The delay in state test results is meant to leave parents in the dark
The New York State Department of Education is a joke, but parents and advocates of academic excellence are not laughing at the SED’s recent salvo against transparency and accountability.
For the second year in a row, the SED is delaying the release of student results on statewide math and English exams — tests taken by children in grades 3 through 8 last spring.
And these are easy-to-score multiple-choice exams: SED should have included the results weeks.
In years past, the findings have been released to parents and schools over the course of the summer, or at least ahead of Labor Day and the traditional opening of public schools.
No longer.
The SED leaves parents and school leaders in the dark for no apparent reason.
The scores were released last year eight weeks into the new school year — and only after Empire Center filed a lawsuit to request it.
In the city, fewer than half of Gotham’s public school children were proficient in languages and math. It was even worse for black and Hispanic students.
Led by Education Commissioner Betty Rosa, the SED and the Board of Regents are waging a war of converts against tests and the student performance that enables standardized exams.
Back in March, the SED announced that it would adjust the grading criteria for grades 3 through 8 assessments to better reflect the “new normal” in student performance.
That means lowering the bar for students in grades 3-8 to do well on state math and reading tests. It does so using last year’s lower results as a new basis for setting expectations: disastrous post-pandemic results are becoming the ‘new normal’.
What a sneaky way to cover up the learning loss due to prolonged school closures and absurd “distance learning”.
Expenditure on public schools in New York have rose to a record high despite declining student performance in such exams.
And don’t ask what happened to it 9 billion dollars The government handed over to the Empire State schools in President Joe Biden’s “American Rescue Plan.”
Far from denouncing this massive waste and failure, Rosa & Co. are on board.
Worse still, it is to be expected that the SED will demand additional government school subsidies in the billions next year.
And this is no joke — or rather, it is a sick First, for both taxpayers and children.
