members said they wanted.

“There’s something to be said about most people believing there’s something we could fix about our current system,” she said. “Those fixes are going to be the hard work.”

The task force would start meeting by September and produce a final report by November 2024. Lawmakers could consider recommended changes in the 2025 legislative session.

Changing standardized testing won’t be easy

Hamrick sees her bill to reduce the testing burden, co-sponsored by Bacon, as complementary to the task force work. Colorado has had a number of school districts engaged in local experiments around more nuanced accountability work. Federal funding would allow those experiments to continue and expand and generate new models, Hamrick said.

But Walmer said it would be more appropriate for the task force to consider whether Colorado should make changes to its testing regime, rather than pursue those changes first.

And Dickhoner said she saw the bill as an attack on testing more broadly.

“We really do see the bill as seeking to dismantle the statewide assessment system,” she said. “Without valid and comparable state data, you lose the ability to effectively allocate resources and you lose the ability to identify bright spots.”

As introduced, the bill also would allow districts to opt out of assessments that track how well early elementary students are reading. Hamrick said she’s working with advocates to understand concerns.

Democratic Gov. Jared Polis is aligned with education reform ideas and has been more supportive of small tweaks rather than big changes.

Lori Cooper, CASE president and assistant superintendent of student achievement in the Fountain-Fort Carson district in Colorado Springs, said districts already do assessments throughout the year that provide much of what parents and the state might want to know about student progress, without adding state tests that stress students out.

“When it takes five days to complete, it really affects a kid’s grit and resilience, and there are only so many ways you can create value around an assessment,” she said. “Everyone is trying to help kids understand the why.”

Even if the bill passes, securing federal support could be challenging. Without a waiver, Colorado would risk millions in federal funding.

Scott Marion, president and executive director at the National Center for the Improvement of Educational Assessment, said he sees little appetite at the federal level for waiving testing, and programs that support innovation have stringent requirements.

The Innovative Assessment Demonstration Authority allows for local experimentation and waives some federal requirements but doesn’t provide any money to support that work. New systems have to eventually scale up to the state level or be abandoned entirely, Marion said. Nor is the federal government currently accepting new applications.

The bill would require Colorado to apply for a Competitive Grant for Local Assessments, which is expected to accept applications this year. That program does come with money to support pilot programs — about $3 million over four years — but participants still have to administer all the usual tests alongside those local experiments.

“It’s like, do you want to climb Longs Peak in Colorado?” Marion asked. “Yeah, it’s there. You could do it. But you better be in shape, and you better not get caught in bad weather. It’s the same thing here. You can do this, but it’s not for the faint of heart.”

Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the correct grades in which students take standardized science tests.

Chalkbeat National Managing Editor Sarah Darville contributed reporting.

Bureau Chief Erica Meltzer covers education policy and politics and oversees Chalkbeat Colorado’s education coverage. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

As state rethinks grad requirements, a group of NYC schools offers lessons on swapping out Regents

2023-03-28T10:05:00+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free New York newsletter to keep up with NYC’s public schools.

On a recent Monday, the 12th-grade science room at Leaders High School in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, felt like a Silicon Valley startup.

Students sprawled on a couch and crisscrossed the room in rolling chairs.

Seventeen-year-old Mahmoud Hussein excitedly bounced among classmates cradling three bright red plastic shapes he’d made in a 3D printer. Hussein was collecting data on which of the objects would make the best fidget to help restless students concentrate in class without being “distracting to the eye or ear,” he explained.

Across the room, 17-year-old Helen Chen hunched over a case of essential oils, extracting drops and mixing them together as part of a monthslong quest to develop new perfume scents free of toxic chemicals.

There’s an unusual level of student freedom. School staffers say that would be impossible without a key feature of Leaders that sets it apart from most other New York City high schools: Students here aren’t required to take year-end Regents exams that usually serve as graduation requirements.

Instead, Leaders’ seniors will document the results of their experiments and present their findings to a panel of educators and experts in what’s known as a “performance-based assessment.”

When Regents exams are the end goal, the entire curriculum is shaped to drive success on the tests, said Leaders Principal Tom Mullen. Without those tests as the final assessment, there’s a “really powerful” opportunity to reshape what and how students learn.

“It frees you up to go into much more depth into what you’re studying and allows for inquiry,” he said.

17-year-old Layla Duran performs exercises to help a classmate at Leaders High School gather data for an experiment while Principal Tom Mullen looks on.

For more than two decades, a coalition of schools like Leaders has quietly offered a striking alternative to the test-based graduation system that reigns in most of the state.

The group — called the “performance standards consortium,” or “consortium” for short — launched 25 years ago with a handful of schools and now comprises 38 members that receive waivers from the state to forgo Regents exams, except the English test. All but two are in New York City.

For most of its history, the consortium has attracted fervent support from its students, parents, and educators, but has operated largely under the radar for most families and policymakers.

That may be changing now as the state reaches a crucial point in a yearslong effort to rethink graduation requirements, casting a new spotlight on performance-based assessment and the work of the consortium.

Students from consortium schools post better college outcomes

Proponents argue that, when done well, performance-based assessments can be just as rigorous, or more so, than tests, and encourage deeper learning that will better serve students in college and the work world.

They point to data including a 2020 study comparing the trajectory of consortium and traditional public school students at CUNY. The analysis found teens from consortium schools were more likely than peers with similar backgrounds from traditional public schools to graduate high school, enroll in higher education, and persist once they got there.

The model has even attracted praise from both ends of the political spectrum. Ray Domanico of the right-leaning Manhattan Institute argued that consortium schools’ “success in getting graduates into college — and the success of their students once they are in college — gets much less attention than they deserve.”

Members of the state’s blue ribbon commission for re-evaluating graduation requirements may soon be paying more attention.

This fall, the commission will present recommendations to the Board of Regents on whether to maintain Regents exams as graduation requirements, and, if not, what to use in their place.

A recent report conducted on behalf of the state education department and Board of Regents said performance-based assessment was the single most popular topic brought up at listening sessions it conducted across the state.

The state education department, meanwhile, is running a pilot program to collect more data on the potential of expanding performance-based assessments. The pilot won’t conclude until 2027, but state education department officials said the group is already communicating its preliminary findings to the blue ribbon commission.

“It’s now very popular to talk about performance standards,” said Michelle Fine, a professor at CUNY’s Graduate Center who has been evaluating the consortium schools since their inception.

The newfound interest is both exciting and nerve-racking for those invested in the consortium.

On one hand, supporters believe there’s room for the model to grow, and that performance-based assessment could play an important role in revamped state graduation requirements.

But proponents also warn that the approach requires a significant level of buy-in and work that may not be right for every school. Moreover, some supporters worry that the rigorous assessment system they’ve worked decades to hone could get watered down as the model expands.

“Everyone who works in a school has seen something called a ‘project’ that’s really just a stack of papers,” said AJ Rathmann-Noonan, the director of school support for the consortium. If a similar fate befalls performance assessments, “it becomes harder to make the case that this is a rigorous alternative to the Regents.”

That’s why proponents of the approach are now working hard to disseminate what they see as the cardinal lessons about what makes the model work — and even bringing in members of the state Board of Regents for visits to see the assessments in person.

Among the biggest takeaways consortium educators want to communicate: the importance of having a network of peer schools to work alongside, securing widespread buy-in from staff before switching to performance assessments, and perhaps most importantly, the impossibility of juggling Regents and performance assessments at the same time.

“You can’t split your attention between traditional and performance assessment,” Rathmann-Noonan said. “We want to make sure those lessons are surfaced so people don’t make the same mistakes.”

Leaders High School makes the leap to a new system

Staffers at Leaders High School understand firsthand both the benefits and challenges of switching from Regents testing to a new kind of assessment.

The school was part of a wave that joined the consortium after state officials agreed in 2013 to issue more waivers.

At the time, staffers at Leaders were eager to experiment with new methods of teaching, but were frustrated by having to prepare for Regents. They also were concerned about the tests’ effects on vulnerable students.

Many staffers felt the Regents weren’t “showing what kids know,” said special education teacher Alexandra Edwards. “We had all these students that had testing anxiety, and we had a big English language learners and special education population.”

The school had to clear a high bar to join the consortium: New entrants are required to hold a staff-wide referendum and secure support from every employee before they can join. That’s the only way to ensure schools are fully prepared for the workload and “level of collective effort” ahead, said Rathmann-Noonan.

Staffers remember that first year as a blur of activity. Teachers spent extra professional development days reworking curriculum plans from top to bottom, getting familiar with the new assessment system, and visiting other consortium schools to pick up tips.

Four graduation-level Performance-Based Assessment Tasks, or PBATs, serve as the North Star for consortium schools: a capstone science experiment, a social studies research paper, an analytic English essay, and a math “narrative” in which students describe the process of solving a math problem.

For each performance assessment, students deliver both a written component and an oral presentation to a panel of teachers, experts, and community members that students themselves play a part in selecting. Schools across the consortium have a unified system for grading the assessments, which draw from the same state standards that guide the Regents exams. Consortium staffers meet frequently to revise the grading system.

Teachers at Leaders quickly learned that preparing students for PBATs was a very different journey than getting them ready for Regents.

The entire faculty had to work together to design a four-year sequence that equipped students not just with content knowledge but also the more intangible skills they needed to complete long-term research papers and experiments.

As time went on and staff settled into a rhythm, they noticed that, even as some aspects of their job got harder, others became easier.

“I have so much less work when it comes to classroom management. I have so much less work when it comes to rote grading,” said English teacher Dana Nelson. “My work is really having the emotional stamina to consider each student and where they are.”

Ten years into using performance assessments, she’s still tweaking her PBAT every year, Nelson added.

“There’s no such thing here as the grizzled veteran who has the yellow pad of tried-and-true things that has been the same for however many years,” she said. “You constantly have to reflect and revise and change.”

In the long term, educators say, that can lead to greater job satisfaction, and could be part of why teacher retention rates in consortium schools exceeded citywide averages from 2011 to 2016, the CUNY study found.

The added curricular freedom also forces students to think much more deeply about what they’re really interested in, starting from an early age, staffers said.

Inspired by her own heritage, 18-year-old Fernanda Carrillo, wrote about Mexican immigration during the Trump administration for a history prompt on how communities have resisted oppression.

Zeroing in on her interests helped keep her from disengaging during the pandemic.

“Because of COVID my grades were suffering,” she said. “It really helped that they let me do what I want to do.”

Applying the consortium’s lessons statewide

Supporters of the consortium model say that the lessons schools like Leaders have learned should help inform the state’s approach to incorporating performance-based assessments into its graduation requirements.

How exactly those requirements could change is still blurry.

Sheree Gibson, a Queens parent and member of the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, who’s also on the state’s blue ribbon graduation measures committee, said that while there’s been widespread discussion of reducing the role of the Regents exams in graduation requirements, she’s heard little momentum to scrap the tests altogether.

That means that Regents tests will likely continue to play some role in the state’s graduation landscape, just alongside other “pathways” like performance-based assessments.

Consortium supporters are adamant that requiring schools to simultaneously offer both styles of assessment at once isn’t effective.

They point to recent efforts to expand performance-based assessment in New Hampshire as a cautionary tale.

University of Massachusetts researchers found in a 2022 review that the requirement to simultaneously use performance and test-based assessments “created two conflicting goals” for educators.

Experts on the model also caution that schools have to be intentional about explaining it to families, particularly those in communities that have been historically underserved by schools and crave external accountability.

Staff at Leaders say many of the families who enroll their students as ninth graders come in without fully understanding the consortium model. A handful decide that it’s not the right place for their kids and leave, but many others come around to the approach once they get to talk it through with staff.

Often, the discussion turns back to what parents really want their kids to leave high school with: the ability to speak and write with confidence, think critically, manage their time and work independently, and identify and pursue their passions — precisely the qualities educators say performance-based assessment encourages.

“It’s making those connections for parents,” said Edwards, the special education teacher. “Those are all really important skills just for existing in the world.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

My high school is exempt from Regents exams. Other schools should be, too.

2023-03-28T10:00:00+00:00

I lived the first 10 years of my life in Shanghai. From a young age, there was an emphasis on the gaokao, China’s nine-hour, multi-day college entrance exam. It was such a big deal that I can remember parents talking about preparing their children for the test while I was in the third grade.

When I moved to America and started middle school in New York, standardized testing took on a different form: state tests. During state test week, there was always a tangible aura of stress at school. I wondered about the purpose of these tests, which seemed to promote rote memorization.

Alexander Calafiura

In high school, students spend years studying for their end-of-course Regents exams, which, for most New York public school students, are necessary for graduation. But a rich and meaningful learning experience is possible without these often-dreaded exams.

I know this because I attend East Side Community High School, a consortium school that is one of 38 New York public schools that are exempt from all Regents exams except one (the English exam). Instead of taking state exit exams in other subjects, students at my school prepare “exhibitions,” a series of writing and oral projects that culminate in extensive research papers and creative projects. (For decades, students in New York state have been required to pass Regents exams to get their high school diploma, though a state commission is now considering whether to eliminate them as a graduation requirement.)

I wanted to attend a high school that prioritizes student life, learning, and extracurricular pursuits over standardized testing.

After middle school, attending a consortium school held a huge appeal for me. I wanted to attend a high school that prioritizes student life, learning, and extracurricular pursuits over standardized testing, and my high school years have been incredibly rewarding.

In biology, for example, I took what I learned in class and combined it with theories of game design to create a fun and engaging DNA replication-inspired game using UNO cards. In the process, I learned many things beyond the scope of a high school biology class. My research had me studying mitosis and meiosis, amino acid transport, and protein synthesis in-depth. I wasn’t regurgitating information; I was applying my knowledge. And by the time I handed in my assignment, I felt like an expert on DNA replication.

Although every student was required to conduct their own written explanation, we were encouraged to work with classmates to create the game. In my group, we delegated responsibilities, and everyone seemed to value the methods and manners others brought to the project.

Without the pressure to memorize definitions, facts, and timelines for the Regents exams, my teachers have more creative liberty. In our U.S. History class, we got to explore African American history in depth, without cutting our conversations short in the name of moving through the content. We dedicated time to reading and analyzing books by Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs — works that exemplify Black resistance and joy.

And in Algebra II, we wrote a research paper with statistics on the connection between workplace regulation and consumer satisfaction. We also explored ways to incentivize major shoe companies to pay their South American workers a living wage.

Proponents of standardized testing say eliminating these assessments would lower high school standards. In reality, consortium schools raise the bar. Students at my school hone sophisticated research and writing skills and contribute to the community in profound ways. As a New York state commission mulls eliminating the Regents as a graduation requirement, I want them to know that my peers are some of the most brilliant, responsible, and upstanding people I have ever met. Our high school experience has taught us to be free and independent thinkers. We are more than prepared for college and beyond. I wish all New York City public school students had the opportunities that we do.

Alexander Calafiura is a junior at East Side Community High School in New York City. In his spare time, he enjoys folding origami, reading classic literature, and having a nice cup of coffee on a rainy day.

What to know about the upcoming state tests for grades 3-8

2023-03-23T21:50:12+00:00

It’s testing season in New York once again.

Schools across the state will administer standardized reading and math exams for grades 3-8 in April and May, as well as science exams for eighth graders in June.

With the intense attention on the pandemic’s effect on students, some schools might be ramping up their focus on the state tests. Some districts have signed up their schools for computer-based programs for math and reading, according to Nathaniel Styer, a spokesperson for the city education department. It’s part of a learning “acceleration” initiative launched earlier this year by the education department, Gothamist reported.

There might be more attention on this year’s state tests, following the spotlight on last year’s dip in national test scores, which also showed drops in fourth grade math scores in New York City.

But there’s a big caveat with the state tests: This year, the exams are based on new learning standards and can’t be compared to results from the last school year, when nearly half of students passed reading exams and 38% passed math.

Many educators and families argue that testing takes away classroom time and doesn’t tell the full story of how a student is doing — a viewpoint schools Chancellor David Banks has previously echoed. Others believe it is a useful tool.

State officials said the tests are just “one tool” that helps teachers understand their students’ academic needs.

Here are some things you should know about the upcoming exams:

When are the tests and how will they be administered at schools?

Schools will give the state English test over a consecutive, two-day period between April 19-21. If students are absent those days, they can make up the tests between April 24-28.

Two weeks later, students will take math tests from May 2-4 with make-up dates scheduled for May 5-11.

Eighth graders will take a science laboratory exam between May 23 and June 2 and a written exam on June 3. Make-up tests for the lab exam must happen sometime within that testing window, while make-up dates for the written exam take place between June 6-9. There will be no fourth grade science test as the state prepares to transition to a science test for fifth graders, beginning next spring.

Most New York City schools will give the exams on paper. So far, 130 schools plan to use computer-based testing, Styer said — which has sometimes come with technical issues across the state. For computer-based tests, the window for English exams will be April 19-26 and for math will be May 2-9.

While computer-based testing is currently optional, mandated computer-based state testing will begin next spring for grades 5 and 8. All schools will be required to give the exam on computers in the spring of 2026 for all grades.

How will the tests be different this year?

For the first time, this year’s state tests will be based on the “Next Generation Learning Standards,” a set of grade-level learning standards established in 2017 that were revised from the controversial Common Core standards.

The Next Gen standards, as they’re often called, were meant to clarify previously vague language from the Common Core. For example, whereas Common Core geometry standards simply stated that students must be able to “prove theorems about triangles,” Next Gen’s revisions detailed the specific theorems.

When the state’s Board of Regents adopted the new standards, some groups lauded them for not straying too far from Common Core, while other education organizations said the standards were too rigorous for early grades.

What do the new tests mean for scoring them?

New tests also mean that the state will determine new benchmarks of what makes a student proficient in reading, math, and science. This summer, teachers will participate in a process where they will decide what students need to know in order to demonstrate that they’re meeting grade-level standards – otherwise known as being proficient – on state exams. That process will impact scoring for this spring’s tests.

“It’s a matter of judgment to decide, ‘OK, we think a student who’s proficient should be able to answer this question correctly, say, two-thirds of the time,’” said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College, giving an example.

Can we compare scores to last year?

No. Because the tests are new, the results can’t be compared to last year’s scores. Studying scores from year to year is helpful for understanding progress students have made — especially amid the pandemic.

But because state officials have warned against comparing results to previous years whenever the test changes, it’s been impossible to consider trends over the better part of a decade.

In 2016, New York allowed students to have unlimited testing time and cut the number of questions. In 2018 the state went from three testing days to two. The exams were canceled due to the pandemic in 2020, and the following school year, a fraction of students took shortened exams with just a quarter in New York City — far less than 2019.

They advised against comparisons with last year’s scores because looking at a student’s performance in 2022 versus 2019 would “ignore the enormous and, in many cases, grievous impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students, families, teachers, and entire school communities,” a spokesperson for the state education department said in a statement.

That may be frustrating to some educators, families, and researchers because it makes it impossible to see long-term trends of student performance and growth. These exams, however, are just one indicator of how well students are doing in New York, said Pallas, and should be viewed along with other metrics, such as graduation rates and college acceptance rates.

“The state testing system is just one piece of evidence that has to be put into relation to all the other things that are available,” Pallas said.

How are my child’s scores used?

Schools are federally required to administer these exams, and districts are required to assess 95% of their students.

In New York City, the exams are used to see where students are meeting grade-level expectations “as well as students that need academic intervention in literacy and math,” Styer said.

State officials have said that these scores are just one measure of how a student is doing in school. However, the scores don’t come back until the fall – meaning teachers can’t see them the year that children take the exams.

In New York City, high schools and middle schools that screen students for admission can no longer take state test scores into account.

Can I opt my child out?

Yes. While federal officials require schools to administer these tests, parents can pull their children out. New York City’s education department has previously advised parents to speak with their child’s principal if they’re interested in opting out.

Last year, 10% of students opted out of exams compared with 4% in 2019.

Federal law requires states to give assessments to at least 95% of students. If fewer students participate at a school, it could contribute to the school being labeled as struggling – which state officials define as needing “targeted” or “comprehensive” support. But generally, low test participation may only affect a school’s accountability status if it’s combined with bad results on other measures, such as chronic absenteeism, according to state education officials.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City public schools. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

New Jersey students take high school exit exam amid concerns about passing score, usefulness

2023-03-15T18:50:15+00:00

For the first time in four years, thousands of New Jersey students will take the state’s high school exit exam this week as a graduation requirement.

The testing comes as some states roll back the mandate and concerns persist about the test’s usefulness and ability to measure college readiness.

From 1979 until 2020, the state administered some version of the New Jersey Graduation Proficiency Assessment. But in 2020 and 2021, Gov. Phil Murphy suspended the exit test, which is given to high school juniors, along with other state standardized exams, due to the pandemic.

Last March, high school juniors took a trial run version of the exit exam after Murphy also waived the requirement for the Class of 2023 due to the pandemic. The state reinstated the requirement for the Class of 2024 and the Class of 2025. Shortly before students took that test, the state board of education raised the passing score for those students from 725 to 750, although the board also said it would revisit that score after reviewing results from the 2022 trial run.

On that draft version of the exam students took last spring, 39% passed the English Language Arts portion, while 50% passed Math in New Jersey, according to state data. Those results came after years of disruption and learning loss caused by COVID, as well as acute mental health challenges among school-age children.

Those results, along with the fact that the state so far hasn’t revised the passing scores for this year’s exam, have led to some pushback in New Jersey, which is one of nine states that requires a high school exit exam (that figure includes New Jersey’s resumption of the requirement for the Class of 2024). However, many states have ended their exit test mandates in recent years, due to concerns about unfair burdens they impose on some students, among other worries.

“Implementing a new, harder exit test in the middle of a pandemic, and a pervasive mental health crisis among young people, is unbelievably bad policy,” said Stan Karp, director of the Secondary Reform Project for the Education Law Center, a New Jersey advocacy group. “It’s tone deaf and harmful to students.

This month, Karp and his team sent a letter to the state’s department of education urging for a review of the passing score. They also called the test “high-stakes” for high school students who may have met other graduation requirements, but struggle with standardized assessments.

The Education Law Center estimates that the higher passing score of 750, instead of the 725 recommended by the department, reduced passing rates by 15% to 20% on each section of the test.

“The validity of the passing score is a matter of significant public consequence. The results of last year’s NJGPA administration emphasize those consequences,” the group wrote.

The state education department had not responded to Chalkbeat’s request for comment about the Education Law Center’s letter at the time of publishing.

Karp and his team have also questioned the usefulness of the test since it is not required by federal mandates, he said. They have questioned its capability to accurately capture “graduation-level competencies” for high school students who already take a slew of state standardized tests and other exams that measure student performance over the course of several years.

For those reasons, Karp and his team are supporting the bipartisan Assembly Bill 4639, which would eliminate the exam as a requirement for New Jersey high schoolers. The bill is currently in the assembly’s education committee and is up for a vote this week.

“The [NJGPA] does not provide any useful information to teachers or schools. The results arrive at the start of a student’s last year in high school, far too late to have any positive impact on educational programs,” Karp said.

Newark juniors feel nervous about the exit test

Starting in December, Newark Public Schools required all juniors to attend a Saturday class to prepare for the exam this week. On average, Newark students scored 706 for the English Language Arts portion and 726 for math on the trial exit exam last year — 44 points below the passing score for English and 24 points below the score for math.

Yamia Bermudez, a junior at University High School, said she attended two Saturday sessions and found them “somewhat helpful” in preparing her for the exit test. During the sessions, students worked on a mock test and reviewed questions as a group in order to get a feel for what they could expect, Bermudez said.

But after taking the first two sections of the English portion of the test this week, Bermudez said the reading passages were boring and the questions confusing.

“When it was over, everybody was like: That was so confusing, it was so long, like what were they talking about?” said Bermudez about her peers who shared their thoughts after testing on Monday.

This year, the exam is broken down into three, 90-minute sections for English and Language Arts and two 90-minute sections for math. The test is computer-based, and students answer questions on their Chromebooks. Results will be available before the end of the school year in June, according to the district’s letter to parents.

Bermudez said she feels nervous about her performance on the test so far, but knows she can take an alternative test if she doesn’t pass.

The state offers a long list of substitute assessments for students who do not pass, such as the Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery, the SAT, and ACT, among others.

Ultimately, Bermudez said she is confident in the skills she’s learned but could do without another timed test.

“When it comes to tests, I get stressed, I always overthink, and I end up doing worse than I would have had I just taken the time to calm down,” she said. “But for a state test, you don’t really have time to calm yourself down, you have 90 or 60 minutes to get it done.”

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Bill to ease Tennessee’s third-grade reading and retention law clears first legislative hurdle

2023-03-15T10:00:00+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Sign up for our free Tennessee newsletter to keep up with the Shelby County public school system and state education policy.

State lawmakers advanced legislation Tuesday that would put fewer third graders at risk of being held back this year under Tennessee’s 2021 reading law.

The law, which pins retention decisions on how well a student scores in English language arts on the annual Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program test, would be revised to consider results from a second state-approved test, too — but only for third graders who score just under the state’s proficiency threshold on their TCAP.

The legislation also would direct the state Board of Education to develop rules for appealing any retention decision for students who scored as approaching proficiency.

And it would require that any public school student held back in kindergarten, first grade, or second grade undergo tutoring during their following school year.

The House K-12 subcommittee advanced the measure — which was similar to legislation filed last week by House Education Committee Chairman Mark White — after studying a flurry of other bills to revise the law. Parents, educators, and school boards have flooded lawmakers’ offices with complaints about the state’s stricter retention policy, which takes effect with this year’s class of third graders.

Committee members ultimately rallied around the compromise bill that passed on a voice vote. The measure widens reading test criteria for retention but keeps the state, not local educators, in control of those decisions.

The legislation still faces multiple votes in the House and Senate and could put lawmakers at odds with Gov. Bill Lee. The Republican governor pressed for the law and is urging the legislature to stay the course on the state’s literacy strategy.

His strategy draws a clear line in the sand to prevent “social promotions” and includes free tutoring and summer learning camps to help struggling students catch up on learning, as well as options for retesting third-graders who are at risk of being retained.

“Contrary to what critics will say, Tennessee’s reading success plan is about moving kids forward, not holding them back,” Lee wrote in a recent editorial published by The Tennessean.

A spokeswoman for the governor offered no further comment Tuesday night when asked about the bill’s advancement.

But the leader of the state’s largest teacher organization called it a “positive step.”

“Multiple measures are important when understanding student achievement for young children,” said Tanya Coats, president of the Tennessee Education Association. “A year-end test that runs for 180 minutes for 8- and 9-year-olds should not be the only way we understand where students are in English language arts.”

Only a third of Tennessee students read on grade level, according to state testing data. The existing law puts tens of thousands of third graders — and more than 2,700 students in Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest district — at risk of being held back this year if they do not take advantage of summer learning opportunities and tutoring.

“We don’t always get it perfect the first time,” said Rep. Sam McKenzie, a Knoxville Democrat, calling the proposed changes an improvement.

Asked by McKenzie what percentage of third graders would be at risk of retention under the proposed changes, the bill’s sponsors could not give an accurate estimate but said there would be an impact.

“There would be more retained if we didn’t pass this bill,” said Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Culleoka Republican, who is carrying the bill in the House for White.

Third grade is considered a critical marker for reading, which is considered foundational to all subsequent learning. But while the law is intended to set children up for success in school, critics say the retention policy could have significant unintended negative consequences by shaming students who are already struggling. And they note that children from low-income families are more likely to be retained in the early grades because they have limited access to high-quality early childhood education and support at home.

Most research suggests that retention has, on average, null or negative effects on students, and that it’s also linked strongly to dropping out of high school.

You can track the bill on the General Assembly’s website. To learn more about Tennessee’s current retention policy, visit the state education department’s answers to frequently asked questions.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado goes paperless: Students will take computer-based SAT and PSAT starting next year

2023-03-13T23:22:01+00:00

Colorado high school students will continue to take the SAT and PSAT as the state’s way of measuring school and district academic performance, but they’ll switch to the computerized version in spring 2024.

A committee of teachers and school administrators recommended the College Board’s online suite of tests to replace its paper version, according to the Colorado Department of Education. The new computerized test was piloted by the College Board in 2021, and the organization said in a news release last year that it’s “easier to give, and more relevant.”

State law requires the state education department to take competitive bids every five years for a statewide assessment. The selection, however, was delayed a year because of the pandemic. The state must wait 10 days before the contract becomes official, according to a news release.

Colorado public colleges and universities no longer require a college-level exam like the SAT or ACT for acceptance, part of a growing “test optional” movement nationwide. However, many colleges and universities still ask for test scores as part of their application, and even students applying to test-optional schools can submit their scores to show their qualifications.

Colorado began using the PSAT and SAT to measure students’ math and English abilities in 2017, part of a compromise to reduce the overall number of tests students take in school. At the time, Colorado was the epicenter of an opt-out movement protesting a heavy testing burden, and many parents excused their students from taking standardized tests.

The idea was to use a test high school students would want to take anyway because it would help with their college and scholarship applications. Ninth and 10th graders take the PSAT and high school juniors take the SAT in the spring.

Colorado uses the test results along with graduation rates and other factors to rate the performance of schools and districts. SAT scores also are one way students can show they meet graduation requirements for basic competency in math and language arts.

While Colorado high school students use the college readiness exams, K-8 students use the Colorado Measure of Academic Success, or CMAS, to test math, English, and science understanding.

Jason Gonzales is a reporter covering higher education and the Colorado legislature. Chalkbeat Colorado partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage. Contact Jason at jgonzales@chalkbeat.org.

Retention rule in reading law could hold back over 2,700 MSCS 3rd-graders, official warns

2023-03-10T23:35:39+00:00

More than 2,700 third-graders in Memphis-Shelby County schools are at risk of being held back under Tennessee’s retention law for struggling readers, a MSCS official told the board’s Academic Performance Committee Thursday.

The numbers are based on students’ performance on the i-Ready reading proficiency diagnostic assessments that are administered nationally and were given to MSCS third-graders last winter.

Those assessments serve as predictors of how students will perform on the English language arts section of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program test, or TCAP, which is the sole criterion used to identify students for retention under the state’s stricter reading law passed in 2021.

Of the 6,748 MSCS third-graders who took the winter tests, 4,196 students scored below a cutoff that would call for further intervention under the retention law, according to data presented by Jaron Carson, chief academic officer for MSCS.

Of those 4,196 third-graders, 1,409 would be exempt from the retention law because of a disability or an individualized education plan, or because they are English language learners.

That leaves 2,787 MSCS third-graders who could be held back this year if the winter assessments accurately predict their scores on the spring TCAPs, Carson said.

But Carson also presented recommendations to the committee to reduce the likelihood of retention for those students. They included pushing for a change in the state law to allow third-graders to take the English language arts section of the TCAP three times.

Suggested dates were April 17-21, June 12-26 and July 8-19.

Right now, students in grades 3 to 5 take the TCAP from April 17 to May 2. The state Education Department will also hold a TCAP retake for third-graders from May 30 to June 2.

In Mississippi, which has been lauded for boosting its ranking for the fourth-grade reading proficiency rate from 49th in the nation to 29th, third-graders get three chances to pass its reading assessment test. Carson cited Mississippi’s successes in making his recommendations.

Another recommendation was to give third-graders unlimited time on the third-grade English language arts test, or more time to complete certain sections.

The recommendations come amid growing concerns about the impact of the law in Tennessee, and a flurry of efforts in the legislature to revise it. Three weeks ago, critics of the law gathered at First Congregational Church in Memphis and voiced worries about the law, including what they saw as unfairness that a single test would determine whether a child is promoted, and the lack of tutors available to help students who needed to catch up.

But Gov. Bill Lee has stuck by the law with the stricter retention policy, which he pushed for during a special legislative session on education in 2021 to deal with the impact of the pandemic.

MSCS board member Amber Huett-Garcia, who attended the meeting at the church and who has spoken with lawmakers about possible revisions, didn’t sound optimistic about the chances of Carson’s recommendations being adopted.

“About 2,700 students are likely going to get a retention letter, and we have to be prepared to navigate that process,” she said.

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee 3rd-grade retention law will intensify Memphis students’ pandemic woes, local critics say

2023-02-23T23:50:43+00:00

Many Memphis youths are already struggling to overcome emotional and psychological trauma inflicted or exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

But the specter of being held back in third grade if they can’t pass the state’s reading test will pile onto that trauma, Memphis and Shelby County child and education advocates said during a town hall Wednesday.

“I don’t want my babies that I’m responsible for caught up in this,” said Ian Randolph, board treasurer for Circles of Success Learning Academy charter school.

“They’re trying their best to meet our expectations as educators, and you put this kind of crap on top of them, after going through a pandemic … now you want to put more pressure on them to meet a state expectation?”

Randolph was among the roughly 50 people who gathered at First Congregational Church to discuss — and to lambaste — Tennessee’s strict third grade retention law, which kicks in this year. The law requires that third-grade students who don’t demonstrate reading proficiency on the TCAP assessment for English language arts participate in tutoring or summer learning programs, or risk being held back from the fourth grade. (Some students are automatically exempt.)

The law, passed in 2021 during a special legislative session that Gov. Bill Lee called to address pandemic learning loss, also included funding for tutoring and summer learning camps to help struggling third graders catch up.

But those aspects of the law became unworkable for many families, some attendees said, because of issues ranging from a shortage of tutors to confusion about how progress is measured on the tests the students take after the recovery camps.

Barring changes in the law, thousands of Memphis students face the prospect of having to repeat third grade. According to data presented by Venita Doggett, director of advocacy for the Memphis Education Fund, 78% of third-graders in Memphis-Shelby County Schools could be held back this year, while 65% of third-graders could be retained statewide.

The figure would be closer to 80% for Black, Hispanic and Native American third-graders in MSCS, and 83% for low-income students.

The implications of those figures resonated with Natalie McKinney, executive director and co-founder of Whole Child Strategies Inc., a nonprofit that supports families and children in the Klondike and Smokey City neighborhoods in Memphis.

The retention law, she said, would have a disparate impact on children in those neighborhoods, where 1 in 3 residents are poor, and 70% of the schoolchildren are from low-income families.

“They’ve all been impacted emotionally by the pandemic,” said McKinney, who moderated the town hall. The retention policy “doesn’t make any sense.”

Lee and other defenders of the law say that it’s needed to avoid pushing unprepared students ahead, and that holding students back who aren’t proficient in reading is part of the state’s post-pandemic recovery efforts.

“If you really care about a child’s future, the last thing you should do is push them past the third grade if they can’t read,” the governor once told Chalkbeat.

But even some of his political allies have expressed concerns about enforcing the law based on the result of a single test.

Already, Doggett said, 19 proposals have been filed to amend the law — bills that range from nixing the retention requirement altogether to extending funding for summer camps and other aid beyond this year.

Pending the outcome of those efforts, organizers of the town hall urged attendees to sign a letter they had drafted asking Lee to issue an executive order to waive the retention policy for third graders testing below proficiency this year.

“The current 3rd grade class of 2022 and 2023 were the students who were affected by the pandemic,” the letter reads. “Studies show that a tremendous amount of learning loss occurred due to these students being virtual in the previous grades. In addition, these studies showed (that) to recoup the loss during the pandemic would take years.

“The third grade retention law seems to hold these students and educators accountable for something that was new to this generation for which they had no control,” the letter said.

The letter also urges lawmakers to use more criteria than a single test to determine whether a student should be retained, and to focus on broader solutions, such as partnering with community agencies, to help students recover from pandemic learning loss.

Besides sending a letter to Lee, opponents of the retention policy said they planned to pressure their local public officials to push back on the law, as many school boards have. Some called for the MSCS school board, the Memphis City Council and the Shelby County Commission to issue a joint resolution supporting the waiver.

The two MSCS board members who attended the meeting in person, Amber Huett-Garcia and Michelle McKissack, said they intend to push for revisions to the law.

“Let me be clear: This is not a good law. I do not support it,” said Huett-Garcia, who said she plans a trip to Nashville in early March to talk directly with lawmakers.

“The mood that I have gotten from legislators is that they know that they have not gotten this right,” she said, “but this is not the time to let up pressure.”

Bureau Chief Tonyaa Weathersbee oversees Chalkbeat Tennessee’s education coverage. Contact her at tweathersbee@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee looks to ‘Mississippi miracle’ as it grapples with stagnant reading scores

2023-03-01T17:29:52+00:00

Tennessee, which once counted on Mississippi’s worst-in-the-nation reading scores to elevate its own national ranking for literacy, is now looking to its neighbor to the south as a role model for how to improve.

In a turnaround dubbed the “Mississippi miracle,” the state saw its fourth-grade reading scores on a national test rise dramatically between 2013 and 2019, even for historically marginalized groups like Black and Hispanic students. Mississippi also maintained its reading gains in 2022, while scores in most other states declined after the pandemic caused unprecedented disruptions to schooling.

Now under several 2021 laws, Tennessee is employing many of the same tactics that Mississippi did under its 2013 law. Among them: prioritizing reading improvements and investments in grades K-3, training teachers on the “science of reading,” including an emphasis on phonics, and — most controversial of all — requiring third graders to pass a state reading test to get promoted to the fourth grade.

Carey Wright, Mississippi’s education chief from 2013 to 2022, praised Tennessee during testimony Wednesday before state lawmakers in Nashville who are considering whether to make changes to Tennessee’s policies for holding third graders back.

“You are really to be commended for the comprehensive nature in which you’ve approached this topic,” she said, noting that Tennessee has even required its teacher training programs to change how they teach reading instruction, which Mississippi did not.

Wright cited a recent Boston University study finding that Mississippi third-graders who were retained under that state’s law went on to achieve substantially higher scores in English language arts by the sixth grade. The study also found that retention had no impact on other outcomes such as attendance or identification for special education.

But national research about retention is mixed. Critics argue that there are more risks than benefits — from negative social and emotional effects to a disproportionate impact on student groups who are already marginalized, such as those who come from low-income families, are of color, or have disabilities.

Why Tennessee zeroed in on third grade

Literacy is foundational to all subsequent learning, and third grade is considered a critical marker. As the old saying goes: You learn to read up until the third grade, and after that, you read to learn.

But for years, reading scores have been mostly stagnant in Tennessee, with only about a third of the state’s third graders showing proficiency based on state tests.

In 2011, lawmakers passed a retention law to try to address the problem, but the statute was largely unenforced, with few third graders being held back by local school leaders.

“So here we are 12 years later having the same discussion,” said Rep. Mark White, who chairs the House Education Administration Committee and helped pass the state’s new reading and retention policies.

“I personally am grateful that we passed a retention law … because now we have everybody’s attention,” the Memphis Republican said to kick off Wednesday’s hearing.

House leaders have compiled a list of 14 bills that aim to revise or tweak the law. They range from gutting the retention provision altogether to giving local districts more authority to determine which students should be held back. Gov. Bill Lee pressed for the 2021 law and wants to stay the course.

To avoid retention, the law says third graders whose scores on state tests show they are “approaching” proficiency must attend a summer camp and demonstrate “adequate growth” on a test administered at the camp’s end, or they must participate in a tutoring program in the fourth grade. Students who score “below” proficiency must participate in both intervention programs.

Third graders are exempt from retention if they were held back in a previous grade; have or may have a disability that affects reading; are English language learners with less than two years of English instruction; or retest as proficient before the beginning of fourth grade.

Parents also can appeal a retention decision if their child performed at the 40th percentile on a different test that allows for comparisons with national benchmarks, or if the child experienced an event that reasonably impacted the child’s performance on the TCAP test. The appeal can be based on other criteria such as results from locally administered screening tests required by the state.

Tennessee Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn has shepherded Gov. Bill Lee’s reading improvement plan including Reading 360, an array of programs to train teachers on reading instruction, provide more resources and mentoring networks to school districts, and support families to help their children read better.

Pushback against retention is widespread

While Tennessee’s tutoring and summer learning programs are popular, many parents and educators dislike the part of the law that makes results of the state’s standardized TCAP test for English language arts the only criterion to determine whether third-graders can progress to the fourth grade. Numerous school boards also have passed resolutions urging the legislature to revisit the new retention policy.

On Wednesday, several district superintendents echoed that call.

“I respectfully ask that you allow districts to use multiple data points when making the monumental decision to retain a student, which can have serious long-term consequences,” said Gary Lilly, director of Collierville Schools in Shelby County.

Beyond the state’s test, school districts generally give students multiple assessments that are specifically designed to gauge reading progress. All of those results could be considered, Lilly said, along with other factors such as a student’s overall achievement, attendance record, and emotional and social maturity.

Lilly noted that Tennessee also has among the nation’s highest thresholds for measuring proficiency. The state began working to raise them when a 2007 U.S. Chamber of Commerce report gave Tennessee an “F” for truth in advertising, because its standards were so low that most students were deemed proficient.

But Lilly suggested that Tennessee may want to rethink those high thresholds.

“I am not advocating to decrease the rigor of our standards,” he said. “What I am saying is that the TCAP test should not be viewed as the definitive authority to target students for retention.”

Another concern is the state’s one-year timeline for implementing the new retention policy at scale, affecting third graders who score either “approaching” proficiency or “below basic.” Some district leaders have argued that starting just with the students who score “below basic,” which is Tennessee’s lowest-performing category, would be a more targeted and logistically feasible approach.

Jeanne Barker, director of Lenoir City Schools, said her district won’t receive TCAP results until after the school year ends, leaving little time for students to take the test over or for families to decide about attending summer learning camps or appealing retention decisions to the state education department.

Penny Schwinn, Tennessee’s education commissioner, acknowledged the “tight timeline” but testified that no parent should be surprised by the end of the school year if their child is identified as having a reading deficiency.

“Parents should be receiving notification that their child may be at risk for needing additional supports two times before we even get into testing season,” said Schwinn, adding that preliminary TCAP results will become available the week of May 19.

Advocates look beyond third grade

Policy conversations that began with third grade reading continue to gravitate toward earlier grades.

Wright said Mississippi’s playbook emphasized the importance of literacy instruction and interventions for struggling readers as early as possible.

“My goal was that, by the time third grade came around, there shouldn’t even be an issue around third grade,” she said. “We should have captured those kids a long time ago and made sure that they were getting the interventions and the help that they needed.”

Tennessee education advocates shared similar sentiments.

Nancy Dishner, president and CEO of the Niswonger Foundation supporting students and educators in East Tennessee, said her biggest concern about Tennessee’s current initiative is that “we’re not doing it early enough.”

“We have to move back,” Dishner said. “Birth is when we need to start helping our kids, not when they enter elementary school.”

Amy Doren, a 35-year educator and former coordinator of early childhood programs at Kingsport City Schools, agreed.

“Children’s brains develop 90% to capacity by age 5. So why would we not seek to make an impact in those early years?” Doren asked. “That’s where we want our children to learn to be problem-solvers and critical thinkers, so that when they get to the third grade, they’ll be ready to handle it.”

Editor’s note: This story was updated on March 1, 2023, to add that parents can appeal a retention decision based on the results of locally administered, state-required screening tests; and to clarify that the one-year timeline for implementing the third-grade retention policy “at scale” refers to potentially holding back students in two scoring categories, versus starting just with the lowest-performing category.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee is talking about rejecting federal education funding. What would that mean for kids?

2023-02-16T11:00:00+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Subscribe to our free Tennessee newsletter to keep up with the Shelby County public school system and state education policy.

When House Speaker Cameron Sexton recently floated the idea of Tennessee rejecting U.S. education dollars to free its schools from federal rules and restrictions, he made the pivot sound as simple as making up the difference with $1.8 billion in state funds.

“I don’t think the legislation would be too hard to do,” he said last week after publicly declaring his desire to “do things the Tennessee way” at a Tennessee Farm Bureau reception on Feb. 7.

But the way federal funding works is pretty complex. Some districts and schools are more dependent than others on that money, which is directed to schools that serve disadvantaged students and programs that target certain needs ranging from rural education and English language learners to technology and charter schools. A related web of state and federal laws and policies created in response to the federal grants also likely would have to be unwound.

Sexton told Chalkbeat he’s working on legislation to “start a conversation” about the possibilities. And once filed, his written proposal might answer some of the many questions that Tennesseans are asking about what such a change would mean for kids and schools.

But for now, here are a few answers, along with more questions to ponder:

Is the proposal in Tennessee serious?

While a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education dismissed Sexton’s comments as “political posturing,” the House speaker said he’s dead serious.

“I absolutely think we should do it,” Sexton told Chalkbeat.

Sexton noted that, based on the latest budget information, Tennessee could tap into $3.2 billion in new recurring revenues, which would more than cover any lost federal funds for education.

“Now is the time to look at it,” said Sexton, who as House speaker is one of the state’s most influential Republicans. “It doesn’t mean that you do it this year or you have to do it in the next six months, but it starts with the idea.”

Spokespeople for Republican Gov. Bill Lee and Lt. Gov. Randy McNally expressed openness to Sexton’s proposal, while several education leaders in Tennessee’s GOP-controlled legislature expressed outright enthusiasm.

“I would do everything in my power to pass that bill,” said Rep. Scott Cepicky, of Culleoka, who chairs a House education subcommittee and said he “wants Tennessee to have more autonomy when it comes to educating our kids.”

“It’s intriguing,” added Rep. Debra Moody, of Covington, chair of the House Education Instruction Committee. “I think my constituents at home would love it.”

Others were more reserved in their comments.

“It’s a thought-provoking idea, but I’d like to see details,” said Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg, of Bristol. “I have questions about what federal strings would be removed and, more importantly, do those strings need removing? Right now, I don’t know.”

Can Tennessee say ‘no’ to federal money?

Probably. No state has rejected the funding so far, mainly because states typically need the money, which on average makes up about a tenth of their budgets for K-12 education.

But Republican leaders in other states have talked about the idea before, and Oklahoma lawmakers are currently considering legislation to phase out federal funding over 10 years for pre-K through 12th grade. A smattering of small school systems across the nation already have passed on federal money because of the cost of compliance.

“States do not have to accept federal funding at first glance,” said Matthew Patrick Shaw, assistant professor of law, public policy and education at Vanderbilt University. “These are carrot-stick programs in which the federal government has policy objectives and, in order to encourage states to go along with them, offers money that they believe states need to operate these programs.”

Would the change disrupt finances for students and schools across Tennessee?

Possibly, but a lot would depend on how it’s done.

Through a program known as Title I, the federal government distributes hundreds of millions of federal dollars to Tennessee schools that serve large concentrations of students from low-income homes to help improve achievement. If Tennessee replaced Title I funding with state money, would it still use the federal formula for distributing that money? Sexton hasn’t said.

The same question applies to federal funds that go to Title III programs to support English language learners, or for Title V programs to support rural education.

Sexton says Tennessee would still cover the costs of all of those programs, as well as free meals funded through assorted grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But in Memphis-Shelby County Schools, where all but eight of the system’s 155 district-run schools have Title I designations, some officials aren’t convinced about the stability of state funding.

“If Tennessee decided to do it our way, what does ‘our way’ look like?” asked school board member Amber Huett-Garcia, whose district expects to receive more than $892 million in federal funding next year.

“Would it achieve equity? Would Memphis continue to receive the share that it currently gets?” she continued.

What federal strings does Sexton want to cut?

Testing is the main problem, according to Sexton.

“I don’t think the TCAP test measures much of anything, and I think teachers would tell you that you’re teaching to a test,” said Sexton about the state’s annual test under the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

States that take federal money must give annual assessments in reading and math in grades 3-8 and once in high school. They also are required to administer a science test one time each in elementary, middle and high school grades. Thus, each state must give 17 tests annually, though no individual student takes more than three of those tests in a given school year.

Sexton said Tennessee could scrap TCAP — which Tennessee developed through its testing companies to align with the state’s academic standards — and create a better test with the help of its educators.

But several education advocates note that states already have more flexibility than ever to develop their testing, evaluation, and accountability systems under a 2015 federal law crafted with the leadership of former U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee.

“When shepherding the Every Student Succeeds Act, Sen. Alexander was laser-focused on Tennessee and what Tennessee would need to be successful,” said Sasha Pudelski, national advocacy director for the School Superintendents Association.

States receiving Title I funds also must participate in national tests of fourth- and eighth-grade students in reading and math every two years. Known as the nation’s report card, the National Assessment of Educational Progress allows comparisons across states and is an important marker for showing how students are doing over time.

Lundberg, a key education leader in the Senate, said such testing data is important for Tennessee.

“I want to make certain that we’re able to continue comparing Tennessee to Montana or California or Michigan,” he said. “If we really want to be No. 1 in the nation in education, we need to be able to measure apples to apples across states.”

Incidentally, the TCAP exam that Sexton wants to scrap is the same standardized test that a 2021 Republican-backed reading law uses as the only criterion to determine whether third-graders can progress to the fourth grade. Lawmakers have filed numerous bills this year to address concerns about the retention policy, which kicks in with this year’s class of third graders.

What other federal mandates are considered burdensome?

Few would dispute that accepting federal funding comes with a lot of red tape. Mounds of paperwork and numerous audits of how money is spent are all part of a huge bureaucratic infrastructure that comes with administering billions of dollars of federal funding.

But Sexton, who said there are “a gazillion restrictions” he doesn’t like, did not enumerate other burdens beyond testing, despite Chalkbeat’s multiple requests to his office for a list.

Marguerite Roza, a Georgetown University professor who researches education finance policy, said she suspects the bigger objections are related to current “culture wars” about curriculum and whether transgender students should be allowed to use school bathrooms or play sports consistent with their gender identity, which may not correspond with their sex assigned at birth.

“Those strings come from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights,” Roza said.

Civil rights enforcement is the mission of that office based on the passage of federal laws such as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Title IX of education amendments passed in 1972, and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, which prohibit discrimination based on race, sex, and disability.

And Tennessee has been at the forefront of culture war legislation. It passed more laws in 2021 aimed at limiting the rights of transgender people than any other state in the nation, according to an analysis by The Associated Press.

The state also has passed laws in recent years to prohibit the teaching of certain concepts related to race and sex in classrooms and to allow an appointed state panel to ban certain school library books statewide if members deem them inappropriate for the ages of students who can access them.

If Tennessee rejects federal funds, would the state still have to ensure students’ civil rights protections under federal laws, including for students with disabilities?

The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, or IDEA, is a federal funding statute that says schools must identify students with disabilities and provide them with a free and appropriate public education tailored to their needs. But generally speaking, legal experts say, those requirements apply only to states that accept IDEA funds.

“If I were a parent of a child with a disability, this would be a major concern,” said Gini Pupo-Walker, state director for The Education Trust in Tennessee. “Would my child’s rights and needs be protected without the federal funding and oversight?”

Sexton says the state would still fund services that are currently part of IDEA and would come up with a similar program that he believes could be better.

But the Tennessee Disability Coalition says there’s no assurance that a Tennessee version would give families the same or better protections than under IDEA or other federal laws designed to protect students with disabilities.

“It’s hard for the disability community to trust Tennessee when our state’s track record hasn’t been so great,” said Jeff Strand, the coalition’s government affairs coordinator. “Our state institutions for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities have a long history of abuses, and we continue to see a troubling pattern of actions such as our state’s choice not to accept federal funding to expand Medicaid services.”

Gov. Bill Lee speaks to advocates for people with disabilities gathered at the Tennessee State Capitol on Feb. 4, 2020.

Another concern is where families could appeal when the system isn’t working for their students. Under IDEA, they can call for a meeting at school to speak with teachers, administrators, and case managers. If they’re not satisfied, they can appeal all the way up to the Office of Civil Rights. Dozens of disability-related cases in Tennessee schools are currently being investigated by that federal office, which has the power to take away funding from states or schools that don’t follow the law.

“It’s already tough to live with a disability in Tennessee,” said Strand. “A change like this would cloud a specific longstanding avenue that ensures that the rights of students with disabilities are being protected. And it clouds it for no good reason.”

Beyond IDEA, federal civil rights laws are hard to unpack because some are also linked to receipt of federal funds, so it may depend on how state laws are structured.

The Office of Civil Rights also enforces Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, a civil rights statute which prohibits discrimination against individuals with disabilities, as well as Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, which extends this prohibition against discrimination to government services such as public schools, regardless of whether they receive any federal financial assistance.

Several legal experts believe many Tennessee families likely would turn to the courts over alleged violations of those laws based on the state constitution, which guarantees equal access to a system of free public education, or the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees equal protection under the law and due process of law.

“If you want to know how this change would affect children,” said Vanderbilt’s Shaw about the possibility of rejecting federal funds and restrictions, “there’s just a lot of uncertainty.”

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado school case study highlights need for collaboration in turnaround work

2023-02-17T17:24:37+00:00

Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news organization covering public education in communities across America. Subscribe to our free Colorado newsletter to keep up with education news from around the state: ckbe.at/subscribe-colorado

When Centennial Elementary in Greeley was facing state intervention in 2016, Superintendent Deirdre Pilch, who was new at the time, decided to try something different.

She surprised then-Principal Anthony Asmus by letting him decide how he wanted to turn things around at the school.

“She backed us up,” recalled Asmus. “We had the choice for this. That was big.”

Seven years later, Centennial is being cited as a success story in a new study commissioned by the state that highlights the importance of local leaders and classroom teachers taking ownership of school improvement efforts.

Officials with the Colorado Department of Education are using the findings to improve how they help schools in turnaround. The state on Wednesday approved the latest round of school improvement dollars.

The case study, presented to the State Board of Education in October, follows Centennial Elementary and Prairie Heights Middle School, two Greeley schools that joined the state’s Transformation Network and have maintained their improvements over time.

Researchers found that narrowing the focus to fewer improvement strategies, empowering teachers to lead change in their classrooms, and having good relationships between state, district, and school leaders, are key.

And, importantly, the study found, local educators such as teachers and school leaders have to feel ownership of the work that’s happening, rather than being told what to do.

“There was a need to go a little deeper on what happened to those schools that had left the program and sustained success,” said Elena Diaz-Bilello, a researcher at the University of Colorado Boulder, and author of the report. The study was done by the Center for Assessment, Design, Research and Evaluation (CADRE) at the CU Boulder School of Education.

“There’s a big part of the picture that’s always missing,” Diaz-Bilello said. “You don’t capture the richness that turnaround schools undergo when they are going through this work.”

Schools that join the network receive state or federal funding for three years as well as support from state experts in improving their school. To join, schools have to be identified as struggling either by state or by federal measures, and then apply. Schools that are struggling and looking for funding and state support have a long menu of program options to pick from, including the Transformation Network. State leaders say more schools have been joining.

This year, the governor allocated additional funds for school improvement work. For all school improvement grants, Colorado has $8.1 million in state dollars and $16.4 million from federal dollars. Some of the awards will be split over four years.

Sixteen schools will join the Transformation Network this year. Seven of them will receive $945,000 in state grants, while another nine will share $1.2 million in federal funds.

Many of the schools that take part in the Transformation Network, including the two in Greeley, receive benefits that last beyond the participation in the state program. Since it began, 97 schools have participated in the network.

According to state data, a majority of schools that completed three years in the network and started with one of the two lowest ratings – turnaround or priority improvement status – raised their marks to get off the state’s watch within three years.

Of all schools that have participated in the Transformation Network, about one in four had a low rating in 2022, the most recent year. That’s a marked improvement since almost all start with low ratings.

Researchers note that there isn’t evidence showing that top-down mandates for improvement– such as the state board’s directed orders that aim to force change — work.

Colorado is engaged in an ongoing debate about how well the school accountability system works to improve student outcomes. An audit found that it was largely working as designed, but superintendents still want to see changes. Meanwhile, the Adams 14 school district is resisting state-mandated reorganization orders.

One of the two recommendations in the report is to find a way to either make the Transformation Network an option for schools that reach year five of low performance, or to find a way to design state improvement orders with a focus on relationships and local ownership.

Current law lays out four pathways for schools with persistently low test scores: external management, converting to a charter, closure, or using the state’s innovation status to earn more autonomy from certain laws or union contracts.

Making the Transformation Network an official pathway option would require policy or law changes, something that’s not in the works. But state staff are working on incorporating the same relationship building into all of their other work.

“We see real power in that partnership and growing each other together,” said Lindsey Jaeckel, executive director of the state education department’s school and district transformation unit. “Just having time to coach and grow leaders and teacher leaders specifically — it affirms it’s really important to have a supportive staff culture.”

When there is collaboration, local leaders can take ownership of the work and “lean in more,” said Adam York, a research associate with the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado Boulder. He also worked on the case study.

“When the spirit of the turnaround is taken up this way by the schools, CDE are finding schools and districts are positively responding and they see a lot of improvement,” York said.

State officials also realized through the study that district-level support is often missing from rural schools where staff are limited. Rural schools are underserved in the network in general, so state officials have now been recruiting those schools to participate and finding ways to create relationships between them, so they can have that added level of support they may be missing.

What worked for the schools highlighted in the case study?

The schools highlighted were Centennial Elementary and Prairie Heights Middle School, both in Greeley, a growing working-class city a little more than an hour north of Denver. Researchers also looked at Dos Rios Elementary, which didn’t officially join the network, but where the district used many of the same supports.

Both Centennial and Prairie Heights had higher than average numbers of students from low-income families, and students whose home language wasn’t English. For example, this school year, about 45% of Centennial’s students identified as English learners, 7% identified as homeless, and more than 86% qualified for free or reduced-price meals.

Before joining the Transformation Network in 2016, the two schools had multiple years of low ratings and were facing state intervention if they didn’t improve. In the case of Prairie Heights, the school was put on a state-approved improvement plan the following year, but it was the plan pitched by the district. By 2018, the schools’ ratings improved.

Researchers who interviewed staff and spent time at the schools documented four key strategies that helped the schools improve:

Using a state provided tool to define limited and focused areas of improvement, goals, and to measure progress toward them;
Routine classroom observations connected to training;
A collaborative culture where teachers have leadership roles in the improvement work;
Alignment between the support provided at the school, district, and state level.

When Centennial joined the network, then-Principal Asmus, his assistant principal, and his district supervisor all used the grant money to attend training through the New York-based Relay Graduate School of Education.

“In turnaround status, you’re just grasping for things that will work. You just don’t get any traction,” Asmus said. “We thought let’s just focus. What is a program that helps us get clarity? And we were fortunate that our supervisor went with us.”

Asmus said that allowed him to receive coaching from his supervisor, who knew what he was trying to change. State leaders were also helpful, he said, but it was nice having someone closer.

The state recognized that the district’s support made a difference. So this year, it is rolling out a new rubric for participating schools to measure how well districts are supporting their schools. It’s part of trying to foster relationships so that school, district, and state leaders are working toward the same goals.

In the report, researchers also highlighted distributed leadership, a collaborative culture of helping each other improve and allowing teachers to take on leadership roles for various improvement strategies.

Asmus said that teacher training at his school changed. He started having teachers practice scripting and getting feedback on what they may say in class as part of each training.

“If things are not right, the leader takes the responsibility,” Asmus said. “I just owned that. I wasn’t afraid to jump in and model the instructional practice and get feedback myself.”

Asmus said that teachers seeing him open up and take feedback allowed them to be more open to it themselves.

“That continued on into the classroom where they would work and support each other, observing each other,” he said.

Researchers noticed that too.

“It becomes part of the ritual for teachers to model for each other and to have open classrooms so they can get feedback,” Diaz-Bilello said. “There was no risk in trying out new things because we can always correct ourselves.”

That’s good practice, Diaz-Bilello said, and not just for turnaround schools. Now that Asmus is an assistant superintendent overseeing 11 Greeley schools, that work is spreading to those schools as well.

At Prairie Heights Middle School, teachers told researchers that once they joined the network, they had a say in “everything.”

“We made decisions together and talked about what action steps we were going to take…we had a say on professional development and getting even more staff involved in that … we were even creating professional development for other staff!” teachers quoted in the report said.

And researchers saw that teacher participation continues today.

“The amount of energy, work and dedication it takes to move a school — I can’t stress enough how impressive it was to be in these schools,” said Diaz-Bilello. “Sometimes that piece is lost. You lose the human element of the stories. But it’s just such an important part, the way these schools have grown because they have nurtured such strong relationships.”

Correction: The original story only listed schools joining the Transformation Network using state funds. The list has been updated to include schools that are receiving federal funds.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Concern over Tennessee’s third grade reading and retention law prompts flurry of bills

2023-02-03T19:23:09+00:00

Lawmakers have filed at least 18 proposals to try to address concerns about a new Tennessee reading law that could force tens of thousands of third-graders to attend summer school this year to avoid being held back.

Several bills would gut the retention provision altogether, while others would keep the law mostly intact but extend related state-funded summer and after-school programs beyond this year.

Some measures would give authority back to local school districts instead of the state to determine which students should be retained. Others would add measures beyond Tennessee’s annual test for making such a decision. And one proposal would establish a new reading and retention checkpoint even earlier than third grade — making students who are finishing kindergarten take a reading test to determine whether they are ready for the first grade.

All are in response to a controversial law that passed in 2021 during a weeklong special legislative session called by Gov. Bill Lee to address learning disruptions caused by the coronavirus pandemic. The same law created summer learning recovery camps that began that year and tutoring programs that started in 2022.

The interventions have proven popular to help students catch up from the pandemic, but the law’s retention provision — which kicks in with this year’s class of third-graders — has sparked pushback and even outrage.

“It’s upsetting, because it feels like they’re punishing our children,” said Leslie Wallace, whose 8-year-old son is in third grade in Knox County Schools. “At this age, a child is going to be extremely discouraged if they’re held back, especially if they started kindergarten during the pandemic.”

The Republican governor pushed for and has stuck by the law, including the aggressive retention policy, which could hold back third graders who aren’t deemed proficient readers based on state TCAP tests administered each spring.

“If you really care about a child’s future, the last thing you should do is push them past the third grade if they can’t read,” Lee told Chalkbeat last fall before easily winning a second term in office.

But now many lawmakers in the GOP-controlled legislature want to take a closer look at the law’s far-reaching implications for third graders, their families, and schools.

“I’m not saying you should never retain a child,” said Rep. Gloria Johnson, a Knoxville Democrat and retired teacher who voted against the law. “But the decision should be made student by student, by their teachers and parents — not because of sweeping legislation that’s based on a single test score.”

Legislators drew a line in the sand

Third grade is considered a critical year for reading because literacy is foundational to all subsequent learning. But reading scores have been mostly stagnant in Tennessee, with only about a third of the state’s third graders meeting the law’s high threshold for proficiency based on state tests.

In 2011, lawmakers passed a retention law to try to address the problem, but the statute was largely unenforced, with few third graders being held back by local school leaders. That set the stage for the 2021 retention provision that, starting this school year, requires third graders to get extra help if they don’t show proficiency on their TCAP test for English language arts.

Backers of the new policy say the law might not be perfect, but they also worry that many Tennesseans don’t fully understand it.

“This was never about ‘fail one test and you’re automatically retained,’” said Rep. Kirk Haston, a Republican who is a teacher, coach, and health education administrator in Perry County. “It’s more about reading identification and providing a lot of supports for students who need help.”

The law says students whose scores on state tests show they are “approaching” proficiency must attend a summer camp and demonstrate “adequate growth” on a test administered at the camp’s end, or they must participate in a tutoring program in the fourth grade. Students who score “below” proficiency must participate in both intervention programs.

Third graders are exempt from retention if they were retained in a previous grade; have or may have a disability that affects reading; are English language learners with less than two years of English instruction; or retest as proficient before the beginning of fourth grade.

Numerous school boards across Tennessee have passed resolutions calling for revisions, though. Among other things, they’ve urged the legislature to let local educators make retention decisions, without giving final authority to the state. And they’ve noted that TCAP is not a reading diagnostic test and, therefore, isn’t the best measure of a student’s reading ability.

But should the line be drawn earlier?

It’s little wonder that the retention rule is controversial — because research is mixed, and holding students back is a controversial policy decision in education.

Supporters say having students repeat a grade can spur additional supports that struggling readers desperately need, and that those academic interventions matter, especially in the early grades.

Critics worry that retention falls disproportionately on student groups who are already marginalized, such as those who have disabilities, are economically disadvantaged, or are of color.

Most research suggests that retention has, on average, null or negative effects on students, and that it’s also linked strongly to dropping out of high school.

The best time to intervene in a student’s progression in school is also under discussion in Tennessee. Increasingly, lawmakers and education advocates are recognizing the importance of also providing interventions for struggling students in kindergarten, first, and second grades — instead of zeroing in on third grade.

That’s where discussion veered this week in a House education subcommittee chaired by Rep. Scott Cepicky, a Republican from Maury County, during an exchange with Reginald Nash, a former Memphis kindergarten teacher who now works for The Education Trust in Tennessee to advocate for education equity.

“The General Assembly should consider revising the law to permit students at risk of retention who opt into reading and tutoring at the beginning of third grade, as opposed to after it, and as early as kindergarten, to be promoted,” Nash told lawmakers. “This approach could possibly be easier to implement, requires less bureaucracy to track, and proactively gets more students into reading tutoring before and during third grade.”

Cepicky, who is co-sponsoring a bill that could delay kindergarten entry for many children and add another retention gate before kindergarten, clearly liked the idea of programs and policies directed toward students before they fall too far behind.

“We have to do something in early education to change the dynamic that we have right now,” he said. “We can’t keep going with the status quo.”

Legislators must sort through revision bills

Before the 113th General Assembly convened last month, revisiting third-grade retention topped most lawmakers’ list of education priorities this year based on feedback from constituents.

The large number of proposals filed by this week’s bill-filing deadlines bore that out as Republican leaders shared their plans for sorting through the barrage of legislation.

Senate Education Committee Chairman Jon Lundberg said Thursday he’ll let the House take the lead in vetting the proposals, with hopes of eventually bringing a consolidated bill before his panel.

In the House, the first focused look is set for Feb. 14, when all of the bills are laid out before an education subcommittee chaired by Haston.

“We’re just trying to get organized,” said Haston, who added that he doesn’t expect votes for several weeks. “We want to get everything on one calendar to see the lay of the land.”

As part of the process, Rep. Mark White, who chairs the full House Education Administration Committee, has scheduled a Feb. 22 hearing to discuss early childhood literacy. Nine legislators are new to his 19-member committee, and White said he wants them to understand the big picture before voting on any potential revisions to the 2021 Learning Loss Remediation and Student Acceleration Act.

Among those testifying at the hearing, he said, will be a range of literacy experts, from third-grade teachers and school superintendents to Tennessee’s education chief, Penny Schwinn, and education officials in Mississippi, where students improved the most on national reading tests in 2019.

In the meantime, Tennessee schools have been sending out information and hosting meetings with parents of third grade students to inform them about what the law means for their child.

But many parents like Wallace, in Knoxville, are afraid.

“I appreciate the interventions being put in place, but I don’t appreciate the threat that my child could get held back if he doesn’t score high enough on a test,” she said. “I don’t feel like it’s a conducive environment for learning.”

The Education Trust has compiled a list that summarizes and analyzes each retention-related bill.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

How to grade schools post-pandemic? States must decide.

2023-02-01T12:00:00+00:00

Earlier this month, Massachusetts officials unveiled a new plan to hold schools accountable for students’ pandemic recovery. The pushback was swift.

Members of the state board of education questioned the pacing of the plan, which gives schools where students fell furthest behind up to four years to return to pre-pandemic academic levels. Worried the plan would widen achievement gaps, they called for more ambitious goals.

“We must do better,” one board member said, noting the generous federal aid schools received to speed students’ recovery.

At the following board meeting, held last week, school district leaders from across the state showed up to defend the plan. They enumerated the challenges students faced during the pandemic, from housing instability to poor mental health, and the staff shortages and other difficulties that continue to plague schools. The state must take those extraordinary circumstances into account, they argued.

“It is important that accountability systems be not only aggressive,” one superintendent said, “but also achievable and compassionate.”

This debate — in essence, whether to ease up on academic expectations or double down — is flaring up across the country as school accountability systems creak back to life after a pandemic pause.

Mandated by federal and state laws, the systems set goals for schools, rate their performance, and direct support to schools identified as struggling. But the pandemic has complicated every step of that process.

What are reasonable goals after student test scores plunged last year to their lowest level in decades? How to acknowledge schools’ dogged efforts to distribute meals and laptops, offer COVID testing, and track down missing students during a public health crisis, while still insisting that they provide students a rigorous education? And what is the right way to target support when so many students need so much help?

As states try to answer those questions, longstanding disagreements over testing students and rating schools have resurfaced — and calls to rethink those practices have grown.

“I do think the status quo is being questioned,” said Chris Domaleski, associate director of the Center for Assessment. “There’s an appetite for lasting changes to accountability.”

Are states asking too much of schools — or not enough?

During the first two years of the pandemic, the federal government gave schools a reprieve from accountability. Now that grace period is over.

Last year, the U.S. Department of Education resumed enforcement of the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA, the 2015 law that requires states to identify the lowest performing schools based on test scores and other metrics. The agency allowed states to adjust their accountability systems to account for pandemic disruptions, including missing data from when tests were suspended or scaled back.

One of the most common changes was to recalibrate growth measures, which track how much students improve on tests over time. Due to missing data, some states compared students’ test scores from last year to pre-pandemic, while other states simply scrapped that metric. In some cases, those arcane technical changes made a big difference in school ratings.

In Virginia, which made a number of such changes, 10% of schools received a low rating last fall — only slightly more than before the pandemic despite a major decline in test scores. Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin and state education officials said the school rating system, which was established under a Democratic administration, obscured the extent of students’ academic struggles by giving schools too much credit for progress over pass rates.

“This masks the catastrophic learning losses experienced by our most vulnerable students,” said Jillian Balow, Virginia’s superintendent of education, in a statement when the ratings were released.

In Arizona, the number of grade K-8 schools earning As or Bs actually increased last year compared with before the pandemic. Some critics questioned the high ratings when state tests showed that only a third of students were proficient in math last year.

But Kathy Hoffman, the former state superintendent of education who lost her bid for reelection in November, said schools should be recognized for making progress.

“I do think growth is really important for Arizona schools to be striving for,” she said, adding that students improved their test scores more than expected from 2021 to 2022.

In North Carolina, school grades moved in the opposite direction, with more than 500 additional schools earning D or F grades last fall than did so before the pandemic. In that state, student growth counts for just 20% of a school’s annual rating, compared with 50% in Arizona.

“The current accountability model does not do justice to the hard work that teachers and students put in every day in schools across the state,” said Catherine Truitt, North Carolina’s superintendent of education, in a statement when the results were announced.

California removed student growth from its school ratings last year, but plans to bring it back in 2023 and add additional measures of student progress, said Linda Darling-Hammond, president of the state board of education. Because lower-income students tend to have lower test scores, rating schools on student achievement rather than growth punishes schools serving more poor students, she added.

“Comparing their outcomes in school when you haven’t evened out the playing field for them, either in or outside of school, doesn’t tell you much about what the school is contributing,” said Darling-Hammond, who is also an education professor at Stanford University.

States debate what to do with struggling schools

All the hand wringing over school ratings might suggest that they carry dire consequences for schools. But in most cases, they don’t.

Under ESSA, the main upshot for struggling schools is an increase in federal aid and a requirement to create improvement plans. However, many states have used the law’s flexibility to limit how many schools are identified as struggling, according to an analysis of 10 states by the education advocacy group All4Ed. While some states targeted more than half of schools for extra support, other states identified fewer than 5%, the group found.

Some state officials blame limited funding and capacity for the low numbers, said Anne Hyslop, All4Ed’s director of policy development, who co-authored the report.

“A lot of states will say, ‘We don’t want to over-identify schools, but then not be able to give them money and other resources to actually make improvements,’” she said.

Hyslop said states could have “supercharged” their accountability systems last year by funneling some of their federal pandemic aid to struggling schools. However, she saw little evidence of that happening.

It was a “missed opportunity,” she said, to “see this restart of the accountability system as part of the COVID recovery effort.”

In some states, persistently low-rated schools can face harsh interventions, such as state takeovers. But states typically avoid such drastic measures.

Massachusetts law, for example, allows the state to appoint an official to take control of any chronically low-performing school district. However, only three districts are currently under state control, and Boston struck a deal to avoid that fate last year.

This month, state lawmakers introduced a bill to revoke the state’s authority to take over districts. Instead, the state would have to give more money to struggling schools, and districts would create plans to address the “root causes” of schools’ low achievement. The bill would also end the state’s requirement that high schoolers pass an exam to graduate.

“We definitely think it’s time to change the way we go about assessment and accountability in the state,” said Lisa Guisbond, executive director of the advocacy group Citizens for Public Schools.

But critics say that softening accountability would let schools off the hook for catching students up — even as they have an unprecedented amount of funding to aid their recovery efforts.

“We’re not really interested in listening to excuses for why it can’t be possible or giving more grace,” said National Parents Union co-founder Keri Rodrigues, whose children attend Massachusetts schools. “What we’re looking for is urgency.”

Patrick Wall is a senior reporter covering national education issues. Contact him at pwall@chalkbeat.org.

NYC schools are once again cleared to grade their own students’ Regents exams. Will score manipulation surge?

2023-02-01T00:20:52+00:00

New York City schools will once again grade their own students’ Regents exams, a policy that officials scrapped a decade ago amid concerns that educators were systematically nudging scores over the passing cutoff.

The city’s education department informed schools last month that starting this school year, “most Regents exams” that students take will be scored by teachers in their own schools, according to a memo obtained by Chalkbeat. Schools have already begun grading their own Regents exams that were administered last week. Generally, students must pass four or five Regents exams to graduate from high school.

The move represents a significant shift, and comes as state officials are reconsidering the role of Regents exams. For more than 10 years, New York City schools have largely sent their Regents exams to centralized sites where educators from other campuses graded the exams.

Some school leaders praised the change, along with the city’s teachers union, which pressured the city to abandon centralized grading. But some experts worry that teachers will once again unfairly bump up familiar students’ scores. It also represents a departure from state standardized tests administered to students in grades 3-8, which are scored centrally.

“You’re not going to have the same type of layers of bureaucracy that existed in the centralized scoring sites,” Janella Hinds, the teachers union’s vice president for academic high schools, said of the new Regents grading policy. Under that system, teachers were pulled out of their schools and “days were wasted waiting” for exams to arrive or even completely lost on some occasions, Hinds added.

A spokesperson for the city’s education department echoed that sentiment, writing in an email that the process was burdensome for schools that had to proctor exams and manage end-of-year activities while sending staff out of the building to grade exams.

City officials began centrally grading Regents exams in the wake of a 2011 Wall Street Journal investigation that found students were much more likely to earn the exact number of points needed to pass the exam than earn a score just below the cutoff — evidence that teachers gave students a boost to help them pass.

On the state level, officials banned teachers from grading their own students’ exams and ended a policy that required re-scoring exams that were just below the passing threshold. After those policy changes, evidence that educators were manipulating scores vanished, researchers found.

Teachers will continue to be barred from grading their own students’ exams, according to the city’s recent guidance. And certain exams, including physics and chemistry, will continue to be scored centrally. But some experts worry that teachers will still be familiar with the students whose exams they’re grading, which could make it more likely that some will push students over the passing threshold.

“What we observed back when teachers graded their own students’ Regents exams is very clear evidence that they use their discretion to manipulate the Regents scores of students who were close to the threshold for passing the exam,” said Thomas Dee, a professor at Stanford University who co-authored a study about the grading irregularities.

“Barring some design feature, I think it’s likely that that manipulation would return,” Dee said.

Between 2004 and 2010, when schools were allowed to score their own students’ exams, researchers estimated that 6% of all New York City Regents exams were manipulated upward. (There were similar signs of manipulation across the state.)

More Black and Latino students benefited from the manipulations because they were more likely to be just below the passing score. But focusing only on students just below the passing cutoff, researchers found teachers were more likely to give white and Asian American students extra points, raising questions about whether the new policy will lead to similar results.

“Once you have this devolution of testing responsibility,” Dee said, “the outcomes may become capricious in ways that we might find troubling.”

The 2019 study notes that the grading changes do not appear to have been tied to school accountability pressure or the possibility of bonuses, but were rather the “‘cultural norm’ among New York high schools, in which students were often spared any sanctions involved with barely failing exams.” (On some campuses, teacher evaluations are based in part on Regents exam scores.)

Representatives of the city and state education departments did not directly address questions about whether they’re concerned about grade manipulation under the new policy.

Hinds, the teachers union official, said she doesn’t believe teachers will unfairly give students higher scores. “I believe my colleagues have integrity — they do follow the rules. I believe that we do want to see our students succeed and hold them responsible for the work that they’ve done.”

Some school leaders also said they support the change and noted that a small share of Regents exams, particularly those in August, were already graded by their own schools.

Anna Nelson, an assistant principal at Bronx Latin, said educators at the centralized grading sites may not give enough credit if they have different teaching philosophies about how students should approach certain problems.

“There would be times when our kids would get zeroes on problems where they should’ve had a couple points,” she said.

Still, she predicts that schools will return to the practice of bumping up students’ scores if they’re on the edge of passing.

“I think there will be an increase at least in cases where it’s borderline,” she said. “The fact that they need these Regents exams to pass high school makes them so high stakes.”

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

After COVID paused Regents exams, graduation rates for NYC’s English language learners surged

2023-01-19T19:31:54+00:00

Arnulfo Toribio was ready to drop out of high school.

It was 2020, and Toribio felt exhausted from learning years’ worth of material while balancing school with a full-time restaurant job. Before immigrating to New York City a few years earlier, he had spent much of his childhood working on a Mexican farm to support his family after his father died, missing at least six years of formal schooling.

A guidance counselor persuaded him to stay on track for a diploma, and Toribio got an additional boost just months before graduation: In response to the pandemic, the state canceled New York’s Regents exams, five of which students are required to pass in order to graduate. Students would still need to pass their courses. Toribio, who hadn’t passed his English or Algebra Regents after a couple attempts, graduated later that year.

“I benefited from that policy,” Toribio explained in Spanish through a translator. “It honestly helped me graduate.”

Bucking national trends, graduation rates rose across the state in the 2020-21 school year. Even more surprising, the rate catapulted for the city’s English language learners — rising by 14 percentage points to 60%, the largest increase on record for those students and a greater rise than other student groups.

The graduation rate spike seemed counterintuitive given that low-income immigrant communities had been severely affected by the pandemic, and many English learners found it more difficult to learn remotely. (Educators also found it difficult to teach remotely.)

Data obtained by Chalkbeat suggests that the temporary policy change — first canceling the English Regents and then not requiring a passing score on it to graduate in 2020-21 — removed a hurdle for English language learners trying to earn their diplomas. More English learners graduated during that time period, far fewer of whom passed the English Regents exam.

State officials acknowledged the spike could have been connected to the temporary cancellation of the Regents exams, and specifically the English exam, but they couldn’t say to what extent.

The effects of that policy could become clearer soon, as the state prepares to release graduation rates from the 2021-22 school year, when Regents exams resumed. The data could help inform a commission tasked with recommending changes to the state’s graduation requirements in 2024, including whether the Regents exams should still be required for students to graduate.

More English language learners take advantage of the Regents cancellation

Students typically take the English Regents exam at some point between freshman and senior year — with some taking it multiple times in hopes of eventually passing so they can get their diplomas. (Some students can appeal their scores and still graduate.)

In the 2018-19 school year, nearly 3,000 English language learners graduated from city public schools within four years, and roughly 67% of them had passed their English Regents at some point. In comparison, nearly all students who graduated and were not learning English as a new language had passed their English exams.

By 2020-21, when the English Regents was optional, the number of English language learners who earned diplomas rose to nearly 4,900, while just 8% passed their exams. (Pass rates also fell for other students who graduated, as more of them earned diplomas. Still, more than three-quarters of non-English learners had passed the test.)

The data doesn’t prove that English Regents exams are the source of low graduation rates among English learners because other factors could have influenced the recent rise, multiple policy experts who reviewed the data said.

Still, there’s “pretty good evidence” that canceling the exams was “one of the things that caused kids to be able to graduate,” said Julie Sugarman, senior policy analyst for K-12 education who focuses on English learners at the Migration Policy Institute’s National Center on Immigration Integration Policy.

Sugarman also noted that counselors could have encouraged more students to graduate, or looser grading policies could have helped students. (In Toribio’s case, he said his teachers were also flexible with his assignment deadlines as he searched for a new job during the start of the pandemic.)

Still, the data shows strong signs that “students who disproportionately struggle with high stakes standardized tests are disproportionately impacted” when those exams are no longer required to graduate, Sarah Part, a senior policy analyst with Advocates For Children, which has been advocating to remove Regents as a graduation requirement, said in an email.

English language learners typically don’t graduate on time

Graduation rates for English learners have been historically low — 46% graduated on time in 2020 in New York City, compared with 79% of all students citywide. Advocates and policy experts have cited many reasons, including that newer immigrant students might juggle work with school and lack of enough support in classrooms as they’re still learning the language.

Those rates have steadily grown since 2016 by an average of roughly 4 percentage points annually. But the 14-point jump in the 2020-21 school year was an anomaly. It was so high, that for the first time in eight years, English learners no longer had the lowest four-year graduation rate among the city’s major student groups, surpassing children with disabilities.

Research has found little evidence that requiring high-stakes graduation exams improves student achievement, and doing so may actually increase dropout rates for struggling students. The English exams can be particularly hard on English learners, advocates and researchers said. Sugarman said she often hears from educators about students who have passed all of their classes, but can’t pass the English Regents exam.

Just 3% of the city’s English learners who graduated last year did so without using any exemptions from Regents exams, compared to 28% of non-English learners, according to an analysis from The Education Trust-New York.

That organization described their findings as a “signal that students may be underprepared for postsecondary opportunities.”

At the same time, the data is likely fodder for advocates who have called for the state to stop requiring the Regents exams to graduate.

“What are more meaningful measures that can still capture the student’s learning and still give them different possibilities in different ways, so that their ability to graduate doesn’t depend on one test they take on one day for a few hours out of the four years plus of their high school career?” said Juliet Eisenstein, senior staff attorney with Advocates For Children who sits on the state’s commission that is reviewing graduation requirements.

Juanmy Moscoso, an English learner who graduated in 2021, took the English Regents exam five times before passing it, finally succeeding his junior year of high school, three years after he first moved to the United States from the Dominican Republic. He was part of the minority of English learners who passed the exam prior to graduating in 2021.

He felt that his teachers had done all they could to prepare him, but it was tough to pass the exam while also juggling a challenging course load, including several Advanced Placement classes.

“The problem is me not knowing the language as I wanted,” Moscoso said.

Hua-Yu Sebastian Cherng, an associate professor of international education at NYU, who has studied English language learners, has raised the larger question of why officials expect newcomer English learners to graduate on time to begin with — an argument other policy researchers have also made.

Those students are acclimating to a new country, as well as a new language, and could benefit from extra support and more time instead of “getting them out as quickly as possible,” he said. He said that many newer immigrants don’t pursue college and wondered if that would be different if they received more support in school.

There are signs that English learners who get more time to learn the language perform well academically. The graduation rates for students who are former English learners typically outpace their peers.

Toribio, the student who graduated in 2020, went on to attend community college. But he stopped attending because he was struggling to pay for school, according to an advocate who has helped him in the past. He hopes to go back soon.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Incoming Newark high school students may take new entrance test

2023-01-11T11:00:00+00:00

Eighth graders seeking admission into Newark’s high schools could take a new entrance exam this year.

During last month’s Newark Board of Education meeting, the board approved a $52,260 contract to acquire the Stanford Achievement Test, or SAT10, and use it as the Newark Enrollment High School Entrance Exam. This year, incoming high schoolers are required to take their admissions test in early February but the district has not clarified if the new entrance exam will be given to students this year.

The contract term is for Jan. 12 through Dec. 31, 2023.

Rochanda Jackson, the district’s executive director of policy, planning, evaluation, and testing, reviewed and approved the contract but did not respond to emails from Chalkbeat Newark asking when the new test will be implemented or how schools will use the exam results in upcoming admissions decisions for the 2023-24 school year. Newark Board of Education members and spokesperson Nancy Deering also did not respond to emails.

High school admission exams are typically used to assess students in subjects such as math and reading and are often used to determine student placement in private or specialized schools. All Newark eighth graders are set to take an entrance exam next month, whether or not they applied to any magnet schools, but it is unclear if the new entrance exam will also assess placement for students hoping to get into a magnet school.

In 2020, students looking to get into one of Newark’s six magnet high schools took the PreACT from test maker, ACT Inc. Some of the schools previously administered their own entrance exams, which the district eliminated several years ago.

Superintendent Roger León has shared little about the district’s high school entrance exam, and during board meetings in the fall, only noted the dates for the test next month.

Current Newark eighth grade students are slated to take a high school admissions test during the school day at their current schools on Feb. 10, with non-Newark students scheduled for testing on Feb. 11, according to the Newark Enrolls website. Additional testing days will be held on Feb. 17 for Newark eighth graders and Feb. 18 for non-Newark students. School match letters will be sent on April 18 to all Newark students.

But neither the district’s website nor its Newark Enrolls enrollment guidebook show how the high school admission exam will be used to weigh enrollment decisions for students vying for a spot in Newark’s traditional or magnet high schools.

According to the owner of the test, Canada-based company Multi Health Systems Inc., or MHS, the SAT10 was “independently developed to give schools a tool to measure students’ achievement” in math, reading, environment, science, and social science at different stages throughout the school year. Texas-based company NCS Pearson, Inc. formerly owned the test before transferring ownership to MHS in February 2022.

“The SAT10 was developed with the intention of providing educators with a tool to assess student progress toward academic standards in kindergarten-12th grade,” Jenni Pitkanen, chief product officer for MHS, wrote in an email to Chalkbeat Newark. “Educators who administer the SAT10 use the results in different ways as suits their particular needs as part of an overall assessment process.”

The SAT10 consists of questions on reading and comprehension, sound and letters, mathematics, language, spelling, listening comprehension, science, and social science. Each test is scored electronically with one point given for each correct answer and students’ raw scores are converted to different scores that provide “equitable comparison” across different groups, Pitkanen said.

Electronic, booklet, and scantron options are available for the SAT10 test, and results are provided to the school district once testing and review have been completed, Pitkanen said, adding that how the results are used is a local decision.

“More generally, achievement tests are used to identify student strengths and needs in a given grade, leading to the effective placement and instructional planning,” Pitkanen said.

During the 2021-22 school year, 29%, or roughly 11,100, Newark students were enrolled in district high schools, according to Newark Enrolls data.

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Hochul’s 2023 education agenda: high-dosage tutoring, college access, student mental health

2023-01-10T18:14:53+00:00

Improving access to student mental health services, boosting school funding, and creating high-dosage tutoring programs figure prominently in New York Gov. Kathy Hochul’s education agenda, according to her annual State of the State address on Tuesday.

Hochul’s speech — which governors use to signal their priorities for the coming year — outlined issues she’s shown interest in before, such as improving college access.

Her proposals, which come two months after significant drops on national reading and math exams, also show a deeper commitment to addressing how the pandemic impacted students both academically and mentally.

Still, her proposals don’t include some items that advocates were hoping to address this year in Albany, including hiring shortages, which Hochul prioritized last year.

Here are highlights from Hochul’s education policy proposals:

Hochul keeps pledge to fully fund Foundation Aid

As part of her budget proposal, Hochul confirmed that she will include a $2.7 billion increase in school funding for districts across New York under the Foundation Aid formula, which sends more money to high-needs districts.

Last year, state lawmakers had promised to spend billions of more dollars over three years to fully fund the long-debated formula, which accounts for most of the dollars that schools receive from the state.

This upcoming budget will represent the final phase-in of that money, and Hochul’s commitment to spend an additional $2.7 billion matches the funding request from the state’s Board of Regents, as well as a coalition of education-focused organizations called the Educational Conference Board.

High inflation rates ballooned the cost for this year from a $1.9 billion increase to $2.7 billion — raising concerns among some advocates about whether Hochul would stick to her word as the country is at risk for a recession.

“This historic level of financial support for New York public schools will reverberate for generations to come, broadening access to opportunity and enabling New York to build the education system of the future,” said Hochul’s book of policy proposals.

Several education organizations applauded Hochul’s plan. In a statement, Alliance for Quality Education, a school funding advocacy group, called it a “historic milestone for New York State’s public schools.”

Plans to make student mental health needs more accessible

As part of a broader effort to address mental health needs, Hochul has proposed to make school-based services more accessible to students and less expensive to open and run such programs in the first place.

Student mental health needs have been a large focus for educators and advocates since the onset of the pandemic. While many New York City schools offer some level of help to those with behavioral or mental health needs, educators and families report that the needs outpace what’s available, and many students are unable to access those resources.

More than one-third of New York City public schools have none of the six mental health programs that the education department touts on its website, according to an audit conducted last year by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

Hochul wants to increase the rate at which school-based clinics and other wraparound services are reimbursed by Medicaid, hoping that this will encourage providers to open more such clinics. She would also create annual grants that would help cover the costs of creating school-based services. Her proposal did not include more specific details, including how much money would be available for the grants.

Hochul also wants to introduce legislation that would require private insurance to pay the Medicaid rate for school-based services that students receive, since those insurance companies typically pay below the Medicaid rate, according to a spokesperson for the governor.

Charles Dedrick, executive director of the state Council of School Superintendents, applauded the proposal and described it as a “comprehensive plan” to expand and provide coverage for these services.

Hochul wants to invest in high-dosage tutoring

In order to address the academic effects of the pandemic, Hochul plans to invest $250 million of Foundation Aid money for districts to create high-impact tutoring programs, where students are tutored multiple times a week.

Mirroring national trends, New York saw steep drops in fourth grade math and reading scores, as well as eighth grade math, on the National Assessment of Educational Progress exams, given for the first time last year since 2019.

Districts would use the money to establish the programs on their own or in partnership with an outside provider. These programs would specifically tutor students in grades 3-8 on reading and math.

Officials did not immediately respond to say how the money would be distributed or how much New York City would receive.

Researchers have found that students can do better in school when they’re tutored frequently in small groups. The endeavor is expensive, but an investment from the state could inject a boost to create such programs in New York City and elsewhere. Hochul’s policy book says that such programs “deliver increased instructional time and customized student learning, and establish meaningful relationships between tutors and students.”

One possible model in New York City is a CUNY-run tutoring program, where 800 of the school’s students studying to become teachers are working with struggling readers in first and second grade.

Creating a pipeline to higher education and the workforce

Hochul pitched a slew of proposals aimed to get more students into college and the workforce.

Under her plan, New York’s graduating high school seniors would receive admission to their local SUNY community college. Additionally, students who aren’t admitted to their SUNY school of choice would automatically be considered for admission at another SUNY campus.

She’s proposing to spend $20 million in grants for districts to create college-level courses in high school, through which students can earn college credit. The money would also go toward technology-focused programs – both in school districts and colleges – with the goal of preparing more students for such careers after graduation.

Priority for the grant money will be given to programs in high-needs school districts, as well as districts that plan to create programs focused on computer science and computer and software engineering pathways “with an eye toward the technology jobs of the present and future,” according to the proposal book.

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

Goodbye, Regents? A New York commission mulls high school graduation requirements

2023-01-04T23:16:42+00:00

New York’s high school students have taken Regents exams since the 1870s. But they could become a relic of the past, as state officials start the final leg of a lengthy process to rethink the state’s graduation requirements.

In New York, students are generally required to earn 22 course credits in high school and take five Regents exams, including one each in English, math, science, and social studies. A 64-person commission charged with reviewing those requirements first met in October, and it is expected to present its recommendations to the New York State Board of Regents in the spring or summer of 2024.

The long-simmering discussion often centers on how New York is one of just 11 states that requires high school exit exams and that, despite a rising graduation rate, diploma requirements may be hurting the state’s most disadvantaged students.

“Regents exams have been the gold standard for over a century — and with good reason,” Commissioner Betty Rosa wrote in February 2019, when she was the chancellor of the Board of Regents, months before the state’s efforts began. “But our systems must be continually reviewed, renewed, and occasionally revised in order to best serve our students and the people of this great state.”

Policymakers and advocates are offering some clues for where they hope things will go. That includes alternatives to the Regents exams, removing the exams as part of graduation requirements, or even creating another type of exit exam.

Research shows that exit exams may increase dropout rates

Decades of research has shown that Regents exams don’t better prepare students for life after high school and can harm students of color from low-income families.

This was backed up in a review of academic literature presented to the Board of Regents in November and shared with the special commission tasked with recommending possible changes to the board. High school exit exams led to an increase in dropout rates and were more likely to impact graduation rates for low-income and Black students, the review found. However, one nationally representative study found that graduation rates only temporarily dipped after introducing high school exit exams.

Dropout rates can improve if students are offered “alternate pathways” that aren’t another high-stakes exam, such as the SAT or ACT, according to the review. The review also found that students enrolled in optional, high-level classes were more likely to do well on standardized tests and attend college. Additionally, graduation rates also increased in places that offered peer support programs and had mandatory attendance policies.

A pilot program offers hints at alternative graduation requirements

The Board of Regents was supposed to consider changes in 2021, but the pandemic delayed the process. As the board picked back up on that work last year — which included collecting feedback from communities across the state — officials showed an interest in alternatives to the Regents exams. On top of offering more options for completing exam requirements in recent years, the state education department launched a pilot program that offers students alternatives to Regents exams, such as projects and essays.

That program was, in part, inspired by New York City’s roughly three dozen consortium schools, which have been approved by the state to grant diplomas based on oral presentations, essays and research papers, science experiments, and higher-level math problem-solving instead of the five required Regents exams.

But policymakers may face some pushback to performance-based assessments.

Jeff Smink, deputy director at Education Trust-New York, which is represented on the blue ribbon commission, said his advocacy organization isn’t opposed to alternate pathways and understands that some students need other options to meet graduation requirements. But the group wants students to be assessed using an “objective measure.”

“The concern is that there just won’t be that accountability — districts can say students did this performance assessment, but there’s no objective measurement of whether students are prepared,” Smink said.

Policy tweaks in recent years have led school districts to rely disproportionately on less rigorous graduation requirements, according to Smink’s organization. For example, in 2019, Ed Trust found that 62% of the state’s increase in graduation rates was due to more students earning “local” diplomas, which is one of the state’s less rigorous graduation pathways. They also found that Black and low-income students were more likely to take less rigorous, career-focused pathways. (It had been easier for students to earn an older version of local diplomas through the 1990s, but that changed as the state phased in the Regents diploma requirements by 2015.)

Ed Trust is also concerned about how prepared students are for life after high school. Smink pointed to data that gives a glimpse of what happens after graduation. Of New York’s nearly 58,000 graduates in 2014 who received tuition assistance and attended college in the state, just 59% of those students graduated from college in six years. Only 29% of those students graduated from college on time.

Some advocates don’t want to wait for commission

Other advocates are pushing the board to scrap Regents exams from graduation requirements even before the commission comes up with its recommendations.

The Coalition for Multiple Pathways to a Diploma, a group that has pushed for changes to graduation requirements for more than a decade, compiled a 1,200-signature petition last month calling for the state to immediately remove Regents exams from diploma requirements. The coalition pointed to research about the negative effects of the exit exams.

“While the Commission’s work moves forward, the State should take action now to ensure that students who have passed all their courses are able to graduate from high school and pursue their postsecondary goals,” Julie Eisenstein, senior staff attorney for Advocates for Children, which is part of the coalition, said in a statement.

Bobson Wong, a math teacher at Bayside High School in Queens who is on the commission and has helped write and edit questions for the Algebra 2 Regents exam, wants to see more research before deciding whether the Regents exams should be eliminated or how they should factor into earning a diploma.

Regents exams have a mix of multiple choice and open-ended questions. Wong doesn’t think that multiple-choice questions best capture what students have actually learned about a subject, but he sees value in some sort of final exam, such as a Regents exam with just 10 free response questions.

“How would that change our thinking about student learning and student assessment?” Wong said. “Of course, there are logistical issues of how would you grade 3,000 exams like that, but just imagine if we kind of freed ourselves from the mentality of making this a standardized test.”

Wong said he’s not opposed to the idea of alternate or performance-based pathways such as essays or projects, but he’s skeptical of how well they prepare students for life after graduation.

He’s hoping that the commission can have an “honest conversation” about why current requirements are leading to rising graduation rates but are leaving many students without the skills he believes they need after high school.

“Every teacher I know, knows that there is enormous pressure within the entire system to graduate students, whether or not they know the material,” Wong said. “I know students who have difficulty doing middle school math, so why are they in high school? Because we don’t have the support in place to master the content in middle school, so we just move them along because we don’t want a 15-year-old sitting in seventh grade.”

Reema Amin is a reporter covering New York City schools with a focus on state policy and English language learners. Contact Reema at ramin@chalkbeat.org.

13 Chalkbeat stories that defined 2022

2022-12-21T19:15:00+00:00

This was the year when many of the pandemic-era challenges facing America’s schools went from acute to chronic.

Classrooms fully reopened, but attendance and enrollment have yet to fully rebound. Tutoring and mental health programs got off the ground, but staffers remained in short supply. Students began making academic progress, but new national data underscored how far they’d fallen behind. Each step toward recovery, moment of joy, and successful lesson came with a reminder of the pandemic’s ongoing fallout.

Meanwhile, the nation’s conflicts continued to envelop schools. Republican lawmakers and local activists redoubled their efforts to restrict what students can learn about racism and LGBTQ issues. And shootings erupted on and off school grounds, cementing gun violence’s new status as the leading cause of death for America’s young people.

Below are 13 stories from Chalkbeat reporters across the country that documented those forces in action and explained what it all meant for America’s schools:

February 3: Schools got $190 billion in COVID relief from the feds. What’s happened to it?

This year, schools were figuring out how exactly they were going to use the biggest chunk of their billions in federal COVID relief. Tutors? Building renovations? Both? Matt Barnum explained the state of play — and how to find your district’s plans for yourself.

“The idea that schools aren’t spending it quickly partly reflects a monthslong lag in the data, not local officials dragging their feet. And the best evidence available suggests that schools are making seemingly reasonable purchases: buying masks, computers, and air filters, while adding summer school programs, tutoring, counselors, and teachers. But district plans vary widely in quality, and there are more than 13,000 school districts across the country. Zoom out further, and, so far, information at the state and national levels is limited, incomplete, or nonexistent, making it difficult to closely monitor this unprecedented infusion of federal cash.”

March 11: Iowa scrapped teacher training on equity. Students of color felt the sting of that decision.

Volta Adovor was one of several high school students asked to help shape a conference for Iowa’s teachers focused on racial equity in 2021 put on by the state education department. Once Iowa’s legislature began considering a bill that would restrict how teachers talk about racism, it all ground to a halt, as Kalyn Belsha reported.

“The deferred conference stands as just one illustration of the nation’s about-face on centering race and equity in teachers’ work over the last year. For the students, though, the fallout has been both local and personal. After state officials asked them to share their time and experiences as students of color, the apparently open-ended postponement has left some feeling doubly dismissed. ‘We wanted to give solutions,’ Adovor said. ‘It was just us talking about things that we cared about.’”

March 19: As schools try to recover, COVID’s toll lingers: ‘We haven’t seen fine, ever’

This story, by Kalyn Belsha, Melanie Asmar, and Lori Higgins reporting from Tulsa, Denver, and Detroit, captured the exhaustion of last spring, when schools were inching toward “normal” but nothing came easily.

“When the virus seemed like it was under control, the omicron wave of cases brought half-empty classrooms or temporary returns to virtual learning. It’s been a year of survival and triage for teachers, school leaders, students, and their families. Now a shift is underway. Mask mandates have largely lifted, and more Americans say they are ready to leave the pandemic in the rearview mirror. But teachers like [Ana] Barros are still grappling daily with issues that COVID has left in its wake, most of which defy easy solutions. ‘I really feel scared to say that we’ve turned a corner,’ she said. ‘The things that we were struggling with, even outside of COVID, are just still there.’”

April 12: ‘Am I not allowed to mention myself?’ Schools grapple with new restrictions on teaching about gender and sexuality

As laws restricting how teachers can talk about gender and LGBTQ issues took effect, Kalyn Belsha chronicled the effects on classrooms in Tennessee and beyond.

“A history teacher skipped over PowerPoint slides about the fight for gay rights during a lesson on the civil rights movement. Another English teacher hinted that Oscar Wilde was, ‘you know,’ instead of saying he was gay while teaching ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray.’ Queer symbolism throughout the text went unmentioned. To 17-year-old Aneshka, who asked that their last name be withheld, these were all indications that a new law requiring teachers to notify parents about lessons on gender and sexuality had had an effect at their eastern Tennessee high school.”

June 7: Student voices on Uvalde: Our leaders ‘are just not going to protect us’

After 19 children and two adults were shot and killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in May, we turned space over to students to reflect. Meleena Salgado, then a junior at John Hancock College Preparatory High School in Chicago, wrote about the moment she heard what had happened.

I was feeding my dogs, and my dad rushed in and said a school had been shot up. My heart just sank. I was frustrated that there was another one. I hate to use that term because there were people who were lost. But I was just like, come on. No matter how many are hurt, [politicians] are just going to say, ‘Oh wow, what a tragedy,’ and then we’ll find out about the next one. I’ve been worried about a school shooting since I was little. The oldest fear I have about being shot up at school is when I was, maybe, in third grade. I was in the bathroom alone and heard this really loud bang, and I thought, ‘Oh, God, maybe this is it.’ (That bang turned out to be someone dropping a textbook in the hallway.)

Aug. 1: As fewer kids enroll, big cities face a small schools crisis

Mila Koumpilova, Matt Barnum, and the Associated Press’ Collin Binkley looked at one consequence of the enrollment declines many cities experienced during the pandemic — more tiny schools — and the pain ahead for communities that will be forced to reckon with their cost.

Chalmers [School of Excellence] lost almost a third of its enrollment during the pandemic, shrinking to 215 students. In Chicago, COVID-19 worsened declines that preceded the virus: Predominantly Black neighborhoods like Chalmers’ North Lawndale, long plagued by disinvestment, have seen an exodus of families over the past decade. The number of small schools like Chalmers is growing in many American cities as public school enrollment declines. More than 1 in 5 New York City elementary schools had fewer than 300 students last school year. In Los Angeles, that figure was over 1 in 4. In Chicago it has grown to nearly 1 in 3, and in Boston it’s approaching 1 in 2, according to a Chalkbeat/AP analysis.

Oct. 24: Nation’s report card: Massive drop in math scores, slide in reading linked to COVID disruption

Matt Barnum dove into one of the biggest stories of the year: scores on national exams that offered the most authoritative accounting yet of learning lost because of the pandemic.

Students in fourth and eighth grade saw unprecedented declines in math and significant dips in reading achievement between 2019 and 2022, according to the results of national exams given last school year and released Monday. The declines were broad-based — affecting students in every state and every region of the country. ‘The results point out and confirm that this is a pretty massive hit to student achievement in our country,’ said Scott Marion, a testing expert and member of the board that oversees the tests.

Nov. 2: A look inside Colorado’s yearslong push to change how schools teach reading

This year saw more schools, school districts, and entire states take a hard look at their reading curriculums and push for changes aligned with the “science of reading.” Colorado was among the most forceful in requiring districts to make changes, and Ann Schimke has followed the story closely.

Peter and his classmates were learning a rule about the English language that they applied over and over that day — when reading and writing ‘hope,’ ‘cute,’ ‘tape,’ and ‘slide.’ Such lessons reflect both a districtwide and statewide shift in how children are taught to read in Colorado. Gone by the wayside are reading programs that encourage children to figure out what a jumble of letters says by looking at the picture or using other clues to guess the word — a debunked strategy still used in some popular reading curriculums. Now, there’s a greater emphasis on teaching the relationships between sounds and letters in a direct and carefully sequenced way.

Nov. 7: Not ‘present,’ and paying a steep cost: How pandemic recovery in Detroit and across Michigan hinges on getting kids to class

Districts across the U.S saw chronic absenteeism spike last school year, and the numbers have prompted a variety of campaigns to boost attendance. Detroit’s challenge is especially acute: Two-thirds of the city’s students missed at least 10% of last school year. The issue extends beyond education, as Koby Levin, Ethan Bakuli, and Kae Petrin explain.

Absences seldom boil down to a decision to skip school, experts say. Interviews with parents and researchers show that families generally understand the importance of regular attendance and do their best to get their children to class. Instead, absences often result from painful but rational choices between a family’s basic well-being and attending school. Problems with housing, health, work, or transportation can quickly spiral into a crisis for a family that lacks money or a social support system.

Nov. 9: Hope, healing, and the return of an annual camping trip for Brooklyn high-schoolers

A multi-day hike outside New York City this fall was much more than a field trip for one group of high-schoolers, as Michael Elsen-Rooney wrote. It was a return to tradition and a chance for students to grow as leaders after several trauma-heavy years.

Surrounded by her classmates on a bright October morning in the woods of Fishkill, New York, Diana Ramirez had no trouble making herself heard. The 14-year-old enthusiastically initiated chants and cheerfully shouted instructions to her peers during team-building activities on a multi-day camping trip organized by their Brooklyn public high school. Speaking up hasn’t always been so easy for the high school freshman — especially during the past several years overshadowed by the pandemic.

Nov. 17: Schools across the U.S. have turned to Paper’s online tutoring. Some worry it’s falling short.

Virtual tutoring has grown in popularity as schools look for ways to help students catch up and struggle to staff up in-person programs. Kalyn Belsha took a look at one popular program, Paper, and found low usage rates and concerns it wasn’t helping the students who needed it most.

The district spent $913,000 in COVID relief funds for Paper to provide its middle and high school students with access to 24/7, on-demand tutoring. But Columbus quietly cut ties with the company in September because too few students were using the tool. District records obtained by Chalkbeat show that less than 8% of students with access logged on last school year. Half of those students used it just once. In some schools, not a single student logged on.

Nov. 18: School psychologist, counselor hiring lags nationwide even as student mental health needs soar

As students struggle, many schools have talked about the ways they are adding mental health support for students. But this fall, many still hadn’t managed to add counselors or psychologists, despite an influx of federal relief money, Patrick Wall, Kalyn Belsha, and the Associated Press’ Annie Ma documented.

Among 18 of the country’s largest school districts, 12 started this school year with fewer counselors or psychologists than they had in fall 2019, according to an analysis by Chalkbeat. As a result, many school mental health professionals have caseloads that far exceed recommended limits, according to experts and advocates, and students must wait for urgently needed help. ‘They have so many students that they’re dealing with,’ said Mira Ugwuadu, 17. ‘I personally don’t want to blame them. But I also deserve care and support, too.’

Dec. 9: How one Chicago school social worker is grappling with COVID’s toll on students

Chicago has doubled the number of social workers in schools. But each of them is still juggling hundreds of students’ needs, as Mauricio Peña documented, at a moment when students are struggling with academics and behavior.

In the bathroom, [Mary] Difino took another deep breath, then headed back to her office. There she tidied up and fixed her desk. She grabbed her soccer bag from that morning’s Piccolo girls soccer team practice and a binder full of drills and activities. Her role as coach for second, third, and fourth grade students is a reprieve from her frenetic duties during school hours. She thought about what was needed to calm the fights and help her students: a restorative justice coordinator, smaller class sizes, perhaps another social worker. But as Difino left for home that night, that wish list seemed far away — and she just felt exhausted.

New Jersey’s test scores for 2022: See the math and literacy results for your district

2022-12-21T17:01:21+00:00

Significant disparities between New Jersey’s white and Asian American students and their Black and Hispanic peers grew bigger on last spring’s state standardized tests, while proficiency rates among Newark’s relatively young students suffered the biggest declines from pre-pandemic levels, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the scores.

There were drops in proficiency rates in math and English language arts on the spring tests for all student groups in the state. And Newark’s struggles with achieving math proficiency have only grown more pronounced.

The scores on the New Jersey Student Learning Assessments, known as the NJSLA, were released by the New Jersey Department of Education last week. The tests were taken by students in grades 3-8 in math, English language arts, and science.

Students took the tests, which were created by Pearson Assessments, between April and June of last school year. It was the first time they took the test since 2019, due to disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic. (In 2021, Newark students took a different exam that also indicated significant learning loss.)

Comparing this year’s test scores to results from pre-pandemic years can give educators and families a clearer look at how the pandemic stalled progress in student learning.

New Jersey also saw a glimpse of this earlier this year on “the nation’s report card,” which showed significant dips in math and reading scores among fourth and eighth graders on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

On average, the state test results show that students are performing at the same levels of students in the same grades in 2015, undoing years of steady progress before the pandemic.

“The issues we’re seeing — the achievement gap, the lower percentage of students in Newark meeting or exceeding state learning standards — pre-date the pandemic, but have certainly been exacerbated by it,” said Ronald Chaluisán, executive director of the Newark Trust for Education, in a phone interview on Tuesday.

Statewide proficiency rates showed a growing gulf between the highest and lowest performing student demographic groups.

For example, 83.3% of all Asian American students were proficient in English language arts in 2019, compared to 37.9% of all Black students. This year, that gap grew by nearly 3 percentage points. About 78.8% of all Asian American students were proficient on the English language arts exams, while 30.5% of Black students achieved proficiency, according to an analysis by the state education department that was presented earlier this month at a state Board of Education meeting.

Meanwhile, in Newark public schools, proficiency rates in math for third and fourth graders — many of whom were already falling short of achieving proficiency on the test before COVID — fell significantly from their peers’ scores three years ago.

During a school board meeting in September, district leaders shared a first look at these results, which Superintendent Roger León called “horrible” before promising a focus on tutoring this school year.

The share of third graders in the district who met proficiency standards in math decreased from 35.4% in 2019 to 15.1% in 2022. Similarly, fourth graders meeting proficiency standards in math decreased from 32% in 2019 to 12.2% in 2022.

“Pretty consistently across the board a huge percentage of our students have not done well on those exams over many years,” Chaluisán said.

Data from the spring exams should be used to inform district leaders on how to proceed next with students who need the most support, said Steven LoCascio, director of Kean University’s educational leadership program.

“We have to be very careful not to go on business as usual with our students, especially those who aren’t meeting expectations,” LoCascio said. “In math, for example, the concepts build on one another, and if we’re seeing that basic skills aren’t there, then your students will stay at an ongoing deficit, making it more and more difficult for them to succeed in the future.”

Newark’s largest charter school networks were not immune from proficiency declines.

Fifth graders at KIPP schools in Newark went from a 48.2% proficiency rate in English language arts in 2019 to 31% this year. And fifth graders at North Star Academy schools also saw a steep drop in proficiency, going from a 73.8% proficiency rate in 2019 in English language arts to 51.5%.

“Our charter leaders and teachers remain committed to meeting the immense challenges of this moment so that more students can recover socially, emotionally and academically,” said Harry Lee, president of the New Jersey Public Charter Schools Association, in a statement about the test scores.

The Newark Trust for Education has a five-point response to the test scores across the city’s schools, Chaluisán said.

Among the issues the nonprofit education group will focus on in the new year is pushing for an “aggressive timeline” to help students recover lost ground in math and reading, as well as urging a citywide effort to help students through a collaboration between community organizations, families, and schools.

“If we’re not dramatically changing the day-to-day in this collective work of helping our young people, then we are creating barriers for our kids,” he said. “We are really committed to bringing the community together around the urgency to this issue and around the solution to this issue.”

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark, covering the city’s K-12 schools with a focus on English language learners. Contact Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

Nearly half of Philadelphia seniors still working to meet new state graduation requirements

2022-12-21T00:40:12+00:00

Nearly 4,000 high school seniors in Philadelphia schools have yet to meet new graduation requirements imposed by a state law that goes into effect for this school year.

As of last week, 52% of seniors, or 4,223 out of 8,120 students, had met state requirements for graduation, according to district officials who testified before the City Council on Friday.

In their presentation to the council, Philadelphia school officials estimated that only 28% of seniors scored proficient or advanced on all three state Keystone exams, which is one of the paths students can take to earn a diploma. (The Keystones are generally taken in the 11th grade.) Another 290 students — or 4% — are on track to graduate because they passed one state test and had a high enough composite score in all three.

The remainder have used alternate pathways created by Act 158, the state law signed by former Gov. Tom Wolf in 2018 as a way to offer students who do not score at least proficient on the three Keystone exams more opportunities to graduate. It takes effect with this year’s graduating class.

Aside from relying on proficiency and composite scores on state exams, students can earn diplomas by attaining an industry-based certification in a career and technical education program; scoring high enough on tests like the Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams; or following an “evidence-based” pathway approved by the Pennsylvania Department of Education, which can include work or internships outside of school and acceptance into a four-year college.

The district reported that 94 students so far have met requirements by getting a CTE certification, 452 through an alternate assessment, and 208 through an “evidence-based” project. In addition, 326 students with disabilities approaching the age of 21 are on track to graduate via a separate state law, and another 587 are meeting the goals and objectives of their Individualized Education Plan.

That leaves 3,897 students who the district characterized as still “in progress” to meet the requirements.

Those statistics track with a recent report from the Philadelphia Education Research Consortium on the implications of the 2018 changes to graduation pathways.

Using data from 2018 and 2019, the group projected that more than half the district’s students will need additional help to either pass state Keystone exams, or graduate under one of the other pathways. The group also found that in 2018 and 2019, only about a third of students scored high enough on all the Keystones tests to graduate based on those results under Act 158.

“The share of students who would have met or almost met Keystone pathways varied based on race/ethnicity, economically disadvantaged status, and other student characteristics, reflecting local, state, and nationwide historical inequities in standardized tests,” the consortium said in its October report.

Principal Brianna Dunn-Robb of Constitution High School said there’s an intense effort under way to help those students who aren’t on track to earn a diploma yet.

“We’re working hard in collaboration with the district to meet the needs of all individual students,” she said. “It takes a lot of planning and working to see what pathways students will follow. There is a lot of data collection on a weekly basis.”

Students can “flow in and out of different pathways” throughout the year, she said. The key is to get more cooperation from local businesses to increase internship opportunities and institutions of higher education to expand dual enrollment, she said.

School officials also told council members that the city government itself could offer internship opportunities, recruit private employers to offer them as well, and establish a database of participating businesses and organizations.

“I hope we look upon this as not just a school district issue, but a city of Philadelphia project to assure all our graduates are college and career ready,” Dunn-Robb said.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia officials optimistic about early literacy efforts despite disappointing test scores

2022-12-07T11:25:00+00:00

This story is featured in Chalkbeat’s 2022 Philadelphia Early Childhood Education Guide on efforts to improve outcomes for the city’s youngest learners. To keep up with early childhood education and Philadelphia’s public schools, sign up for our free weekly newsletter here.

Mayor Jim Kenney had a question for the 30 or so four- and five-year-olds arrayed before him at the Little Einsteins child care center in Germantown just before Thanksgiving.

After reading to them from the book “Our Favorite Day of the Year,” about holidays, food was on the mayor’s mind.

“What do you like to put on top of your pie? I like vanilla ice cream,” he said.

“Pizza!” one little boy shouted.

“Pizza on top of your pie?” the mayor responded in mock disbelief. The little boy giggled.

Soon, it was a free-for-all. “French fries!” “Hot dogs!” “Nuggets!” children shouted.

“Now you’re being silly,” the mayor said, appearing to enjoy every moment as the children basked in the attention.

During November, Kenney visited several child care centers to highlight what he considers one of his biggest achievements as mayor: making affordable, high-quality early childhood education available to an additional 4,300 students through PHLPreK, an initiative that supplements state and federal programs including Pre-K Counts and Head Start.

The focus on prekindergarten is part of the city’s effort to ensure that all students can read on grade level by the end of third grade. This Read by 4th campaign began in 2015, and has brought together universities, foundations, businesses, and other institutions to emphasize literacy activities in everyday life as well as in the classroom.

As a target on the road to universal proficiency, the Philadelphia Board of Education has set a goal that 62% of third graders will be proficient readers by the 2025-26 school year. Yet while many systems have been put in place to help the city achieve its goal, the results so far have been mixed — at least as measured by standardized test scores.

Just 28.2% of Philadelphia third graders scored proficient or advanced in reading this year on the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment, or PSSA, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of the state test scores. That is not only a decline from pre-pandemic proficiency of 32.5% in 2019, but more than 10 percentage points below the goal set by the Board of Education for the 2021-22 school year for the district to be on track for its goal of 62%. (In 2020, the state did not administer the PSSA; in 2021, a relatively small share of students took the PSSA due to the pandemic, and officials have warned against comparing those scores to results from other years.)

Overall for grades 3-8, 34.7% of students scored proficient in reading on the PSSA in 2022. That’s below the interim target of 42.5% the district set for 2021-22 in order to stay on track to reach its goal of 65% proficiency by 2026.

Recently released scores from this year’s federally administered National Assessment of Educational Progress for fourth and eighth graders — known as “the nation’s report card” — revealed promising but also worrying signs for Philadelphia’s younger students when it comes to literacy.

While fourth graders’ NAEP reading scores dipped nationwide and in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia’s fourth grade reading scores did not change significantly from 2019, the last time the NAEP test was administered. At the same time, Philadelphia’s fourth graders scored significantly below the national average and the average for Pennsylvania. (NAEP is administered to a representative sample of students, not all of them.)

Despite worrying signs in the data, those working in the field also see encouraging signs.

Donna Cooper, executive director of the advocacy group Children First, called it “amazing” that Philadelphia’s fourth grade NAEP scores in reading “didn’t tank” for 2022 after all the pandemic-related disruptions.

And others point to the foundation for future success in literacy that Philadelphia has put in place recently through a diverse set of initiatives inside and outside schools. “We feel we’re in a much better place than we were seven years ago,” said Jenny Bogoni, executive director of the Read by 4th campaign.

Early literacy efforts focus on coaches and curriculum

The initiative started in the wake of research showing that students reap lifelong benefits if they are reading proficiently when they start fourth grade. A 2012 study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, for example, found that students who do not reach this milestone are four times less likely to graduate high school on time than those who do.

Despite the added pre-K seats in Philadelphia over the last several years, inadequate availability may still be hindering efforts like those to improve early literacy.

About 12,000 children, or nearly half of those eligible for those seats based on family income, still don’t have access to affordable early childhood education, Cooper pointed out.

That could contribute to the reality that despite “tons of effort” after seven years “we’re not seeing movement” on the traditional measures of children’s literacy, she said.

Still, while the percentage of students reaching proficiency on the PSSA has not shown the progress people would like, the share of students scoring “below basic” (the lowest level) on the test did fall across various student subgroups from 2015 and 2019. For example, the percentage of Black male students scoring below basic on the English Language Arts test declined from 46.5% in 2015 to 41.5% in 2019, according to the district.

“We haven’t quite gotten to putting more in the proficient bucket, but we’re bringing up the bottom,” Bogoni said.

Starting in 2019, the district overhauled its early reading curriculum by hewing more closely to the science of reading, said Nyshawana Francis-Thompson, the district’s deputy chief of curriculum and instruction.

This shift in instruction seeks to couple comprehension skills — including vocabulary development, background knowledge, and verbal reasoning — with more explicit phonics instruction, decoding, and phonemic awareness, or the relationship between letters and sounds.

With the curricular shift, “We’re more focused on foundational skills,” said Malika Savoy-Brooks, the district’s chief academic support officer.

The district is also working with local colleges of education to make sure that teachers planning to work in the early grades get more rigorous training in reading instruction. And since 2015, early-grade teachers have received summer training in best practices for teaching reading.

Beyond that fundamental shift in core instruction, the district has also hired literacy coaches recently to work in many schools. Officials have also sought to raise awareness among parents about the importance of exposing them to books from a very early age.

Outside of school, the Read by 4th campaign has enlisted the help of “reading captains.” These are community residents who conduct literacy activities in the neighborhood at libraries, schools, parks and other settings.

Diane Castelbuono, the district’s director of early childhood education, said there is “a small army of reading captains out there engaging friends and neighbors in how to raise a reader, and how families can access the resources they need.”

Separately, the district is working with book publishers and funders to obtain more diverse books, and enhance classroom libraries to make sure most of the books and teaching materials are more culturally responsive to the children in the classroom, who are overwhelmingly Black and brown.

Francis-Thompson said the district is drawing on materials and philosophy from Dr. Gholdy Muhammed, an associate professor at Georgia State University who emphasizes the importance of cultural affirmation and appropriate reading materials to children’s development of literacy skills.

“Significant work has been done making sure there are books in children’s homes, making sure the distribution of children’s books is culturally responsive and in different languages,” Castelbuono said.

While curriculum is important, so is making sure that the teachers of early learners also focus on children’s social and emotional needs, said LaTanya Miller, executive director of the district’s office of academic supports who works on adaptive curriculum for students with disabilities.

And with respect to English language learners, who make up 12% of the district’s students, the district has also gradually shifted its approach to stress that speaking and understanding a language other than English is an asset, not a liability.

Over the past several years, the district has invested in modernizing kindergarten through third grade classrooms to include centers devoted to reading, writing, and LEGOs.

And officials are ramping up other initiatives, including playful learning, in which opportunities for reading and conversation are present in places all around the city, including parks, laundromats, and buses.

The ultimate goal of all these efforts, Francis-Thompson said, is to prepare students to be critical of the world around them and “not just a passive consumer” of information. Beyond just teaching skills, creating literate students is about “accepting them and embracing all that they are in a learning environment,” she said.

As with many other education initiatives, the pandemic has disrupted efforts to improve early literacy. Bogoni said almost two full years of remote learning has taken its toll. But she stressed that the city is now in a better position to make badly needed progress.

“We were feeling we were on the cusp of making good progress as the pandemic hit,” she said. “Now the task is to double down. The foundations are in place that should allow us to move forward in this space of urgency.”

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

New policy would change when Chicago students are held back, eliminates test scores as factor

2022-12-07T01:14:29+00:00

Chicago Public Schools could change when elementary school students can be held back a grade and plans to stop using test scores as a factor.

The district did not hold back any elementary students during the first two years of the pandemic in a nod to COVID’s academic and mental health toll. Last year, it revised the policy for promoting students to drop a test that schools were no longer required to give.

Now, the district is proposing to end the use of test scores in promotion decisions permanently, according to a draft policy shared with principals last month and obtained by Chalkbeat. It would also shift the grades in which a student can be held back, from the third, sixth, and eighth grade to the second, fifth, and eighth grade.

Under the proposed policy, elementary students receiving academic interventions would be automatically promoted. The new policy would also add science and social studies to math and reading on the list of subjects students must pass.

Over the past decade or so, the district has gradually relaxed its once-stringent promotion policy. Research showed it harmed more than helped the disproportionately Black and Latino students who were required to repeat a grade. That trend coincided with a rise in skepticism about the value of retention nationally, based on studies suggesting it increases the odds that students might drop out of high school.

The school board is expected to consider the draft elementary promotion policy in January.

Elaine Allensworth with the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, who has studied retention in the district for years, applauds removing test scores as a factor. But she said the change in the grades students can repeat might be disruptive because it would mean those grades would serve more struggling students.

“That affects the achievement and experience of other students as well,” Allensworth said. “It decreases the rigor of instruction.”

Retention can also be stigmatizing for students.

Lisa Russell, the mother of four Chicago Public Schools graduates and a West Side parent advocate with the nonprofit Community Organizing and Family Issues, said a classmate of her youngest son had to repeat the eighth grade shortly before the pandemic hit.

The girl had received good grades and only found out she was behind academically when she did not attain the required score on the Measures of Academic Progress, or MAP, the standardized test used in promotion decisions, Russell said. She added it can be deeply embarrassing to be back in an eighth grade classroom with younger students.

“That put her in a shell where she really wasn’t learning any more,” Russell said.

Russell worked with students with disabilities before she retired and said in her experience retention did not help students who were in some cases multiple grade levels behind by the time they were required to repeat a grade. She is glad the district is considering no longer using test scores to retain students.

Pavlyn Jankov, a researcher with the Chicago Teachers Union, noted the grade promotion changes are part of a broader shift, as the district is also working on a new way of evaluating school performance that is expected to put much less weight on tests.

“As a district, we are moving away from test-based accountability and punitive measures,” he said.

The union advocated for that shift and now welcomes the change. But he said the teachers union didn’t know about the new grade promotion policy. He said he worries that documenting student interventions can add to a growing volume of paperwork for which teachers are responsible. And he thinks the new policy should offer a rationale for switching the grades in which students can be held back.

The district’s pre-pandemic promotion policy for elementary students required them to get a C or higher in reading and math as well as hit a certain score on a standardized test. Students who failed to do so had to attend and successfully complete summer school to move on to the next grade.

But last year, the district discontinued its contract with the NWEA, the nonprofit that administers the MAP test used in determining grade promotion. Schools no longer have to give the test three times a year. It is not being used for grade promotion currently and the new proposed policy would formally eliminate testing as a factor.

Under that proposal, students will advance to the next grade if they get a passing grade in core courses, or if they are getting help in them. There are now interventionists staffed in each school who work with struggling students one-on-one or small groups. These students can move on to the next grade even if they fail a class.

Second graders would only have to pass reading. Students in grades five and eight would also have to pass math, science and social studies.

For Chicago, the proposed policy overall would continue a trend of making it harder to hold students back a grade.

In the late 1990s, the district drew national attention with a strict promotion policy based on standardized test scores that led to thousands of students repeating a grade each year. The district touted the policy as an end to “social promotion,” or letting students advance just because they were a certain age. But by the early 2010s, research had started to raise alarms about the long-term effects of holding students back based on test scores.

The district started letting up on its promotion criteria in response to that research. By 2015, officials floated the idea of doing away with grade retention altogether, though that idea never took hold. The number of students held back continued to plummet.

The district was not able to provide data on how many students were retained on the cusp of the pandemic. It is not clear whether the district is also mulling changes to high school promotion.

The Consortium on School Research’s work has offered a clear repudiation of strict promotion requirements, said Allensworth.

Academic growth tended to slow down in the year students had to repeat. Students who were held back, especially those who repeated more than one year, struggled to fit in socially by high school. Some found themselves still in school at 19 and 20 as peers had moved on to college or jobs.

Overall, students who repeated a grade in elementary school were much more likely to drop out by high school. The prospect of repeating a grade did help motivate eighth graders — but not students in earlier grades.

Students who have to repeat a grade often had experienced a family disruption or mental health issues, Allensworth said.

“Retention doesn’t solve the issue for that student — it adds another problem,” she said. She added, “If you look at the effects of this policy, they are pretty much all negative, especially in the longer term.”

But, said Allensworth, retention remains politically popular, buttressed by what she called the “myth of the third grade level.” It’s the idea that students should reach a specific, easy-to-measure knowledge level by the end of each grade, when in fact children fall on a wide academic spectrum.

Allensworth said questioned adding more subjects students have to pass. But she supports including interventions as a factor in favor of advancing students on to the next grade.

“If students are struggling to pass, you want to do something about it,” she said.

Mila Koumpilova is Chalkbeat Chicago’s senior reporter covering Chicago Public Schools. Contact Mila at mkoumpilova@chalkbeat.org.