NY Test Scores Mean?

Test scores in NY are doing something.

The state claims that they are going up and that this shows that education is improving in the state.

Critics say that more students opted out this year (which is true) and that because of the opt outs Albany is trying to extrapolate something from the data that is not there.

A second group of critics says that test scores are up because students are getting better at taking the tests. If you know how to take a test, especially multiple choice, you can do well.

This was proved to me by a group of students that reviewed like blazes on how to use their Earth Science and Chemistry tables. If you know where to look on the tables, you can get at least a 70 on the Regents Exams. With enough work in a Barron's Review book, you can get past the 80 mark.

Do these students know the content or are they just getting better at tests?

Or are they learning, like capitalists, how to game the system so that they can get through school with a minimal amount of work and not learn anything.

I watched several groups of students kill the US History Regents this year by reading the textbook and doing practice exams that the State Dept. of Education posts on-line. They don't trust the teacher and view all the classwork as “bunk” and “totally useless.”

So, who's correct?

The ultimate question is: How do we know that the students have learned? If we were to give them a real world problem that they will face, can they solve it? Or at least propose solutions?

What is the purpose of the test? And why are we giving them in March, April, and May when the students still have between 1 to 3 months of instruction left.

We need to remember the purpose of testing – to turn off students from learning so that the economically poor students drop out and go into high school graduate equivalence programs. This allows the state to cut funding to poorer districts and then send the money to richer districts or to privatized charter schools. Either way the poor are screwed out of an education that might help them take action to lead them out of their economic situation.

The flip side of the drop outs is that they have not bought all the capitalist propaganda that is pushed down students' throats in our education system. This makes it easier for us socialist to show them real history, real economics, really how the government works, and science that is not clouded by religious bigotry.

So, I doubt what Governor Cuomo says is accurate in any way. Fewer students taking the test means that fewer students are doing better or taking the tests that they are conditioned to take.

And ask students what they think about the tests – Do the students think that the tests show everything that the student knows or is capable of?

If that answer is “No” - then the tests have truly failed.