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Math scores in New York City’s public schools rose last school year while English scores fell, according to state test results released by city officials on Wednesday.
Among students in grades 3 through 8, 53.4% were rated proficient or above in math, an increase of 3.5 percentage points. The share of children rated as reading on grade level fell to 49.1%, a decrease of 2.6 points.
The drop in English scores comes at a crucial time, as improving literacy is schools Chancellor David Banks’ top priority. He has required all elementary schools to use one of three approved reading programs. City officials acknowledged that the curriculum overhaul – which began in just under half of the city’s districts last year and will be rolled out to all schools in the fall – may have negatively affected test scores as teachers had to get used to unfamiliar materials.
A Chalkbeat analysis found that average proficiency rates in districts that began implementing the new curriculum last school year fell by 3.5 percentage points. In districts that were not covered by the curriculum mandate, the decline was slightly smaller, at 2.8 percentage points. An analysis conducted by the Department of Education shows similar trends.
These numbers include only students in grades 3 through 5, because middle schools were not generally required to change the reading curriculum. (Students who score a 3 on the state tests are considered proficient, while a 4 is above the proficiency level.)
“Meaningful change doesn’t happen overnight, and the slight decline in (English) test scores represents a transitional period as our school system adjusts to a new method of instruction,” Banks said in a statement. City officials said other states that have implemented curriculum overhauls have also seen test scores decline.
Still, experts said the overall test scores should be interpreted with caution because many other variables besides the curriculum changes could influence the results up or down, such as fluctuations in federal COVID relief funding and increased rates of chronic absenteeism. The Department of Education did not randomly choose which schools had to revise their curricula in the first phase of the rollout.
State test scores should be used “only as a rough indicator of student performance and not as a decisive assessment or referendum” on curriculum reform, said Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College who has studied school performance and accountability systems. “When multiple things are changing at once, it’s really, really hard to isolate the impact of a curriculum change.”
Officials pointed to data from a separate set of tests the city gave to students in grades K-2 last spring that showed an increase in reading scores compared to the previous year as a sign of improvement. But those statistics also show that scores at schools that adopted the new curricula rose slightly less than those at schools that were not bound by the curriculum. Officials said the differences were not statistically significant.
Susan Neuman, a professor at New York University who supports the curriculum changes, said the city’s assessment data was more encouraging, but it was too early to draw conclusions. “I don’t think it makes sense” to use state test scores to evaluate curriculum targets, she said. “I’m not alarmed” by the decline, she added.
For his part, Pallas was skeptical that the city’s assessment data, based on a screener from a company called Acadience, could say much about policy implementation because it is typically used to identify individual students with performance problems so schools can provide additional help.
“I completely understand the city bragging about the seemingly increasing numbers,” Pallas said. “But again, I believe that has very little to do with the curriculum changes we are experiencing.”
The state test results released Wednesday came out months earlier than in recent years, which city officials said is because state education officials gave them the green light to release local results sooner. The results were delayed until last fall as state officials developed cut scores for the new exam, but in 2022 and 2021, the data were released in late September and late October, respectively.
The results further revealed differences between the different student groups.
About 70% of Asian American students and nearly 66% of white students scored proficient or better on English exams, compared with nearly 39% of black students and about 36% of Hispanic children. About 21% of students with disabilities were rated as performing on grade level.
In math, nearly 80% of Asian American children and just over 72% of white children were proficient, compared with about 38% of black students and nearly 40% of Latino students. For students with disabilities, math proficiency rates were much lower, at just over 27%.
The numbers released Wednesday do not include charter schools.
In general, the state’s standardized tests have undergone a number of changes in recent years, sometimes making it difficult to compare data from one school year to the next. In 2020, for example, the exams were canceled due to the onset of the COVID pandemic and reinstated the following year, albeit made optional for students across the state.
In 2023, students will take a new exam for the first time based on the Next Generation Learning Standards, which were introduced after revisions to the controversial Common Core. Earlier this year, the city’s fifth- and eighth-graders took a computer-based version of those exams as the state continues its multi-year phase of adopting computer-based testing.
And across the city, another 185 schools have opted for digital English exams for some of their third, fourth, sixth and seventh graders, while 166 schools have done so for math classes.
Data from the city showed a larger decline in the share of fifth- and eighth-graders who scored proficient in reading on recent exams compared to the city’s 3rd- through 8th-grade students overall. While some studies have found that students tend to perform worse on exams taken on a computer or tablet, the research is inconclusive. Many states have already moved to a computer-based model, but there have been mixed results across the country.
City officials said they were “unable to distinguish the impact of computer-based testing on student grades from other factors.”
Nevertheless, the tests can be helpful to schools and districts by assisting them in making instructional decisions and developing individualized learning plans for students.
Curious about school-level test scores? Here’s a searchable breakdown of math and English scores for all of the city’s public schools.
Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York covering New York public schools. Contact Alex at [email protected].
Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter for New York City. You can reach him at [email protected]
