New York state's test scores in math were released yesterday, and not surprisingly they were up, up, up. That's not surprising because test scores on state tests almost always go up. That's usually because, over time, teachers and students get used to the test format and better learn how to prepare for the assessments. But that doesn't mean the kiddos are actually learning more math. And sure enough, the gains were widespread. Students in New York City did better, but so did students in each of the other big cities, and the state as a whole.
I told the Times as much, and (another surprise!) that has Joel's folks unhappy with me. They are particularly displeased with my comments about the achievement gap which, I'll admit, came through rather garbled in the article. So let me try this again.
NYC officials are making much of the fact that the "achievement gaps" between white and black and white and Hispanic students are closing. Here's how the Times reported it:
There was also evidence that the gap among students of different races was narrowing in a city whose public school students are more than 70 percent black or Hispanic. Black students, for instance, trailed white students by 17 percentage points this year, on average, compared with 31 points in 2006.
What the reporter is clearly writing about is what you might call the "proficiency gap"--the difference in the percentage of white students who have passed the test versus the percentage of black or Hispanic students who have done so. And as I've argued before, that's a valid measure if "proficiency" is measuring something meaningful, such as being on track for college readiness. But in most places, because the standard is set rather low and because average white performance is relatively high, any progress by minority students will lead to gap closing. That's because most white students are already over the proficiency bar.
But it's quite different than the way most people think about the achievement gap--as the difference in the average scores of whites and blacks or whites and Hispanics. And on that front, to my knowledge, there's no evidence of gap-closing in New York City. (Tell me if I'm wrong.) Minority students are making progress in absolute terms, but white students are too, so the gap remains the same. Again, that's no indictment of NYC schools; I certainly wouldn't want to argue that the world would be better off if white students stopped making gains. But if people think we are quickly approaching the day when, say, blacks will have SAT scores that are on average the same as whites, well, they are going to be sorely disappointed.
So to Chancellor Klein and Company: I'm sorry to have burst your balloon, but we are the Education Gadfly, not the Education Cheerleader!
