Cathie Black Rearranging Deck Chairs on the Titanic

I read Cathie Black’s editorial in the Daily News today.

The focus on the interpretation of test score statistics seems an odd choice for the new Schools Chancellor, like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, given the host of other pressing issues affecting the daily educational lives of the students and teachers populating the public school buildings of New York City at this point in time.

As the parent of a child currently in the  middle of the “middle school choice” process, it seems pretty clear that the kind of middle school she attends will make or break her ability to get into a selective high school and/or pass the desired Regents exams in high school.

The father of one of my daughter’s classmates said he doesn’t want his daughter to attend a middle school that doesn’t offer Regents exams.  Many don’t.  Common wisdom has it that if a child wants to take advanced math in high school, they have to enter high school having already passed the Regents Algebra exam because otherwise there just won’t be enough time to get to take Advanced Calculus or whatever other course the student is hoping to take while in high school in order to be able to hit the ground running as a college student working towards a STEM (Science Technology Engineering Math) career.

The mother of a student at the doomed to close Jamaica High School in Queens testified before a recent PEP meeting said that her son (who chose the school because of  specific accelerated academic and engineering programs that no longer exist) was accepted into an advanced placement math class only to find out after showing up for class the first day of school that it had been cancelled because the teacher had been transferred to another school.

From where I’m sitting, the problem isn’t how the tests are scored.  The problem is that there simply aren’t enough New York City middle schools and high schools that offer  the science and advanced math courses necessary to enable more students to take and pass the various Regents exams that “prove” they have acquired the prerequisite knowledge for college level work.

Theodorakis/News  Schools Chancellor Cathie Black

We should all be immensely proud of that progress. But we still have work to do to ensure that more of our students graduate and that they graduate with the skills to succeed in college.

That is why, for the past two years, the Department of Education has focused on increasing the rigor of our curriculum and working to introduce new assessments that measure whether our students are ready to succeed in college.

We are pleased that yesterday, New York State Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch and state Education Commissioner David Steiner joined us in this discussion by acknowledging that the state standards have been too low. The state is, after all, responsible for setting graduation standards, creating the Regents exams, dictating how the exams are given and scored and, on top of it all, overseeing SUNY and CUNY, the state and city universities that define college-readiness requirements.

But if we are going to have a real conversation about college readiness – which we desperately need – it has to be about more than setting higher “cut scores” on the Regents exams. Right now, students are counted as passing the Regents exam with a score of 65. Everyone agrees that at this level, they’re not truly prepared to do college-level work.

In its analysis, the state argues that students had to score 80 on the Math A Regents test (primarily given to ninth-graders) to truly be ready for college-level work.

But there are better, more rigorous predictors of college success: One is whether kids master higher-level math courses by the time they graduate. Another is whether students take the more advanced Math B Regents test. Success or failure on that exam correlates much more strongly to whether students go on to succeed at the college level. In fact, students who took but actually failed the Math B Regents have a better chance of being on track at CUNY than students who earned an 80 on the Math A Regents.

The state erred in using only the Math A results for its analysis, and if we are going to get this right, we need a thorough analysis using the best metrics available.

While adjusting scores has some value, it is crucial that we also focus on taking steps that will actually help better prepare our kids for college-level work. That means having a curriculum that teaches students how to write critically, how to back up their arguments with facts and how to apply mathematics to real-world situations. And it means having rigorous assessments that align with the curriculum and measure if our students have mastered those skills. The current Regents exams do not offer that.”