In the first indication of how pupils in the nation’s biggest school system fared during the epidemic, test score data published on Wednesday revealed dramatic drops in arithmetic but consistent performance in reading.
The results of the state’s standardised tests revealed the disparate impacts of the last two and a half years on the education of youngsters. Less than 38 percent of third through eighth graders exhibited arithmetic competency, compared to around 46 percent of pupils prior to the epidemic, when the examinations were administered to the majority of the city’s schools.
However, the total reading scores deviated from national trends that have showed substantial declines in literacy among many pupils. However, the findings also revealed that the youngest children fell behind their classmates. Less than half of third graders were competent in reading, a decrease of four percentage points compared to pupils in 2019.
The findings, which follow years of consistent advances in performance in both disciplines prior to the epidemic, also revealed that kids who were already far behind, especially Hispanic students and those from low-income households, performed worse while schooling was interrupted.
The findings increase the pressure on Mayor Eric Adams and the schools chancellor, David C. Banks, as they strive to bring kids throughout the system back on track; they may also generate new concerns about the administration’s financial cutbacks to the schools while a legal fight proceeds.
In 2019, over 46 percent of New York City students passed the math exam, while 47 percent passed the English language arts exam.
Clearly, some students’ development lagged while classes were closed during the viral outbreak in New York and instruction shifted online. From periods of remote learning to the pandemonium that erupted as new variations led to school and classroom closures, many kids’ education was interrupted and often unstable while they handled other pandemic-related obstacles.
The findings follow last month’s announcement of sobering national exam results showing that 9-year-olds who took the test this year were significantly behind their counterparts who did it in early 2020, scoring on average five points lower in reading, the largest drop in thirty years. For pupils with the lowest performance, the decline was 10 points.
All third- through eighth-grade kids in New York are normally required to take examinations in the spring. These exams provide a glimpse into how city children have performed since the disruption started, but testing experts have warned against making broad inferences from the data.
The structure and difficulty of state examinations have experienced significant modifications over the previous two decades, making comparisons over longer time periods almost impossible. For instance, this year’s scores do not provide light on how current pupils compare to youngsters from the late 2000s or even the middle of the 2010s.
Comparable examinations administered in 2018 and 2019 indicate that the achievement gap between Black and Hispanic pupils and their white and Asian American counterparts has remained stable. Three years ago, there was a 38-percentage-point difference in the math test pass percentages of Black and white children. This year, the discrepancy persisted.
Approximately 21 percent of Black and 23 percent of Hispanic kids in New York City passed the math test this year, compared to 59 percent of white students and 68 percent of Asian American pupils.
Each group’s pass rates were more than six percentage points lower than those of kids in 2019, with Hispanic students scoring over ten percentage points lower. Their results were 11 points lower than those of their counterparts in the same grade three years earlier.
According to education experts, it may be difficult to teach more difficult arithmetic ideas remotely, but families may be more involved in helping their children stay up with reading at home.
As a result of the epidemic, schools throughout the country have reported that more pupils have missed reading standards. Thus, the results of the English language arts test were mainly unexpected. The findings did not include other districts in the state, therefore city children could not be compared to students from other districts in New York State.
Typically, statewide data is provided in late August or September. However, the State Education Department revealed last week that this year’s procedure was delayed due to modifications in the preparation and reporting of exam results. Individual districts were entitled to announce their own findings, although New York City was the only big district to do so.
Nonetheless, Wednesday’s findings revealed significant grade-level disparities in how students learnt during the epidemic. Fourth-grade students, for example, scored almost six points lower on the reading test than their peers in 2019; seventh-grade students scored over ten points better.
Students with disabilities continued to struggle on both assessments, as less than one in five special education students completed either exam.
Experts in standardised testing have cautioned that this year’s findings are of little relevance when seen in isolation, stressing that the composition of pupils represented in the scores may alter in 2019 and that last year’s interruptions make it difficult to evaluate the scores.
The examinations were scrapped in 2020, and students from across the state were permitted to opt in to them in 2018. One in five pupils in the city did this, skewing the findings and making them virtually worthless.
City authorities have denied to provide data from diagnostic tests that schools were obligated to administer to pupils during the course of the previous school year in order to evaluate their development.
Rochester, Syracuse, and Buffalo are among the major districts in New York that have not yet indicated when they would release their statistics. In addition, overall test statistics for charter schools were lacking.
This Monday, state authorities said that full findings would be disclosed this autumn.