Math and ELA Regents

This is an e-mailed letter to teachers the other day about recent news of literacy and math scores increasing over the past year in New York City. I'm skeptical but it's still nice to hear about how schools are improving in some sense. If only these kids/politicians/administrators gave a damn about science...

Dear Colleagues,

Today, the Mayor and I announced our elementary and middle school students’ results on this year’s English Language Arts and mathematics tests. In this e-mail, I will walk you through some of the key results, but I would like to start with a big thank you. The principals, teachers, and school staff of this City, as well as our students and their families, should be very proud of what we have accomplished. Setting expectations high, working together, focusing unwaveringly on student learning, we have created strategies to help individual students and entire schools improve. We’ve made substantial progress—both in the past year and over the course of the administration—and you deserve a big “congratulations” for your role in this success.

Now, I will outline a few key points about today’s results:

* In both math and English Language Arts and at every grade level (3 – 8), New York City students made progress in the last school year.
* This year’s gains build on substantial, continued progress in both math and ELA since 2002.
* This year, the racial and ethnic achievement gap separating black and Hispanic students from their white and Asian peers continues to narrow among most student groups, building on progress since 2002. Continued focus is needed, especially in eighth grade ELA.
* NYC’s one-year grade-by-grade gains were bigger than the rest of the State's one-year grade-by-grade gains in math and ELA at every grade level, with only one exception (grade 6 ELA). These gains build on progress over the course of the administration, with New York City students gaining significantly on their peers in the rest of the State.

The following are a few more detailed facts about our citywide results. For more details, please see our highlight presentation or more detailed results at http://schools.nyc.gov/daa/2008ela/2008_Test_Results.pdf.

Math: More than 74% of our students in grades 3 – 8 are now meeting or exceeding State standards in math. That is a gain of more than 9 percentage points since last year. To put this in context, our fourth graders are almost on the same level today as fourth graders in the rest of the State. In New York City, almost 80% of fourth graders are at or above grade level in math, compared to about 86% in the rest of the State. In 2002, only 52% of New York City fourth graders were scoring at levels 3 and 4, compared to more than 76% of fourth graders in the rest of the state. Middle schoolers have also made dramatic gains in mathematics. In the past year, the percent of our eighth-graders scoring at levels 3 and 4 has increased by six percentage points. Today, the gap separating our eighth graders from eighth graders throughout the state is at 15.5 points, compared to just over 27 points in 2002.

ELA: Today, almost 60% of our students in grades 3 – 8 are meeting or exceeding State standards in English Language Arts. That is a gain of almost 7 percentage points since last year. Today, 61.3% of our fourth graders are scoring at levels 3 and 4, compared to just 46.5% of our fourth graders in 2002. At the start of the Bloomberg administration, the percentage of our fourth graders meeting or exceeding State ELA standards was more than 23 points lower than the percentage of fourth graders in the rest of the state meeting state ELA standards. Today, that gap is at 15 percentage points. We still have a lot of work to do in middle school English Language Arts, but we have made steady progress in this area as well. When we started in 2002, less than 30% of our eighth graders were at grade level in English. Today, 43% are scoring at levels 3 and 4. The gap separating our eighth graders from their peers throughout the State has shrunk by almost 3 percentage points.

Achievement Gap: I’ve often written to you about the achievement gap. It’s by no means gone, but I am happy to report that we have closed it substantially in our elementary schools, and we have begun to make some progress closing it in the middle school grades as well. For a full record of our progress in closing the gap, please see the highlights presentation at http://schools.nyc.gov/daa/2008ela/2008_Test_Results.pdf.

When it comes to test scores, we sometimes get caught up in the results of one year. We should be happy with what we have accomplished in the last year. But what I’m even more proud of is the fact that this year’s gains are part of a pattern of sustained, steady progress. Since Mayor Bloomberg took responsibility for our schools, our students’ results have improved in a real way. And we’re closing the gaps that for so long separated New York City students from their peers throughout the State and the gaps that separated African-American and Latino students from white and Asian students inside of our City.

Today, tens of thousands more students are meeting standards because of your hard work. These students are ready to do the work they’ll be expected to complete in the next grade—and they’re getting prepared for the challenges they’ll face when they arrive at high school. We all know what that means: our students will be more likely to graduate ready for college, ready for work, and ready for the challenges of life. And, as you know, preparing our students to succeed is what our work is all about.

Thank you for your continued dedication to New York City’s students.

Sincerely,

Joel I. Klein