Literacy Test Scores Rise for Urban Students in N.Y.
By DAVID M. HERSZENHORN
The number of fourth graders reading and writing at grade level in New York State surged this year, the state reported today, propelled by striking gains in four large urban districts, including New York City, where Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg portrayed the results as an election-year affirmation of his stewardship of the public schools.
To celebrate the results, Mr. Bloomberg, who has repeatedly urged voters to judge him on his ambitious effort to reinvent the nation's largest school system, scheduled a visit to Public School 33 in the Bronx, where fourth-grade scores soared by unprecedented 46.7 percentage points, bringing the number of students meeting state literacy standards to 83.4 percent.
But the percentage of eighth graders meeting state standards, a consistent measure of middle school failure, rose only fractionally statewide and actually fell in New York City, according to results made public in Albany by the state education commissioner, Richard P. Mills.
And the fourth-grade gains in Rochester, Yonkers and Syracuse - all of all of the state's large districts except Buffalo - outpaced the improvements in New York City, making it more difficult for Mr. Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein, to attribute the better results to their particular initiatives, including a new citywide reading program adopted in 2003.
All of this paints a far foggier landscape for Mr. Bloomberg and the city's nearly 1.1 million school children than could ever be captured in the uncomplicated format of a political campaign commercial.
However, Mr. Bloomberg can boast of the largest one-year increase in fourth-grade scores since the current state testing regime began in 1999. And for the mayor, a first-term Republican seeking re-election in the fall, it was only icing on the political cupcake that the sharpest increases in the city - gains so outsized that they clearly reflected a change in the way schools are doing business - were in the northwest Bronx on the home turf of his chief Democratic rival, Fernando Ferrer.
Public School 46, for instance, where Mr. Ferrer's wife, Aramina, has been principal for many years, had an increase of 26.2 points.
Intriguingly, the city's largest gains - in Region 1 in the Bronx, and Region 5 covering impoverished stretches of east Brooklyn and south Queens - were in places where the school administration and the teachers' union maintain strong working relationships despite a long-simmer contract battle that has roiled relations at the highest levels on both sides.
This year's steep increases in the urban districts reflected a quirk in the way state reading scores are most commonly analyzed, by counting the percentage meeting standards rather than the actual scale scores on the exam.
It turned out that the state's largest districts had been hovering just below the cut point for passing in recent years. This year, they broke through.
"This year, they went over the bar," Commissioner Mills said at a capital news conference.
Over all, the number of New York City fourth graders meeting state standards on the English Language Arts exam rose 9.9 points to 59.5 percent. Among the big districts, Rochester had the largest increase, up 14.9 points. Syracuse rose 12 points. Yonkers, the city with the overall best fourth-grade proficiency levels, was up 11.4 points to 76.4 percent meeting standards.
Statewide, 70.4 percent of fourth graders scored proficiently, a gain of 8.2 points.
In eighth grade, the percentage of New York City students performing adequately fell 2.8 points to 32.8 percent. Statewide, the number of eighth graders passing the test rose 0.9 point, to 48.1 percent.
The lackluster eighth grade results were not a surprise - statewide the percentage of proficient students is exactly the same as it was in 1999 when the current test began.
But the sharp increases in fourth-grade scores, which were reflected not just in the percentage passing but also in big jumps in the underlying scale scores, raised eyebrows and a number of questions from critics of standardized testing and other experts. The questions focused on whether this year's exam was easier and how much an overall decline in the number of students tested, especially the number of students with limited English skills, had contributed to the gains.
"If you eliminate the worst test-takers - and I want to be clear, it's not the worst students, it's the students with the most difficulty taking a pen-and-paper test," said Jane Hirschmann, an outspoken critic of the state's testing program, "if you eliminate those students, then you get a big increase."
"You get exactly what Bloomberg wanted, what he calls success, what makes him look good, but in reality I don't think anything has changed," she added.
Over all, the number of students tested this year declined statewide by 9,800, with about two-thirds of the decrease in New York City, and officials attributed most of that to a trend toward lower enrollment in recent years.
State officials said they had analyzed exams for the last three years and found the level of difficulty was consistent. "Technically, the test behaved the same," said James A. Kadamus, the deputy state education commissioner for elementary and middle schools. He noted the difference in results in Rochester, with huge fourth-grade gains, and Buffalo, where scores rose just 4.9 points.
"Similar student populations, very similar in terms of poverty in terms of minority background, if the test was easier, why didn't Buffalo do better," he asked. "If you see those variations, it tells us something is happening different in these districts than was happening before."
Mr. Kadamus and other officials said they were especially heartened by a decline in the number of students scoring at the very bottom - Level 1 out of 4 - meaning that they are far below grade level.
Only 2 percent of fourth graders and only 2.8 percent of eighth graders fell into this category, a slightly decrease.
Officials said they were also pleased by a continued narrowing of the gap in achievement between black and Hispanic fourth-graders and their white and Asian counterparts. For the first time, more than half of black and Hispanic students statewide met standards, up from about 26 percent in 1999. |
