The New Normal of Hidden Test Scores
New York City public schools start classes again next week, and parents are busy buying school supplies, getting kids back on a normal schedule and developing alternative plans given the imminent school bus strike.
But one thing is still missing: our kids’ New York state test scores from last year!
My son took the ELA and math state tests last May — yet I still have no idea of his score and how his performance compares to other New York students. Why this delay?
New Normal
As the Empire Center reported, this hold-up has become a pattern. Last year, the State Education Department (SED) only released the test scores in November after failing to comply with a FOIL request to release the data. We then learned that the results were the worst in the state’s history, a fact conveniently hidden until after Election Day.
In March, the SED said they would accept a “new normal,” standardizing our kids’ low performance by resetting the cut scores for New York state tests.
Families across the country received their test scores back in June or May. New York may be #1 on education spending, but we’re dead last in transparency and making learning outcomes available to families.
Skyrocketing Budget
At the same time, the city is spending millions to welcome newly arrived asylum-seeking students and will start to comply with the law to reduce class size (price tag of almost $2B per year) ensuring that the funding trajectory will continue upward and with no accountability on how the funds are being used.
New York families deserve better. We can’t accept that the nation's most expensive public school system fails to teach our kids basic math and reading. We can’t accept that when they fail to teach the basics, SED will use gimmicks to lower the expectations for our kids and delay the release of bad news.
And we certainly can’t accept any more delays in fixing these problems.
