Chalkbeat

Tennessee TCAP testing time to increase in 2027 due to new, unscored writing test

2026-09-01T21:42:39+00:00

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The amount of time Tennessee students spend taking state standardized tests next spring will increase significantly due to an additional writing test that won’t actually be scored.

Tennessee is adding an unscored field test writing subpart to the English Language Arts section of the 2027 Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program. It will increase total test time by more than an hour for older children and 40 minutes for lower grades.

Field testing is not unusual in standardized testing. Testing companies and administrators often use unscored prompts or questions as trials to determine their efficacy before using them on scored exams. Tennessee previously administered writing field tests at other times of the school year.

But some Tennessee teachers say they are concerned about adding a significant block of testing at the beginning of an already high-stake testing window next spring.

“I feel powerless at times because we see what these weeks of testing do to the kids,” said Chantel Kluemper, a middle school English teacher in Knox County. “The teachers really care about the kids. It’s not that we just don’t want to do tests. It’s that this couple of weeks is draining, and it’s hard to bolster motivation for kids.”

A Tennessee Department of Education spokesperson confirmed the state will add the writing field test during the 2027 TCAP and high school end-of-course exams.

“The state has always and will continue to field test items as a necessary component of constructing a valid, reliable test,” TDOE Director of Media Amanda Chin said. “We made small adjustments to the testing calendar to give schools more flexibility.”

For grades 6 and above, this means an additional 85 minutes in ELA testing. That brings the total ELA testing time for higher grades to 315 minutes.

Grades 4 and 5 will have an additional 80 minutes of testing time with the new field test.

Grade 3, which faces the high-stakes reading retention law, will now have six separate subparts in the ELA test with the additional 40-minute writing field test. Third graders will now take three separate writing subparts, all 40 minutes, in addition to three additional reading-focused subparts. In total, third graders will have 220 minutes of ELA testing next spring.

Tennessee requires schools administer the TCAP within a specific testing window, but it gives schools flexibility in how it spaces out subject subparts. One school could administer the six third grade subparts over just three days, or spread them out over five days.

TCAP ELA testing is scheduled for early April before the rest of the TCAP subject areas, meaning students will take the lengthy untimed writing test at the beginning of the TCAP testing window.

Kluemper said she believes standardized testing can be very beneficial for educators, particularly with assessments that provide real-time benchmarks to track student progress and tweak teaching strategies to directly align with what is working and what isn’t.

The TCAP scoring formula doesn’t provide individualized feedback for teachers, Kluemper said, in the way that district-led formative and summative assessments do.

“I don’t feel teachers feel good about this because it’s just more, more, more,” Kluemper said. “We don’t get information from TCAP that I think is genuinely beneficial and specific for us to know how we can do better, how we can teach that standard better.”

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

See how your Tennessee school performed on the 2026 TCAP

2026-08-27T15:21:12+00:00

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How did your student’s school perform on Tennessee’s TCAP tests?

The Tennessee Department of Education this week released school-level performance data on the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program English and math assessments students took last school year.

State- and district-level results released earlier this summer showed overall improvement across the board for the 2025-2025 school year. For the first time, a majority of students met or exceeded expectations on the state’s social studies assessments, while about 43% of students in grades 3-8 scored proficient in math.

While nearly 45% of Tennessee third graders met or exceeded expectations on the English language arts test, data showed those literacy gains dropped off as students progressed through middle school. Overall, 40.6% of students in grades K-8 met proficiency standards in English.

Chalkbeat Tennessee compiled state results for all students in grades 3-8 into a database searchable by school. The database lists proficiency rates for math and English language arts, frequently referred to as the state’s reading test.

The desktop version of the database also includes year-over-year changes in the TCAP proficiency rates.

Search your school here:

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado’s 2026 CMAS scores: See how your school and district did

2026-08-19T19:00:00+00:00

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New state test results show math scores continued to rise for Colorado elementary and middle school students, with eighth graders making the biggest gains year over year.

But literacy test results were uneven. Fourth and fifth graders’ reading and writing scores ticked up, while middle schoolers’ results fell across the board.

The data, released Wednesday, comes from last spring’s Colorado Measures of Academic Progress, or CMAS. Students in grades 3 through 8 take the tests, which serve as a benchmark for how well Colorado kids are learning.

The story of the latest scores “is one of progress, but also one of continued work ahead,” said Christina Wirth-Hawkins, chief assessment officer for the Colorado Department of Education.

Middle school literacy likely falls into the second category. The percentage of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders meeting or exceeding state expectations declined. While 44.2% of sixth graders met that benchmark in 2025, only 41.6% did in 2026, the data shows.

See how your school or district did on the PSAT and SAT

In a press conference, Education Commissioner Susana Córdova offered a possible explanation. Colorado has put significant focus on helping young students learn to read, but those same techniques aren’t emphasized in middle school, she said.

“I was a middle school and a high school teacher,” Córdova said. “Most of your coursework to become a teacher is about teaching literature, teaching nonfiction, and less about teaching phonics or filling in the gaps when kids are struggling.”

The focus on early literacy might be paying off for upper elementary students, state officials said. About 50% of fifth graders statewide met or exceeded expectations on the state literacy test, up from 48% the year before, the data shows. Fourth graders’ scores jumped the most, from 42% meeting or exceeding expectations last year to 47% this year.

Math scores were up across the board. Eighth-grade results increased the most, going from 34.7% of students meeting or exceeding expectations last year to 37.8% this year.

Córdova said Colorado students had the most ground to make up in math after scores plummeted during the pandemic.

“For many students, math might have been harder to stick with during the school disruptions of the pandemic,” Córdova said. She referred to the year-over-year improvement as “stair-step gains.”

Students who are approaching expectations can read

Students don’t pass or fail the state tests. They score in one of five categories: did not meet, partially met, approached, met, or exceeded expectations.

To gauge whether students are on track, Colorado calculates the percentage who met or exceeded expectations. But this year, state officials emphasized that students who score in the approaching expectations category may still be performing near grade level.

Students who are approaching expectations in literacy can read grade-level texts, Wirth-Hawkins said. But they may struggle to consistently demonstrate their understanding or express their knowledge in writing, which is also part of the literacy test, she said.

While just 40.8% of third graders met or exceeded expectations in literacy this past spring, that percentage jumped to 60.5% when accounting for students who approached expectations.

Test scores varied by school district and student demographics

Big test score gaps remained based on students’ race, family income, disability status, and whether they are learning English as a second language.

For instance, about 50% of white students in grades 3 through 8 met or exceeded expectations in math statewide, compared with 21.6% of Black students and 19.4% of Hispanic students.

Colorado also calculates how much progress students make compared with students who had similar scores the year before, a measure it calls growth. Elementary school girls showed above-average growth this past spring in both literacy and math.

Test scores varied by school district. In math, 118 districts saw an increase in the percentage of students who met or exceeded expectations, while 66 saw a decrease.

In literacy, 88 districts saw an increase and 96 saw a decrease. Those counts include boards of cooperative education services, or BOCES. Scores for more than a dozen districts or BOCES were suppressed in the state data because so few students took the tests.

Literacy and math scores for the state’s largest school district, Denver Public Schools, increased with two exceptions. Denver’s scores in sixth and eighth grade literacy decreased, mirroring the state pattern. Overall, 42.5% of Denver students in grades 3 through 8 met or exceeded expectations in literacy, and 35% did so in math.

That’s slightly below the statewide scores, with 44.7% of students meeting or exceeding expectations in literacy and 37.3% doing so in math.

Some students also took science and social studies tests

Colorado students in grades 4 and 7 were also tested in social studies this past spring, and students in grades 5, 8, and 11 were tested in science.

Science scores were down across the three grade levels, with the biggest dip in fifth grade. About 36% of fifth graders met or exceeded state expectations in science, down from 39% in 2025.

In social studies, 25.6% of fourth graders and 36.6% of seventh graders met or exceeded expectations. State officials said it’s not possible to compare the scores with previous years because the 2026 tests were aligned to new state social studies standards.

Colorado lawmakers voted in the spring to cut the fourth grade social studies test in future years to save money. Only seventh graders will take it from now on.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado’s PSAT and SAT 2026 scores: How did your school or district perform?

2026-08-19T19:00:00+00:00

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Colorado eleventh graders lost some ground on SAT math and reading and writing tests this year, but ninth and tenth graders posted gains on both subjects on the PSAT.

The combined results paint a mostly positive picture for student learning in math and reading in high school, with students in 11th grade still performing better overall than they did two years ago. However, state officials said the groups of students who have historically underperformed still lag behind.

“The overall story of this year’s assessment release is one of progress, but also one of continued work ahead,” said Christina Wirth-Hawkins, the Colorado Department of Education’s chief assessment officer.

The department released statewide assessment data on Wednesday afternoon, a trove of information that includes how students performed on the national standardized tests taken this spring. Colorado measures how well students are learning in subjects by looking at the PSAT and SAT rather than using its own state-created assessment.

The drops on SAT math and reading and writing show students backslid slightly.

See how your school or district did on the CMAS

On the 11th grade SAT math test, 31.6% of students scored proficient, a drop of .9 percentage points compared to last year. Students exceeded 2024 measures by .5 percentage points.

On the SAT reading and writing sections, student achievement dropped 2 percentage points compared to last year, falling to 59.6% of students rated as proficient. That’s ahead of the 57.6% posted in 2024.

Wirth-Hawkins called the spring PSAT results “encouraging” because of the overall increases.

Students scored higher overall on 10th grade PSAT tests compared to the year before. Ninth graders also posted higher overall scores on PSAT math tests but only recorded a .2 percentage point increase on the reading test.

Wirth-Hawkins said the year-over-year growth on the PSAT reveals that there are still achievement gaps, including among different student racial ethnicities and those from lower-income backgrounds.

“Substantial differences in performance remain among student groups,” she said. “So, improvement in the overall percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations does not mean that the gaps have disappeared.”

On all tests, white and Asian students continue to post much higher scores than their Black, Hispanic, and Native American peers.

For example, on the PSAT grade 10 reading and writing test, 78,9% of white and 76.1% of Asian students scored proficient. But only 40% of Hispanic, 44% of Native American, and 45.1% of Black students scored proficient on that test.

Students who qualify for free or reduced lunch also consistently scored about 30 points lower on SAT and PSAT math and reading and writing tests than other students.

Jason Gonzales is a reporter covering higher education and the Colorado legislature. Chalkbeat Colorado partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage. Contact Jason at jgonzales@chalkbeat.org.

NYC’s unexplained test score swings prompt experts to question reading results

2026-08-13T19:07:26+00:00

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This year’s startling collapse of New York City’s reading scores, followed by last year’s big gains, has some experts asking: Did something go wrong with the test itself?

There is no clear evidence there is a problem, experts emphasize, but the unusually wide swing in scores warrants careful investigation, multiple testing experts told Chalkbeat this week.

“My instinctive reaction is there may have been an issue last year that we missed,” said Marianne Perie, who consults with states on testing. “This kind of big increase followed by a big decrease is surprising.”

Perie co-chairs New York state’s technical advisory committee, a panel of experts paid by the state to oversee the testing process. She spoke to Chalkbeat about the trends in her personal capacity, she said. The committee is set to meet next month to review the results in detail and seek to better understand what might explain the changes, Perie said.

Half of New York City students were considered proficient in reading on last year’s tests, down 6 percentage points from the year before, according to preliminary results released last week. The share of third, fourth, and fifth graders who met grade-level standards fell to levels similar to 2024 in both New York City and state.

The sharp test score swings in those grades immediately sparked theories about what could explain them. Some educators and families wondered if the transition to computer-based testing was a factor. Others pointed to a literacy shakeup in New York City that has been dominated by one controversial curriculum.

Last week, EdTrust-New York, a nonprofit advocacy group, called for an independent audit of the state’s reading tests. Officials “never adequately investigated or explained last year’s dramatic gains, making this year’s reversal difficult to interpret,” the group said in a statement.

JP O’Hare, a spokesperson for the New York State Education Department, said the agency “takes this decline seriously and will conduct a detailed analysis to better understand where students are experiencing challenges.”

Simona Beattie, a spokesperson for NWEA, the state’s testing vendor, said in a statement, “At this stage, we have not found any anomalies through our standard due diligence process, which includes corroborating results with an external third party.”

“Given this, we have high confidence in the accuracy of the results,” Beattie added.

In New York City, the share of third graders scoring proficiently on the reading test fell by 14 percentage points, after rising by 13 points the year before. There were also substantial shifts in fourth and fifth grade scores on the test in both the city and state. Seventh and eighth grade reading scores essentially held steady. Math scores ticked up across the state but were flat in New York City.

Schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said in a statement that the scores merit “rigorous analysis so we can ensure we’re measuring what students are learning.”

The fluctuations in elementary reading scores were quite unusual and surprising, said Benjamin Shear, a testing expert at the University of Colorado Boulder. “It requires further scrutiny, questioning, and digging.”

What’s behind the reading score drop? Experts weigh different theories

City officials and some outside groups took a victory lap after last year’s dramatic surge in elementary reading scores, arguing that the major literacy curriculum overhaul was paying off.

Now, the teachers union is pointing to the declines as evidence of problems with the city’s curriculum mandate and threatened to withdraw their support. But that does not explain the broad test score declines across the state, including districts that have not made similar curriculum changes.

In general, testing experts, known as psychometricians, say that a number of theories are worth considering to explain large shifts in scores: changes in student demographics, testing practices, opt-out rates, and educational policies.

Figures released by the city indicate there were no major changes in the number of test-takers in early grades. The share of city students considered low-income in elementary grades also held fairly steady. And while the state finished its transition in the spring to computer-based testing, that wouldn’t explain swings in fifth grade, where digital assessments have been the norm since 2024.

EdTrust-New York noted that in contrast to state scores, there was steady progress on interim reading assessments New York City schools administer at least three times a year.

Emily Oster, a Brown University education economist who has tracked test scores across the country, published a post on Substack this week questioning the plausibility of New York’s score changes. She suggested that there may have been a technical error in comparing the results year to year.

In an email to Chalkbeat, Oster acknowledged there is no definitive proof for this. But, she said, the reported results are “not consistent with nearly everything else we know about student learning.” She noted that fourth graders’ reading scores had jumped last year, but that same group of students, now fifth graders, have seen scores fall back this year.

Asked about Oster’s post, O’Hare from New York’s education department said: “Speculation is not a substitute for data … Our ongoing review of the preliminary data has not identified any of the issues she outlines in her conjecture.”

An over 200-page technical report documented the process to ensure the accuracy of the 2025 results.

Scott Marion, a testing expert with the Center for Assessment, said he’s naturally suspicious of a large change in scores that doesn’t persist the following year. To him, it’s implausible that the rise and fall of scores represents real differences in achievement or teaching practices.

“It doesn’t make sense to me,” he said.

Marion says that perhaps more questions should have been raised about the sharp score increase last year. In his experience, education officials are eager to have testing experts investigate unusual declines, but not unusual increases.

Andrew Ho, a Harvard professor who serves on New York’s technical advisory committee, said he believes the shifts probably point to real changes in student learning, even if the actual swings aren’t as extreme as the exams suggest.

“We should absolutely look at the test, but we should absolutely also look at what the test is likely revealing,” he said.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC reading scores sink, with third grade proficiency falling 14 points

2026-08-07T20:42:44+00:00

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Reading scores sank in New York City last school year, with a nearly 14 percentage point decline among third graders, according to preliminary data released Friday.

Among students in grades 3-8, about half were proficient in reading, a decline of 6 percentage points. That nearly erases a 7 percentage point spike the year before. Math scores were flat, with 57% of students considered proficient.

The declines in reading proficiency were most pronounced in grades 3-5. In addition to the dramatic decline in third grade, fourth grade scores fell nearly 6 percentage points, and fifth grade scores fell by 13 points. (You can find your school’s test results at the bottom of this story.)

The unusually steep drop in reading proficiency comes as the city is heading into its fourth year of a major shakeup in literacy instruction. All elementary schools are required to use approved curriculums that officials contend line up with the science of reading, a longstanding body of evidence about how children learn to read. A growing number of middle schools are in the process of adopting new reading curriculums, too.

City officials vowed to conduct an analysis of the sharp fluctuations in reading scores.

“School leaders across New York City are seeing dramatic swings in literacy proficiency reflected in this year’s state assessment results,” schools Chancellor Kamar Samuels said in a statement. “These results raise important questions and deserve careful, rigorous analysis so we can ensure we’re measuring what students are learning.”

City officials noted that the state test scores diverged from the city’s own periodic assessments, which generally showed improvements in reading.

The city’s teachers union has supported the elementary reading curriculum changes, but criticized the Education Department’s approach in response to the latest scores.

“We have to refocus on what we know works in literacy — a clear plan, a tailored science of reading curriculum, and meaningful professional development for educators,” Mary Vaccaro, the union’s vice president for education, said in a statement.

She said the Education Department “abandoned that approach” last year and “piled on additional programs, assessments, consultant’s recommendations and curriculum in the hopes that ‘more’ would equal better, and we lost ground.”

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has vowed to double down on the literacy and math curriculum overhauls launched by his predecessor. In May, he announced plans to expand the math curriculum mandate into elementary schools, a move the union also criticized.

Test scores alone can’t prove whether a policy is working because many factors influence them. But city officials pointed to the dramatic 7 percentage point spike last year as evidence the new reading programs are paying dividends.

The reading proficiency declines mirror a similar 5 percentage point drop across the state. Some testing experts told Chalkbeat this week that whipsawing scores are unusual and raise questions about whether there are irregularities in the exams.

Andrew Ho, a Harvard professor who serves on a panel of experts who are paid to advise New York on its state assessment system, said the state exams are carefully constructed.

“It’s uncommon but not unprecedented” to see test scores significantly shift up and down, Ho said.

Observers should consider them in the context of other data, including the city’s own assessments and the National Assessment of Educational Progress, widely considered the gold standard assessment. A new round of results on that federal exam, including for New York City, are expected next year.

Others worried that there was an unidentified problem with the tests. Emily Oster, a professor of economics at Brown University who has studied patterns in state assessment results, said the swings were reminiscent of COVID-era disruptions but without an obvious cause.

“It’s just so implausible that there would be these kind of swings, and that they would be concentrated in some grades and some subjects and not others,” she said. “It just feels like there’s a mistake.”

EdTrust-New York, an advocacy group, called for an independent audit of the last three years of state testing data. “NYSED never adequately investigated or explained last year’s dramatic gains, making this year’s reversal difficult to interpret,” the group said in a statement earlier this week.

A spokesperson for the state’s Education Department said that the state conducts two independent audits of its assessments each year and those reviews have not flagged any problems.

As in prior years, the test results show deep disparities between student groups.

Asian American students saw the largest declines in reading scores last year among racial groups, with proficiency rates dropping to about 67%, down nearly 8 percentage points. A similar share of white students were considered proficient in reading.

Meanwhile, nearly 42% of Black students were proficient, a decline of 5 percentage points. About 37% of Latino students were marked proficient, 6 percentage points lower than the prior year. Just under 22% of students with disabilities were proficient readers.

Students who are currently learning English, or were in the past, saw the largest reading dips. Their proficiency rates dipped nearly 10 percentage points to 62.1%.

Math scores were more stable. Almost 44% of Black and Latino students were proficient in the subject, up less than 1 percentage point respectively. White and Asian American students’ scores dipped by about a percentage point each, to 74% and nearly 80%, respectively.

Curious about school-level test results? Here is a searchable breakdown of math and English scores across all of the city’s public schools (charters are not included).

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

New York reading scores plunge on state tests while math proficiency edges up

2026-08-05T21:12:57+00:00

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Reading proficiency plunged across New York state last school year while math scores ticked up slightly, according to preliminary state test results obtained by Chalkbeat.

About 48% of students across the state were proficient in reading on the 2025 state exams administered in grades 3-8, down 5 percentage points year over year. Meanwhile, 57% of students passed the math exams last school year, a modest gain.

The dramatic decline in reading proficiency raised eyebrows among multiple experts who noted state test scores tend to change gradually. The declines also appeared to be concentrated in grades 3-5. Fifth grade reading proficiency declined 14 percentage points last year, for instance, the largest drop of any grade level. The prior year, fifth grade scores soared 13 percentage points.

“Data doesn’t usually look like that,” said Emily Oster, a professor of economics at Brown University who has studied patterns in state assessment results. “Those are pretty big year-on-year swings.”

Oster noted that the math results are more consistent with other states that have seen incremental progress in the wake of pandemic-era declines.

Data from New York State Education Department

The drop in reading scores comes as state officials have nudged school districts to embrace the science of reading, a longstanding body of evidence about how children learn to read. New York City, which enrolls nearly 40% of the state’s public school students, has mandated sweeping changes to elementary school literacy instruction to boost student achievement. (District-level results are not yet publicly available. Last year, the state and city reading scores both increased by roughly the same amount.)

State test scores are an imperfect measure of any single policy because many different factors influence student achievement. But officials often use the scores to bolster the case for their preferred policies — including New York City’s reading overhaul — and scores are typically considered a rough barometer of the school system’s performance.

“The Department takes this decline seriously and will conduct a detailed analysis to better understand where students are experiencing challenges, which student groups and communities have been most affected, and where additional support and resources are needed,” state Education Department spokesperson JP O’Hare said in a statement.

More detailed data is expected soon, though city and state officials did not confirm exactly when district-level scores will be available.

Multiple experts who reviewed the testing data at Chalkbeat’s request said the fluctuations could point to changes with the test itself.

“Seeing statewide numbers that are patterned in that way really leads me to worry about something unusual in the 2024 test and how it was scored,” said Aaron Pallas, a Teachers College professor who has studied school performance. “If we didn’t have 2024 data, we’d say things are pretty stable.”

State officials reduced the number of questions students needed to answer correctly to be marked proficient in 2024, raising questions from some observers about whether the test was easier. State officials previously stressed that the scoring changes were standard adjustments to account for the difficulty of the test questions and did not make the exam easier.

The state is also in the process of transitioning to computer-based assessments instead of paper-and-pencil tests. Experts were skeptical that would explain the fluctuations and state officials said they have extensively studied the question and said the effect is negligible.

Andrew Ho, a Harvard professor who serves on a panel of experts who are paid to advise New York on its state assessment system, said he believes the test reflects changes in student achievement but the exact magnitude may be noisy.

“The safe bet is that there was a real gain and a real decline,” he said, “but probably neither is as big as we’re seeing.”

Officials should pay close attention to a range of data sources, including federal tests that are often considered the gold standard, and consider data over multiple years.

“It’s always about triangulating information,” Ho said. “‘Don’t overreact to blips’ is the sort of statisticians’ mantra.”

Still, experts said policymakers should still take the drop in reading scores seriously, especially as many students have not fully recovered from pandemic-era learning disruptions.

“There’s a lot of kids who are not going to be able to go on and keep advancing in school,” Oster said. “It means that we need more tutoring” in addition to other support.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Just 1 Black student gets into Staten Island Tech as racial gaps at specialized high schools persist

2026-07-10T21:52:19+00:00

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Of Staten Island Technical High School’s nearly 300 offers, just one went to a Black student.

At Stuyvesant, that number was three — the lowest number since at least 2014, which is as far back as the city’s public data goes. And at the High School for Mathematics, Science and Engineering, there were six Black students who received offers, according to Education Department admissions data released Friday.

The dearth of offers to Black students to the city’s eight schools that require the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, as the sole basis for admissions is nothing new.

And Mayor Zohran Mamdani, himself a specialized high school alum — he attended Bronx Science — plans to look more closely at the results, his spokesperson said.

“The mayor believes we must root out the deep racial and economic inequities that persist in our public school system, and our administration will be reviewing these results carefully,” Jenna Lyle, a spokesperson for the mayor, said.

About 3.5% of the roughly 4,000 offers in total went to Black students, edging up slightly from last year’s 3%. About 6.5% of offers went to Latino students, down slightly from 6.9% the year before.

Overall, Black students made up 19.3% of students this year; Latino students made up 42.3% of the nation’s largest school system. About 17% of the students who took the SHSAT last year are Black, while 25% are Latino.

The number of offers to Asian American students at specialized high schools ticked up to 56.5% from 54% the year before. Offers to white students fell slightly to 23.5% from about 26%. Asian American students make up 18.7% of students citywide; white students make up 16.1%.

The city’s specialized high schools enroll about 5% of the city’s public high school students, yet they draw an outsized amount of attention because they are often considered among the best in the country. For years, integration advocates have called to change the testing admissions system to these prestigious schools.

Mamdani said on the campaign trail that he would keep the SHSAT in place. (He did, however, say he would like to push back the start of gifted and talented programs from kindergarten.) Earlier in the mayor’s race, he indicated that he would order a study of racial and gender bias in the admissions exam. In a 2022 questionnaire before he ran for mayor, Mamdani said the test should be abolished.

Another 800 students were invited to participate in the Discovery program, which offers disadvantaged students who scored just below the test-score cutoff a chance to enroll in a specialized high school. The program faces ongoing legal challenges from families who say it discriminates against Asian American applicants. Of this year’s 800 Discovery participants, 11% are Black, 16% are Latino, 62% are Asian American, and 7% are white.

Roughly 26,100 students took the SHSAT, which was offered online for the first time. This coming year, the digital test will be computer adaptive, meaning that students’ responses will affect the level of difficulty of their subsequent questions.

Beyond the specialized high schools, about 58% of rising ninth graders got their first choice in high schools, and 82% received one of their top three choices. For middle school, 77% of rising sixth graders got their top choice, and 94% got into their top three schools. Those numbers were on par with the previous year, officials said.

A focus on 3-K expansion shows results

Mamdani, who didn’t make K-12 education a major focus of his campaign or his first six months in office, has devoted significant attention to expanding access to the city’s free childcare programs.

He launched a free program for 2-year-olds for the first time this year in five school districts for roughly 2,000 kids. Families who applied to that program will get their offers Aug. 4.

Despite an energetic effort to publicize the city’s free 3-K and prekindergarten programs, Mamdani’s administration did not see an uptick in those applications, which stayed flat compared to last year.

But officials did succeed in placing more 3-K applicants in programs closer to their homes in response to complaints from some families in previous years about having to make significant commutes with toddlers in tow. City officials added roughly 2,000 new 3-K seats in areas of high demand to address the issue.

This year, 70% of 3-K applicants got their first choice program, up from 65% last year, according to the Education Department data. Of the roughly 5,100 families who didn’t get into any of the 3-K programs they chose and had to be placed in a program by the Education Department, 63% were put in a program within a mile of their home — up from 39% last year.

Looking ahead, here are some key dates to know:

High school admissions will run from Oct. 6 to Dec. 4, with SHSAT registration closing on Oct. 30. Offers will be sent March 4, 2027.
Middle schools admissions will run from Oct. 14 to Dec. 11. Offers will be sent April 7, 2027.
Kindergarten admissions will run from Dec. 9 to Jan. 22, 2027. Offers will be sent March 30, 2027.
3-K and pre-K admissions will run from Jan. 13 to Feb. 26, 2027. Pre-K offers will be sent May 11, 2027, and 3-K offers will be sent May 18, 2027.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael atmelsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Most kindergartners who start school behind never reach proficiency: study

2026-06-25T04:36:58+00:00

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Just 1 in 10 kindergartners who start school at the bottom of their class in reading and math skills is proficient by third grade.

This finding comes from a new analysis of MAP reading and math scores from the testing organization NWEA. It aligns with a large body of research that finds that many educational gaps are already present in kindergarten and remain stubbornly persistent throughout children’s educational careers.

The finding is “depressing,” acknowledges Megan Kuhfeld, NWEA director of growth modeling and data analytics, but it should not be taken as reason to give up or assume schools can’t change students’ trajectories.

“The key story for me in these findings is that early intervention matters, and if we just wait until third grade to get a signal of where kids are, we’re missing probably the most important window when we can do something about it,” Kuhfeld said.

The analysis released Thursday relies on MAP reading and math test scores from more than 400,000 students who started kindergarten in the 2021-22 school year. Unlike the National Assessment of Educational Progress, students who take MAP tests are not a carefully selected representative sample. But they come from similar demographic backgrounds as American students as a whole, and the sample is larger than NAEP.

Students in participating districts take MAP tests in the fall and spring of each year, providing insights into their growth over the course of the school year and over time. NWEA found that many students made progress relative to their starting point. Conversely, not all students who started out at the top of their class stayed there.

But among students in the bottom fifth of their kindergarten class at the start of the school year, just 10% were proficient in math by third grade and just 13.9% were proficient in reading. For students who were still in the bottom 20% at the end of first grade, just 2% — 1 in 50 — were proficient by third grade.

Students who read poorly at the end of third grade often struggle for the rest of their schooling because they’re expected to use reading to learn every other subject. Elementary math skills, meanwhile, form the building blocks for more advanced work in middle and high school.

Most states start standardized testing in third grade, limiting insight into how students are doing in the early grades. Many states have kindergarten readiness screeners, though, and more states have adopted early literacy screeners as part of science of reading policies.

Kuhfeld said that reflects growing awareness of how important those early years are. But an attitude of “they don’t know it now but they’ll learn it soon, so you don’t need to worry about this too much” remains widespread, she said. The data suggests that “if you’re off track in kindergarten, that means you’re likely going to be off track in later grades,” and schools should act with urgency.

Kindergarten readiness varies widely by income, new data shows. Cities are stepping in to help.

What, exactly, those interventions should be is a complicated question without clear answers. Many states have invested in preschool and high-quality childcare, yet some studies show the effects of preschool can fade over time. Some states like Louisiana and Mississippi have shown progress in early reading and math. Other states that have adopted science of reading policies have not seen similar progress, at least not yet.

NWEA is planning additional analysis of the effect of science of reading policies in states where its tests are widely used. Kuhfeld said teachers should not be expected to solve these longstanding problems on their own, but she believes training and high-quality instruction can move the needle.

Douglas Ready, a Teachers College, Columbia University professor who has studied inequality and the effects of schooling, said researchers have long known about large inequalities at the start of kindergarten and so have teachers, even if just anecdotally. The “glass half empty” view is that schools aren’t doing much to solve inequality, he said.

But there’s also a “glass half full” view, that disadvantages pile up for children in poverty before they even arrive at school, and schools can stop these inequalities from getting worse.

Averages also obscure important stories of success and failure, he said.

“Hidden within these data are schools that are doing amazing things, schools that are closing these gaps,” he said. “And there are schools that are making the gaps worse.”

The growing use of early assessments, including those on which NWEA based its analysis, can serve as a “clarion call” for the public and policymakers to understand just how large a job schools are inheriting from society, Ready said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis students improve on state reading tests but struggle in math

2026-06-24T19:14:41+00:00

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Memphis students continue to improve on state reading tests, but struggle to achieve proficiency in math — especially in middle school.

Preliminary results from this year’s Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP, show the biggest literacy gains for third graders. Just under 32% achieved reading proficiency this year, up from 29.2% last year. Those who don’t pass face significant state interventions, including being held back for a year.

The overall reading proficiency rate in Memphis-Shelby County Schools increased by 1 percentage point to 25.7%, a growth rate on pace with recent years. That still lags behind the state average, with nearly 45% of students across Tennessee achieving proficiency this year.

“We’re trying to make sure that students are ready for third grade, because that’s when we switch: you learn to read K-2, then you read to learn,” said Angela Whitelaw, MSCS’ chief of academics. “We’re not where we want to be. But we’re proud of our teachers for the work that they keep doing year after year.”

These results are preliminary, said Bill White, MSCS’ accountability officer. The final TCAP data, which is adjusted to include alternate tests and exempt students, won’t be released for a few months. White said MSCS’ proficiency rates typically increase slightly in those final numbers. That’s also when individual school and student subgroup data will be available.

Academic performance in MSCS is under heightened scrutiny as a state-appointed takeover board assumes control of the district on July 1. Those nine oversight board members have the ability to alter curriculum and overhaul teaching staff, as happened in Houston’s 2023 state takeover.

District leaders say they’ve been focusing heavily on early literacy this past year, investing in staff for small-group lessons and after-school tutoring. Meanwhile, most elementary and middle school grades saw slight dips in math proficiency.

The biggest drop came among MSCS sixth graders, where 15.7% of students passed the math TCAP — down 4 percentage points from last year.

“When you put a focus on any one area, you will see improvement immediately,” Whitelaw said. “We see high schools are moving; we see the elementary, we have some bright spots. But we know as a district, six through eight, that’s where we’re going to have to spend some time.”

Whitelaw said high school math used to be the district’s “Achilles’ heel.” But MSCS high school students significantly improved on TCAP math tests this year, gaining more than 7 percentage points in geometry proficiency.

Whitelaw said three main changes this year contributed to that rise: The district created standardized lesson plans for teachers, invested in more professional development, and adopted a regional model that allowed academic coordinators more opportunities to coach high school teachers.

“The academic coordinators are like our lynchpin between curriculum and instruction in the classroom,” Whitelaw said. “They take the strategies that we showed them at the central office level and they make sure that it gets inside of those classrooms.”

Now that MSCS knows those strategies work, Whitelaw said leaders will focus on improving those models for middle school educators, such as seeking teacher feedback on standardized lesson plans. They’re partnering with the Council of Great City Schools to support that work and launching “lesson plan champions,” principal-selected teachers who can mentor their peers on instructional strategies.

Plus, the district received a five-year grant from national curriculum nonprofit TNTP to improve middle school literacy, receiving $90,000 annually.

“Instructional coherence is going to be big this year,” Whitelaw said. That means ensuring that what’s taught in classrooms is replicated in small group sessions and afterschool tutoring, she said.

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

Knicks ticker-tape parade is on a school day — and conflicts with Regents exams. Some families are angry.

2026-06-15T00:05:13+00:00

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The New York Knicks’ victory this weekend over the San Antonio Spurs, cementing their first NBA championship since 1973, brought joy to fans across the five boroughs.

Shortly after their win, Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the city will host a ticker-tape parade to honor the team. It will start at 10 a.m. at Battery Park and travel north along Broadway through the Canyon of Heroes before concluding at City Hall for a ceremony where the mayor will give the team the keys to the city.

The only problem: Some parents are mad that the parade is being held on the same day as science Regents exams. The biology and living environment exams are being administered in the morning. The “Earth and Space Sciences” and “Physical Setting/ Earth Science” exams are being administered in the afternoon.

One mom has already started a petition asking city and state officials, as well as the team’s owner, to move the day of the parade. (High school students who aren’t taking Regents exams that day don’t attend school.) And one student started a petition to cancel school altogether on Thursday.

“This scheduling conflict creates a profound issue of equity and fairness,” Michelle Weintraub, a mom of an eighth grader scheduled to take a Regents exam that day, wrote in her petition. “The students most affected are those who have worked tirelessly all year to pass these exams. Depriving them of the chance to celebrate their city’s historic milestone—while adults and non-testing students freely attend—is inherently inequitable.”

Sebastian Crosa, the student who started a petition, played up the feelings of unity the Knicks have brought to the city — and suggested the parade could be a teachable moment.

“The parade is an educational experience in itself, rich with lessons about sportsmanship, history, and the power of dreams coming true,” Cosa wrote in his petition. “By supporting this request, we will allow the next generation of Knicks fans to experience this extraordinary moment, creating lifelong memories and sparking inspiration for future accomplishments in their own lives.”

As mayor, Mamdani has embraced a sense of fun for the city’s school kids, “canceling” bed time so they could watch the Knicks in the championship games. And of course, many kids were grateful to him for bringing back traditional snow days. But to do that, he had to get a waiver from the state for the day off since students already were at the minimum required instructional days.

Getting a waiver again would likely be a tall order.

What do you think about the scheduling conflict? Let us know: ny.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.

New NAEP scores offer optimism for younger students but warning signs for teens

2026-06-10T04:01:00+00:00

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The nation’s 9-year-olds, children who were on the cusp of kindergarten when COVID shut down in-person public education, are now performing nearly as well in reading and math as their counterparts did before the pandemic.

But 13-year-olds, who experienced serious disruptions during their elementary years, are still struggling, with their performance in reading on a key national test essentially the same as children 50 years ago.

These findings released Wednesday come from the National Assessment of Educational Progress’ long-term trend assessment test. Taken together, they suggest two very different outcomes, with one set of results offering hope that younger students now may have less academic baggage from the pandemic, and another set indicating that young high schoolers continue to suffer the effects of the pandemic.

The results come amid worrying trends in NAEP and other test scores. The data shows a slow, consistent rise in scores for both reading and math for both ages starting around 2004 up until about 2012, followed by a downturn that’s bedeviled policymakers. The decline has given rise to debates and speculation about its cause. One result has been a backlash to technology, and especially screens, in schools.

“The results raise important questions about what’s fueling these upward trends in the elementary years and why they’re not happening among the older students,” said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board, the board that sets policy around NAEP testing.

The long-term assessment is a paper and pencil test that’s been given to a representative sample of students since the 1970s to measure achievement over decades. It’s typically administered every four years. A sample of 15,000 9-year-olds and 16,400 13-year-olds took the test on paper and pencil in the 2024-25 school year.

The performance by the third and fourth graders shows “growth can happen again,” said Matthew Soldner, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, or NCES, in a press release.

But there’s a different story for the nation’s 13-year-olds, who are scoring just ahead of their 1970s counterparts in reading and just a little bit further ahead in math. That inertia may signal that learning struggles among those students — who were around 9 years old when the pandemic began — are more stubborn. And educators could be running out of time to intervene, warned Muldoon.

“The 13-year-olds who took this assessment last year are headed to high school now, or are already enrolled,” she said during a news conference. “Schools won’t have them much longer.”

A NAEP slide that goes back a decade

Ebony Walton, a statistician with NCES, said the differences between the two age groups may come down to the fact that the older students’ early school years “really took the bulk of a lot of this disruption.” The younger students experienced little disruption in comparison.

“These nine year olds who were in preschool at the outbreak of COVID 19, they were still able to get their fundamental skills taught in an in-class setting pretty much undisturbed,” she said.

Students averaging the lowest scores have shown the most precipitous declines on assessments in recent years. But this year, in the younger cohort, they’ve shown the most growth in both reading and math. Older students in the lowest percentiles, however, did not significantly increase their average scores in reading or math.

During a news conference this week, Soldner contrasted record high average scores from 2012 with far lower scores in every category from the latest test, particularly for 13-year-olds, where the average score between 2012 and 2025 has declined by 7 points in reading and 15 in math.

The NAEP long-term trend tests are scored on a 0-500 scale. Changes in scores over time are not necessarily statistically significant, and average scale scores aren’t comparable between different subjects.

Nine year-olds have made some significant progress over more than 50 years and in 15 separate long-term trend tests. Students with higher scores on the long-term test can typically take in more complex material and contextualize ideas less familiar to them. Students scoring on the lower end can follow brief instructions and demonstrate more basic skills.

The younger students in every percentile, from those scoring the highest to those scoring the lowest, have increased their average scores from the 1970s in both reading and math, the data shows. For instance, the average math score for 9-year-olds in the the lowest percentile has risen from 171 in the 1970s to 186 in 2025.

But struggling students also remain the furthest away from their 2012 highs. While 9-year-olds who scored the highest on the reading test averaged the same score in 2025 as they did in 2012, those who scored the lowest averaged 7 points behind their 2012 score.

The new NAEP scores represent just the latest data illustrating a nosedive in math and reading scores over the past decade.

The Education Scorecard, which relies on state test scores and released updated data in May, found the country’s students are in a “learning recession” with scores declining since 2013. Reading and math scores on the NAEP test, which students generally take every two years, have also persistently declined.

Speculation over why scores have fallen recently has run the gamut. Some say smartphones and Chromebooks have wrought havoc in classrooms. Others point to diminished federal accountability laws as the culprit.

Soldner pointed out that survey results from the test about students’ experience show that fewer than half — 37% — of nine-year-olds reported they read for fun almost every day, compared with 53% in 2012. A smaller proportion, 14% of 13-year-olds reported reading for fun almost every day, compared with 27% in 2012.

Soldner cautioned that a decline in reading for pleasure didn’t necessarily cause a decline in math and reading scores, but added: “Students’ experiences are at the very least context for the scores that we observe.”

More 9-year-olds than ever — 39% — also reported that they were not assigned homework the day before the test, compared with 24% in 2004. But researchers also noted that in 2025, students who indicated that they spent less than an hour on homework the day before scored higher than peers not assigned any homework at all and students who spent more than an hour on homework.

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org.

Student math proficiency rises but literacy results are mixed, preliminary Colorado test scores show

2026-05-29T22:50:19+00:00

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The share of Colorado students who met or exceeded state standards on state math tests rose from last year to this year in nearly every grade. But when it comes to literacy, it’s more of a mixed bag.

Those are two major takeaways from the preliminary results on the Colorado Measures of Academic Success, or CMAS, which were released Friday by the Colorado Department of Education. They roughly match nationwide data from last year showing that students’ math performance is ticking up, but that reading scores are stagnant. Explaining those and related trends is not an easy task.

The state also released PSAT and SAT results, with encouraging signs for younger high schoolers.

“These results show both progress and areas where we must continue to improve,” said Colorado Education Commissioner Susana Córdova in a news release about the data.

The preliminary data gives an overall picture of the percentage of students in each grade meeting or exceeding state standards on math, literacy, science, and social studies tests. But it doesn’t show results from specific groups of students, like English learners or students with disabilities. It also doesn’t include district or school level results.

The full data will be publicly released in August, according to an education department news release.

The data released Friday shows math proficiency in elementary and middle schools continues to steadily improve after dropping dramatically during the pandemic.

Nine of the 10 grades tested showed improvements. For example, 39% of fourth graders and 37.8% of eighth graders met or exceeded state standards on the CMAS math exam. That’s a slight improvement over last year.

Literacy proficiency increased for fourth and fifth graders, with students in fourth grade making the greatest strides. The data shows 49.9% of fourth graders were proficient in literacy, up five percentage points from 2025, although proficiency rates for third graders fell.

“Early literacy has been a major focus in Colorado, and we are encouraged by the progress we are seeing,” Cordova said.

Meanwhile, there was a decline in literacy proficiency in every middle school grade by two percentage points. For example, CMAS literacy proficiency dropped 1.7 percentage points to 42.2% of eighth graders.

As for high schoolers, PSAT scores for ninth and tenth graders improved from 2025 in both math and literacy.

In literacy, 65.6% of ninth graders scored proficient or above in literacy while 65.1% of 10th graders did so. Meanwhile, PSAT ninth grade math proficiency increased to 40.6%, and proficiency in math for 10th graders increased to 37.9%.

The news was less rosy for 11th graders. The rate of students meeting or exceeding standards on the SAT math and literacy tests dropped slightly compared to last year. The education department cautioned that low participation in the test continues to skew how to interpret those results. The news release didn’t include the percentage of eligible students taking the test this year.

Science proficiency on the CMAS dropped this year in grades five, eight, and 11. And in social studies, which is tested every three years among a representative sample of students, a quarter of fourth graders and third of seventh graders scored proficient.

In recent years, Colorado lawmakers have sought to make the CMAS shorter, and get testing information out to parents and teachers faster.

For the CMAS, students take what’s known as adaptive tests, which means that based on how students do on the first section of CMAS exams, they get either an easier or harder second section.

Next year, fourth graders will also no longer have to take the CMAS social studies test. Lawmakers eliminated the test for that grade to save money after another budget shortfall.

Tom Kane has tracked years of U.S. test scores. Here’s what he’s learned — and still can’t explain.

2026-05-21T09:46:23+00:00

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Just about everyone in education is trying to figure out why student achievement has been declining and how to raise it back up.

If anyone would know the answer it might be Tom Kane, a Harvard University professor who has been poring over data on student learning for the last several years. Kane and several colleagues recently released an extensive database of test scores from most states in the country.

The takeaway: Schools have made some progress recovering from steep learning declines in math, but scores in both math and reading are still far below where they were over a decade ago.

“The U.S. has been in a learning recession since at least around 2013 and that’s especially true in reading,” says Kane. “The challenges we face didn’t start or end with the pandemic.” The implications are alarming. In other work, Kane has found that test scores are linked to a variety of economic outcomes.

The research out of Kane’s center has been so comprehensive that many of its interesting findings have flown under the radar. I wanted to highlight a few of them. And I also wanted to unpack theories to explain poor academic results. What’s striking is that even Kane, a leading expert, doesn’t have clear answers or solutions.

Here are some takeaways from the work of Kane and his colleagues.

There are hypotheses, but no decisive evidence, for why learning stalled before the pandemic

Kane offers two theories. “The slowdown in learning coincided with a dismantling of test-based accountability and a rise in social media use,” his study says. The evidence for both is circumstantial, Kane acknowledges. Other countries have also seen test scores deteriorate, which could be consistent with a rise in social media everywhere. Federal accountability helped drive learning gains in the past, according to some research, so easing the pressure may explain recent declines.

Yet both theories have holes. Test scores have dropped even in early grades where social media use is not prevalent (although general screen use has accelerated for young kids). And accountability policies seemed most effective in raising math scores, but the most persistent recent declines have been in reading.

“We don’t have a definitive answer,” Kane says.

The highest- and lowest-poverty school systems have recovered faster than those in the middle

Kane calls this a U-shaped recovery. You can see it in the graph below, from his recent study. The dark blue and orange lines show learning trends by district poverty rates between 2022 and 2025. In math, the highest- and lowest-need school systems have seen the most progress. In reading, scores in middle-income districts fell the most.

Kane says policymakers should keep in mind those middle-income districts, which are sometimes overlooked in policy and funding formulas.

Federal COVID relief money helped, but it might have gone further

Part of the explanation for this U-shaped recovery is the $190 billion or so in federal COVID relief funding. In the same graph, the line below the actual recovery shows Kane’s estimate of what scores would have been without the money. Scores in high-poverty districts would have been significantly worse, he finds. Those schools benefited more from the money simply because they got more of it.

Kane rejects the commonly heard argument that the federal relief money was largely wasted. But he thinks the test score effect might have been larger had districts been required to spend more on academic recovery.

One caveat: Kane acknowledges he may be underestimating the effect of each dollar of federal aid because he doesn’t have data on how much extra money schools actually spent, just how much they were supposed to receive.

Absenteeism is limiting recovery, at least a bit

Attendance issues have exploded in recent years. Schools have made some progress in getting students back to class, but absence rates remain elevated. Kane and team estimate that this is dragging down learning. The other gray lines in the graphic — above the blue and orange lines — are Kane’s predictions of what scores would be if students were attending school at the same rate as before the pandemic.

The effects are real but fairly modest, indicating absence rates are not the main drivers of sluggish recovery. In reading, for instance, most districts would still have lost ground even with pre-pandemic attendance.

State test scores paint a more optimistic picture of recovery than the main federal test

Kane and colleagues use a combination of state tests and federal NAEP exams to construct their learning estimates. To produce the main trends they rely on NAEP, except for score changes from 2024 to 2025 since NAEP scores aren’t yet available. This matters because state tests tend to produce more positive trends. For instance, NAEP has shown reading scores declining in recent years, even while many states’ results have inched up. It’s not that one set of scores is right and the other is wrong. But this discrepancy is worth keeping in mind.

It’s not clear whether science-of-reading laws are working

Kane doesn’t find a strong correlation between states’ reading gains since 2022 and the number of science-of-reading elements they’ve incorporated. Yet he notes that the states with very few of these tenets have not made progress. Kane emphasizes that this is not especially rigorous evidence, and should be taken as only “suggestive.” More research is needed on whether these laws are changing school practices and improving outcomes.

Progress has happened before and is happening in some places

Kane marvels at the substantial gains in test scores in the 1990s and early 2000s — which went largely unremarked upon at the time. If anything, the prevailing narrative was that nothing in education was working. But if we made progress before, we can do it again, he suggests. That’s also why his report highlights a number of school systems, like Detroit, that are relative bright spots.

“It’s a reminder that improvement is possible,” Kane says.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Millions of students use i-Ready. But many parents view it as a villain in the ed tech fight.

2026-05-19T17:02:53+00:00

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If you talk to an American parent about technology in the classroom, one brand of software comes up again and again: i-Ready.

The software provides digital instruction that promises a “personalized” learning experience to identify students for intervention. It also has interim assessments that aim to monitor student progress. And to keep students engaged with instruction, it uses cutesy animations of cats and aliens to coax students along.

All of that might sound straightforward. But Stuart Day is exasperated with i-Ready — on behalf of himself and his kid.

“It’s just a bunch of digital busy work,” said Day, the father of an elementary-age student in northwestern Pennsylvania. “And he doesn’t like it. He gets really stressed out about it.”

The resistance to i-Ready mirrors a growing resistance to much of the technology that’s made it into American classrooms. It’s an easy target, from the “i” at the start of its name to its backing by private equity. But i-Ready is also widespread in classrooms; roughly one-third of American students use it, according to Curriculum Associates, the software company behind i-Ready. The software’s detractors argue it subjects kids to excruciatingly repetitive lessons and practice exercises. Some parents, educators, and researchers are now skeptical that there’s solid evidence to justify having their kids use i-Ready.

Parents in Los Angeles and the District of Columbia have fought against their districts’ contracts with Curriculum Associates. One parent has filed a lawsuit against the software, claiming Curriculum Associates improperly shares student data, a claim the company denies.

In response to these mounting criticisms, Curriculum Associates claims its products are backed up by a solid library of evidence. The company’s leaders also deny that it should be the villain it’s been made out to be, even as they acknowledge it might not always be used as intended.

“We believe student outcomes are the only metric that matters,” wrote Kelly Sia, the company’s CEO, in a widely shared LinkedIn post in April. “That means being clear-eyed about how our programs are used and whether that time is purposeful, connected to instruction, and supporting student growth.”

But such messages aren’t likely to halt complaints about ed tech that involve everything from a lack of independent research to data privacy and students’ grievances.

Beyond those concerns, Day believes i-Ready has helped turn the American school day into something unrecognizable.

“When I was in school, I remember there were student computers. We didn’t take them home, like they do now … you couldn’t surf the web with them or anything,” he said. “I guess in my mind, that’s what I thought student computers were today, but they’re not like that.”

Parents worry i-Ready leaves kids stuck academically

Some of i-Ready’s presence can be credited to the pandemic’s aftermath.

Though the software has been around since 2011, many schools adopted it during a push for more periodic assessment, in order to track how students were recovering academically after the disruptions caused by COVID. More than a dozen states list i-Ready as a state-approved assessment or instructional material.

But in Facebook groups and elsewhere, some parents have expressed at least two concerns about the software that might be related: its reliance on game-like experiences, and whether it accurately captures where students stand academically.

Kelly Clancy, a parent in New York City, thought it was odd when her 8-year-old tested two grades behind in math on i-Ready’s software. When she asked her daughter what was going on, the answer had nothing to do with math. Clancy’s daughter liked the noise an animated alien made when she got a problem wrong. So she intentionally botched the questions.

“My daughter was enjoying the process of making these aliens look sad and make this funny sad noise,” Clancy said.

That echoes complaints several other parents shared with Chalkbeat that they didn’t like i-Ready in part because their child tested below the level they thought their child would.

Those worries might speak to a broader issue in education in which parents overestimate their child’s academic performance. But Clancy and other parents and teachers also express frustration that they can’t control the sequence of instruction or questions the software generates. The i-Ready algorithm is meant to offer up more practice for students when they struggle, meeting them where they’re at academically. But parents said their students ended up getting the same problems over and over again.

In short, Clancy calls it a “blackbox” algorithm that makes kids frustrated.

Not every parent or kid hates i-Ready. On Facebook, some parents espouse the benefits of mandating their kids practice i-Ready to grow academically, akin to the way parents relied on Hooked on Phonics in the 1990s.

Ty Holmes, chief impact officer at Curriculum Associates, told Chalkbeat that criticisms that i-Ready improperly gamifies learning are overwrought. Holmes said i-Ready creates incentives to keep students engaged, just like teachers do when they give out gold stars to certain students.

“i-Ready is a tool that they use for very specific and targeted reasons, and the overall sort of design of the classroom is still a human endeavor,” he said.

Research debate highlights broader concerns about ed tech

Evaluations by Johns Hopkins University scholars of i-Ready’s personalized instruction programs highlight debates about the research basis for the software, as well as for ed tech in general.

The research, paid for by Curriculum Associates, found some promising results in math for students using i-Ready’s personalized instruction program compared with those just using the program’s diagnostic assessment. The results showed fewer benefits in reading.

“It provides some suggestion that there can be gains from i-Ready, but certainly not a sufficient evidence base to just blanket adopt i-Ready in school,” said Steven Ross, one of the 2022 evaluations’ authors and a professor at Johns Hopkins’ school of education.

The Johns Hopkins study is part of a body of research commissioned by Curriculum Associates. Critics say this research cannot be considered independent because the company paid for it, a common issue in the ed tech industry.

The amount of funding from the federal government available to study educational products with true independence would maybe cover 5% of all products, Ross said. The only alternative is for companies to commission independent parties for reviews, he added.

But Jared Cooney Horvath, one of ed tech’s biggest critics and a neuroscientist who runs LME Global, an education consulting firm, says the lack of peer-reviewed research or randomized controlled trials to measure i-Ready’s efficacy is a glaring concern.

“If one of the most widely used tools in American education operates without an evidential base, this signals a broader problem with how we evaluate EdTech,” Cooney Horvath wrote in a March blog post. “Somewhere along the way, we stopped asking, ‘Does this actually help students learn?’— or perhaps we never seriously considered this question in the first place.”

Pressure mounts on school boards to reconsider i-Ready

Scores of parents at big school districts across the country pressuring school boards to rethink school’s use of iReady.

In D.C., a councilmember has proposed legislation that would compel city leaders to reconsider the district’s $1.5 million contract for i-Ready. And the Los Angeles Unified School District will audit the software after local backlash.

Washoe County, Nevada’s school board recently considered renewing its contract for i-Ready for three years. But in May, the board reversed course and renewed it for just one after receiving about two dozen messages from parents and educators. Board members said they wanted to study student outcomes and screen time to see if they justified the cost of a longer contract.

Calen Evans, president of the district’s labor union, said teachers are frustrated that students spend roughly 30 minutes a week using i-Ready, according to district data.

“We need more instructional time,” Evans said. “We don’t have time for social studies. We don’t have time for science.”

Clancy said districts should drop i-Ready, instead of having individual parents opt their students out. And Clancy said many of the problems her and other parents have raised about i-Ready occur with other ed tech products.

“What we should do is think seriously about what it looks like to redesign our schools around what we know works,” she said.

Lily Altavena is a national reporter at Chalkbeat. Contact Lily at laltavena@chalkbeat.org.

A year ago, experts worried about NAEP’s future. Now, the test is expanding.

2026-05-15T21:15:44+00:00

This story was originally published in The 74. Sign up for their newsletters here.

A year ago, there was speculation that the Nation’s Report Card was at risk under the Trump administration.

Testing experts at the Education Department had been laid off and the board in charge of the program canceled several optional tests. But now, expansion is coming in the form of additional results that could give the public more information about how students in their states are performing.

The National Assessment Governing Board approved a new testing schedule Friday that allows for state-level results in 12th grade math and reading, eighth and 12th grade civics, and eighth grade science.

The vote was 16-3.

NAGB, which sets policy for the National Assessment of Educational Progress, has long aspired to add more granular results, said Executive Director Lesley Muldoon.

“That’s what helps drive actual policy action at the state level,” she said.

The updated schedule would take effect in 2028 for eighth grade civics and 12th grade math and reading. The eighth grade science test would be administered in 2029 and 12th graders would take a civics exam in 2032. Participation is optional, but NAGB wants to know states’ intentions by this summer.

The governing board isn’t alone in wanting NAEP to be more useful to state policymakers. In its recent report on the future of the American workforce, the Bipartisan Policy Center, led by former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, called for more state-level data in the same three areas and a shorter, six-month timeline between the assessment and the release of the results.

Some observers say the board’s vote underscores the importance of NAEP.

“This suggests an acknowledgment that standardized testing, and comparable data across states, still matters,” said Dale Chu, an education consultant who frequently writes about assessment.

At the same time, in its fiscal year 2027 budget, the administration is requesting less for the program than Congress has appropriated in recent years, $137 million compared with $193 million.

Muldoon told The 74 that if Congress maintains $193 million for the program, no additional money would be needed to expand testing at the state level. But if all 50 states want to participate, they might need more resources.

State reactions to NAEP expansion could vary

The response from states, she said, has been positive, but she doesn’t expect all to sign up.

Board Member Julia Rafal-Baer, who voted against the plan, said while she agreed with the science and civics schedule, she’s concerned about whether enough states would participate in the 12th grade assessments. The announcement, she said, would also come in the midst of a “charged environment.”

“You can see it bubbling up now — public trust around testing, technology, AI, screens and student data,” she said during the meeting. “In this room, we understand all the differences. Parents right now do not understand the differences.”

Others noted that with 39 governors’ races this year, those who show interest now might be out of office by the time they have to formally commit. But Board Member Ron Reynolds, formerly head of a California private school organization, said the elections shouldn’t affect the board’s decision.

“I think we would cross a dangerous line if we began to anticipate what the political environment might be at a specific time and then make decisions in advance that might foreclose an opportunity to assess and report,” he said.

States would need to identify a sample ranging from 1,200 to 2,000 students in each of the categories for which they want new results.

U.S. Rep. Mark White, a Tennessee Republican and current NAGB chair, told The 74 that his state is among those that would likely “jump on the opportunity” to see how the state’s students are performing in science, civics and in their senior year.

“Tennessee realized that our K-12 standards were not adequate in 2011 when we compared our performance to NAEP data,” he said. “We got busy.”

In 2013, the state was the fastest improving in the nation, and this week earned recognition as a top performer in post-pandemic academic recovery.

More American students are attending private school. Why do so few take NAEP?

Angélica Infante Green, Rhode Island’s education commissioner, wants her state to participate in all of the assessments, but is particularly enthusiastic about state-level civics. The state passed a law in 2021 requiring students to demonstrate proficiency in civics to graduate.

“It’s important, based on where we are as a country,” she said. “If our students don’t know how the government works and how our democracy works, that poses a challenge.”

Chu said he wouldn’t be surprised if Mike Morath, state chief in Texas, or Indiana Education Secretary Katie Jenner also take “a keen interest,” but predicted that “in many other places the reaction would amount to little more than a shrug.”

Former Florida Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. criticized the NAEP program after the 2024 fourth and eighth grade results were released. The state saw a sharp decline in reading scores, which he attributed to a sample of schools that he said was not representative of the state overall and included two of the lowest-performing schools. He also blamed the shift that year on the switch to a digital test on school district devices.

The Florida Department of Education did not respond to questions about whether the state might participate.

Revised NAEP could be ‘powerful source of information’

Chu and others, however, question whether state-level data on 12th graders would be that useful.

“Low student motivation has long been a cloud hanging over 12th grade,” he said. “I’m not sure bringing those results to the state level adds much unless that issue is addressed.”

Muldoon disagreed that motivation is a challenge, but said that getting a large enough national sample of 12th graders can be. Seniors, she said, are sometimes off campus for internships or college trips.

Some states, like Nevada, require students to take the ACT for graduation. But Jhone Ebert, superintendent of the Clark County School District, and former state chief, said a college entrance exam might not be the best way to measure the skills of students planning to go straight into the workforce. NAEP, she said, would offer a fuller view of students’ skills.

“Not everybody’s going to college,” said Ebert, also on the board. “That doesn’t mean that they’re not going to be successful participants in our society.”

National results from 2024’s 12th graders were discouraging. Twenty-two percent tested at the proficient level in math, a 2 percentage point decline since 2019. In reading, 35% were proficient, also a drop. As with fourth and eighth graders in recent years, the percentage of high school seniors scoring at the below basic level increased. But those results don’t tell states anything about their specific strengths and weaknesses.

State-level data could be a “really powerful source of information,” Muldoon said. “There is no other nationally representative assessment of high school students’ achievement.”

Broader interest in civics education drove NAEP updates

The same is true for civics. The last NAEP civics test was in 2022, and just in eighth grade.

Average scores on the 300-point scale fell by two points, the first-ever decline in the 25-year history of the test, which measures students’ knowledge of government, the founding documents and politics.

Twelfth grade results in civics haven’t been available since 2010. The 2032 civics test in 12th grade will also be an updated version. Patrick Kelly, chair of NAGB’s assessment development committee, told the members Friday that while the “bones are good,” the design of the civics assessment is old.

The last time the test was updated, “our president of the United States was playing saxophone on late night,” he said.

Shawn Healy, chief policy and advocacy officer at iCivics, a nonprofit that provides civics lesson plans and online games, called the state-level results and the update “a big win for our field.”

The results, he said, will offer insight into the success of civics education policies at the state level, such as requiring a dedicated course or completion of student projects, or offering diplomas that recognize achievements. This year, he’s tracked 240 civics education bills in 40 states.

“That speaks to the interest in this issue across blue and red states,” he said.

NAEP scores in 8th grade science drop, gender gap returns

In science, 2029 won’t be the first time state results will be available. Most states voluntarily participated in 2015. But now, under a new design, the questions will more closely match what states expect eighth graders to know in science, said Christine Cunningham, senior vice president of STEM learning at the Museum of Science in Boston and a NAGB member.

Large school systems, those in the Trial Urban District Assessment group, would also be able to opt in to that science exam. Currently, only national data is available for those subjects and grades.

“At a time when science and engineering are having such a profound impact on our lives, it’s important to understand how our students are doing,” she said. “Education leaders continue to see value in expanding opportunities for state-level reporting beyond reading and math.”

Did you use this article in your work?

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Linda Jacobson is a senior writer at The 74. You can reach her at @lrj417 and at Linda@the74million.org.

What is the price of Success (Academy)? Former students open up

2026-05-14T10:00:00+00:00

Sign up for Chalkbeat New York’s free daily newsletter to get essential news about NYC’s public schools delivered to your inbox.

As Success Academy turns 20 this year, former students of New York City’s largest charter school network share their stories in this episode of P.S. Weekly.

Success Academy reshaped what free education for low-income students could look like. The network boasts above average scores on state tests and impressive college admissions statistics. Some alumni, however, wonder if the academic pressure and strict behavioral standards are worth it. Its famously test-focused approach has raised a question: How much pressure on students is too much?

P.S. Weekly producers Jeremiah Dickerson, a senior at Williamsburg Charter High School, and Noa Salas Adam, a junior at Stuyvesant High School, dive into the complex world of Success Academy.

Dickerson, himself a former Success Academy student, interviews another former student about what it was like to attend the school. They touch on everything from uniforms, “mouth bubbles,” and clip charts to extremely rigorous academics and the lingering emotional price tag of attending Success Academy.

P.S. Weekly is a collaboration between Chalkbeat and The Bell. It’s available on major podcast platforms, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Reach us at PSWeekly@chalkbeat.org. New episodes drop on Thursdays.

P.S. Weekly is made possible by generous support from The Pinkerton Foundation.

Transcript

Jeremiah: On the last day of kindergarten, we lined up, and one by one were handed our school’s signature orange tie. That was the prize for graduating to first grade. At five years old, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on mine. It felt like it had a magic power. These days, people might call that aura, but back then, we called it success.

Newscaster: Success Academy, with schools in the Bronx and Brooklyn, is living up to its name, outperforming their peers by a landslide.

Newscaster: If Success Academy were a school district, it would be the single most successful school district

Newscaster: the video raises new concerns about the demands on students at the 34 Success Academy schools in New York City.

Newscaster: Andrew Cuomo, who’s running for mayor of New York, wrote in support of Success Academy

News: Success Academy

News: Success Academy

Jeremiah: Welcome back to PS Weekly, The Sound of the New York City School System. I’m Jeremiah Dickerson, a senior at Williamsburg Charter High School.

Noa: And I’m Noa Salas Adam, a junior at Stuyvesant High School.

Jeremiah: You’ve probably seen the commercials, the TikTok horror stories, and students in navy blue sweaters swarming the streets on weekday afternoons.

That’s right, we’re talking about Success Academy.

Noa: Refresh my mind. Isn’t Success Academy that huge network of charter schools that’s been expanding over time? I see the Success ads everywhere, on subways, buses, even on Spotify.

Jeremiah: Noa, you’re spot on. 22,000 students attend Success Academy, making it the largest charter school network in the city, and that’s even larger than Syracuse, New York’s entire school district.

News clip: And it’s even expanding to Florida next year.

News clip: Success Academy Charter School’s announcing its expansion to Florida, right here in Miami today. With Citadel’s Ken Griffin contributing $50 million to that expansion.

Jeremiah: Success Academy turns 20 this year. It started in Harlem back in 2006 with just one school and 165 students. But two decades later, there are FIFTY NINE Success Academy schools across the city.

Noa: So if there are so many of the schools, they must be doing pretty well, right?

Jeremiah: On paper they are!. Just recently in 2025, Success was ranked number one in mathematics and number two in ELA state test scores out of over 700 public and charter schools across the state.

The school started in predominantly Black and brown, as well as low-income neighborhoods in New York, and more recently have been expanding to wealthier, whiter neighborhoods.

Success has always been a huge target for both praise

News clip: this dreary weather can’t possibly put a damper on the bright students shining inside of Success Academy Bronx 2, They passed their state exams with flying colors.

Jeremiah: And criticism.

News clip: the New York Times broke the story that a principal at the charter school network Success Academy targeted a group of students to be pushed out of his school, maintaining a secret “got to go” list.

News clip: Some disturbing video of a teacher at a New York City charter school is raising questions tonight about the harsh treatment of some of its youngest students.

Teacher: Count it again, making sure you’re counting correctly. Go to the calm-down chair and sit.

Jeremiah: I went to Success from kindergarten to second grade. And because the first class of Success Academy only graduated high school eight years ago, I’m part of a growing number of teens and young adults who make up the Success Academy network and are now can share their stories.

Noa: so I know it was a while ago, but what was your experience at Success like?

Jeremiah: Well, Noa, I’ll keep it brief, but I was suspended multiple times between ages five and seven.

Noa: What, how does such a young kid get suspended?

Jeremiah: I got suspended for things that young kids usually do.

Screaming, throwing a temper tantrum, being upset. You know, just not getting along with peers and not, in general, enjoying my environment

And a lot of times I felt like I was overstimulated, overworked, exhausted, and certain things that really led me to, like, what we would say in common times is crash out.

Noa: ‘Cause you were going through a long school day, right?

Jeremiah: Yeah, like 7 to 4:30 in the afternoon. And

we’re not even accounting for the travel time commuting, you know, commuting from different places. Like, I lived in Harlem with my grandma, but then I attended Success Academy in the Bronx.

Noa: That’s a lot for a small kid

Jeremiah: Yeah, and it honestly makes me wonder whether there are other Success students out there who have had similar experiences to me

Fast-forward to today, I’m a high schooler going to school in Williamsburg. But throughout my high school career, I’ve made friends with quite a few students who went to Success Academy as well.

Sasha: I immediately foot in the door. I was like, okay, things are going to change.

Jeremiah: That’s my friend Sasha Hartwell.She’s a senior at my school and attended Success for much longer than I did. While I went there for a short time, Sasha attended Success for most of her educational career. From third grade to the beginning of her senior year..

Jeremiah: Do you remember what your parents said, if anything, about why they chose Success Academy in the first

Sasha: I do know that they were super ecstatic about the education that the kids were receiving and acceptance rates, the high, you know, amount of kids that were able to make it to college or were able to succeed in life through Success Academy.

Jeremiah: Sasha transferred to Success Academy at the beginning of third grade

Sasha: Immediately I was told about mouth bubble and the clip chart and the sitting on the, on the carpet.

Jeremiah: Yeah.

Sasha: And sitting on your assigned color

Jeremiah: Criss cross applesauce.

Sasha: Yep. Sitting on your assigned color. And I was like, it’s just different. This is really different.

Jeremiah: Take us through like, what is a mouth bubble? Describe it to us.

Sasha: You take a deep breath, you, you breathe in, you try to catch all that air in your mouth because you literally take all the air that you have. You close your, you tight, your lips.

Jeremiah: And you tighten your lips.

Sasha: And you create a bubble with your cheeks. You look like a, a squirrel, essentially.

Jeremiah: I remembered my jaw being sore from holding my mouth in a bubble all day. Kids would try to make the perfect mouth bubble to impress the teachers. This and perfect posture were a sign of respect.

Noa: Sasha also said something about a clip chart? What’s that? You guys speak in code at this school.

Jeremiah: About that.. Sasha will explain..

Sasha: A clip chart essentially is, uh, it’s a, a classic , you know, piece of cardboard. Um, and they paint on it. There’s different colors. You have green, you’d have yellow, you’d have orange, the clip chart specifically, what makes it a clip chart is you have a clip, like you have one of those pinboard clips and you have your name on it, and you put that clip.

Well, I mean, I, when I got there, I remember I got to decorate, you get to decorate your clip, at least you got that privilege. But, you know, you put your clip, you, you do something bad, you get a, I remember there was at some point where, I guess it was like around finals testing.

Jeremiah: Okay

Sasha: Sometimes they would dictate it based off how you did on like a practice exam.

Sasha: it’s one thing to do it, like, after class or do it in private, but no, you told me to get up in front of the whole class and walk to this clip chart and move my chart. And the thing is, is that with Success Academy kids, when we were kids, we were competitive, but we were, we weren’t, like, harsh or mean or anything.

You know, you’re just kids, so you know, you’re playing. “Ooh, you in trouble.” Oh my gosh. Y- every time, “Ooh, you in trouble. You gotta move your chart.” And usually when you move your clip chart, that mean they getting a me- you getting a message from ParentSquare. Your parents will be notified of your clip change, and I’m just like, “Oh my gosh,” like I already be knowing what be happening when I get home.

Jeremiah: at my school they had, like clip chart sheets that you were bringing to your parents where like the teacher can sign off and describe your behavior and basically give a reasoning as to why they gave you that color for the day. Like, a lot of times, like I remember my mom would get upset and she would just like rip up the red papers because the reasonings would be like things that were so little like, hey, like Jeremiah wasn’t paying attention to me, so we put his chart on red. But then for me, like.

Every time, like I would, you know, go down the red, I would cry in certain things because it was an embarrassing moment. It wasn’t something that you wanted to see, you know, like no one wants to see that

Jeremiah: The school doesn’t use clip charts any more. but now according to the 2025-2026 SA handbook they use a stoplight system. The handbook says quote “ Every day, scholars start on green. Throughout the day, if scholars are not following instructions, their color may be moved down to yellow or even red. We keep parents regularly informed about behavioral challenges students face in school and we ask for your support.” end quote

Noa: Sounds kinda clip chart-y to me

Jeremiah: And then are you familiar with the like water fountain rule? I, I think it was 1, 2, 3.That’s enough for me. Yeah.

Sasha: it was, yeah, definitely that

Jeremiah: the teachers would say it, but then the, a lot of the people behind me would say because they wanted that water right.

Sasha: Do remember that, that phrase, that was a waterfront rule

Jeremiah: Success Academy, a big portion of its identity is its uniforms and how students come to school represented. Take us through like what the uniform means to you and how it is.

Sasha: Even before you even get in the building, there -you either have your principal or you have your vice principal and they’re standing outside of the door. They’re holding the door open, but they are there to check to see if you are in full uniform.

Jeremiah: Right.

Sasha: Even in the freezing cold, they will tell you to zip down your coat. Let me make sure you have your tie and your blazer.

Boy, girl, it does not matter. You have to have that tie on and you still have the option to wear a skirt or pants, depending, whatever your preference was. Um, but yeah, they were very cutthroat on them. Socks. I Have been sent home my junior year because I had on black socks, I had on black socks, but not Navy blue socks. Yeah, you have to have them and them shoes.

Oh. They used to get on me for my shoes. They’re all, they’re all black, but they have a little white check mark.

Jeremiah: YEAH

Sasha: If anybody that goes to my school knows me, they know about these sneakers. I wear these sneakers every day. Now my parents obviously are not, you know, they ain’t the wealthiest, so, you know, I make do of what I got.

Right. So I got these shoes. I liked them. I was like, okay, cool. But the one problem, the one problem, it had a little white check. And they used to nitpick on me so bad for it. The principal himself came up to me and handed me a black roll of tape, and I was like, what is And he was like, for your, for your shoe.

Jeremiah: And I know you can hear me and Sasha laughing and joking about all the rules at Success Academy but some of the discipline.Wasn’t a joke. At times, it felt like it we were being punished for just being kids.

They also tried to balance the harsh discipline with special rewards. Like Fun Fridays

Sasha: It’s a fun Friday. It’s like a, you lasted through weeks, so now you get your little Friday and advisory and there would be a shelf on your wall or you know, like on a little bookshelf where you had your little area where they had things from toys and you know, we had a bunch of little toys, trinkets, fidgets, all that type of stuff. And you know, you had, um, a system called Class Dojo where you would gain or lose points , depending on your behavior

Jeremiah: Fridays weren’t so fun for everyone. If your clip wasn’t high enough on the clip chart, or your points in class dojo weren’t adding up. You would have to sit out while your friends ate pizza and sang their hearts out to Just Dance.

Sasha: Think there was one time where I was highly upset. Mm-hmm. I was, I was in trouble. I was in trouble for sure. I was in trouble and they told me that I couldn’t participate in Fun Friday.

Jeremiah: That used to be the worst

Sasha: So obviously I was sulking, yeah. I was sulking in the corner.

I think that that was when I was in the negative probably. ‘cause obviously you can’t spend no points. Yeah. So when you’re in the negative, you’re not allowed to participate in Fun Friday. Mm-hmm. That’s just it. Like, you’re not allowed

Jeremiah: why do you think Success Academy was so strict with all the different rules, like mouth bubbles, clip charts, walking in a straight line, and all of that?

Sasha: I feel like …Even though I don’t feel like the execution was appropriate for us at the age, at the ages that we were, I don’t feel like the actions that they were taking were appropriate. But I do feel like they really do prepare us for the real world and what we would have to face out in the real world.

Jeremiah: What do you remember about test preparation culture at Success Academy?

Like, how did they prepare you? Do you feel like it was effective? What do you think?

Sasha: Think? Mm, I do feel like it was effective, but it was very rigorous. So it definitely caused a lot of burnout before the test even started. Do I think taking tests over and over and over and over again was helpful? No. I don’t feel like that part was helpful. I feel like it stressed us out and it burnt us out for the actual test,

Jeremiah: Success is known for its intense test prep culture. How else would they get those super high scores on state exams?

Sasha: As much as, you know, like this conversation is more of like how it’s affected us mentally, I could say, like, um, educationally success has benefited me way beyond that I, I even can think of now, right? So I can’t, I graduated out of middle school with all my regents done, and I went to public school and everybody was looking at me like I was an alien.

So I was like, oh, so this ain’t normal.

Jeremiah: So eventually you transferred to my school So there had to be a conversation or something that happened where your parents were like, “It’s time to go.” So can you take us through that experience? What happened?

Sasha: Um, honestly, I kinda put my foot down on that one. I said, “Baby, I’m leaving.” I don’t know what y’all think, but I think it’s time for me to go. Not to even be that type of person, but I was literally coming home crying every day. I was really just sitting there, with my little bunk bed with my LED lights and I’m like, “I can’t do this.”

I ca- I can’t do this for another, I can’t do this for another five months. I just can’t."

And so I finally sat down my parents and I said, “Honestly, I don’t know where I go. I just don’t wanna be here. It can’t be here. I can’t do this my senior year.” But again, because I was so upset- Every day coming home, having to do the same cycle. Even on weekends, I just wanted to stay in bed. I didn’t wanna go out, I didn’t wanna go to the movies, I didn’t wanna go shopping, I didn’t wanna do nothing.

Jeremiah: And even though Sasha and I both left Success Academy and are happier in our new school, Sasha felt conflicted like me.

Sasha: in certain aspects I’m grateful for like how they’ve made me who I am as a person, but sometimes I be taking a step back and I’m like, “Oof. Babe, that, that ... Ooh, I’m, I’m a little damaged,” like. Um, like sometimes I would talk to my parents and like, obviously every conversation with your parents, it’s not gonna be a great one.

So you know, we’re dis- we had a disagreement, and I kinda just shut down. Like I stopped talking and I was just looking at them. And it was like you’re not gonna say anything? ‘Cause obviously like you know how we’re talking right now, I’m a very verbal person. If something’s wrong with me, I’m gonna tell you.

So I’m just sitting there and I’m just like not saying anything, and they’re like, “Are you okay?” Like, “You’re not gonna say anything? You don’t agree, disagree?” And I’m just like, “I don’t know. That’s...” And I was just shutting down. And looking back on it- It definitely is like I, I had to deal with that from Success.

When you got in trouble at Success or you’re trying to talk to a teacher to change a grade or why you were late to class, it’s never a conversation. It’s a monologue. They’re talking at you, they’re not talking with you. So I feel like that aspect of it, , it definitely affected me,

I feel like there’s obviously certain aspects of Success Academy where their intensity of certain things, it helps, but also it definitely did take away from my childhood, and actually, like, becoming my own person naturally. When, like, with going to Success Academy, you’re, you’re getting all these rules and all these things thrown at you and, you know, they kinda, they say that your grades don’t define you, but they act like your grades do define you. So when you have that type of mindset growing up, it lowers your self-esteem.

Jeremiah: I’m always someone who participates or raises my hand or says a lot. But then for me, I feel like I rescind it as easily as I give it because I feel like once a space makes it known that it’s not appreciated that I’m speaking up or saying certain things, I just fall all the way back because I have trauma behind that. I feel like growing up with Success Academy, it’s been more so just, like, juggling with the emotions and how I’m still, like, even at 18 years old, I’m still processing my kindergarten through second grade experience.

Jeremiah: So thank you so much for joining us, Sasha today.

Sasha: Thank you Jeremiah, so much for the interview.

Noa: So after all this, the clip charts, the mouth bubbles, why do parents keep sending their kids to Success Academy.

Jeremiah: Honestly, to be real with you, I don’t know either. But looking as a parent – a parents perspective. I would say a lot of parents send their kids to Success academy because of the image. They see kids structured in uniforms, behaving well, they’re keeping quiet, they’re doing their work, and their coming out with good grades. I think the parents especially are the ones drawn in by test scores because every parent wants tso see their student do well. And when the Success Academy scores are in the 90s and the average school nearby is in the 50s, which one are you going to choose – the one in the 90s or the one in the 50s?

If I were a parent, maybe I would trust that high test scores means my child would learn what they need to in order to be prepared for college, their career, or whatever comes next.

Noa: Yeah, speaking of college – I just saw that viral video of the first student to get into an Ivy league at her Success Academy Chapter. Let’s watch it

Clip: I have a very special announcement Our school has again made history on the college acceptance front. We have our first scholar to get accepted to an Ivy League school. (Cheers)

Jeremiah: I feel like it was just very sweet like, on the announcements to hear whoever was just like, announcing it to the school and everything. Because not only did that really show support for the individual, it really like, enhanced I feel like, the community in there that aspect with everyone clapping for her because if I were in her shoes, I would be so happy for everyone clapping for me and everything just in that moment. cheering me on and just celebrating me in general. So I’m sure she appreciated that.

Noa: Yeah, and everyone is just supporting her, which is super cool. I mean, having good college acceptances must be a major draw for families.

Jeremiah: Definitely. One of their major selling points is that 100% of their graduating classes receive offers to a four-year college. And a majority of these students are accepted to selective schools. From the outside, it’s pretty impressive, especially considering 65% of these students come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.

Noa: It really speaks to this idea I’ve heard about Success being a private school without the price tag.

Jeremiah: Yeah. I really connected with Sasha on this idea. On one hand, we were set up to thrive academically by Success, but on the other hand, we both experienced some pretty intense emotional hardship as a result.

Noa: I’m really glad you got to talk about your similarities and I hope maybe other students who went to success or families thinking about sending their kids there found something useful in the conversation too.

Jeremiah: Agreed.

Jeremiah: Success Academy did not respond to our request for comment.

Jeremiah: PS Weekly is a collaboration between the Bell and Chalkbeat made possible by generous support from the Pinkerton Foundation. Producers for this episode were me, Jeremiah Dickerson

Noa: And me, Noa Salas Adam

Jeremiah: Our senior producer for the show is Maria Robins Somerville, and our technical director is Jake Lummus.

Noa: Our executive editors are Amy Zimmer and Taylor McGraw

Jeremiah: Additional production and reporting support was provided by Mira Gordon, Sabrina DuQuesnay, Zana Halili, and Katelyn Melville, and our friends at Chalkbeat

Noa: Music is from APM, and the jingle you heard at the beginning of the episode was created by the one and only Erica Huang. Thanks so much for tuning in and see you next time.

We make transcripts available for our episodes as soon as possible. They are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.

Kids are in a ‘reading recession’ as test scores continue to decline

2026-05-13T04:01:00+00:00

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MODESTO, Calif. – Before every important test, teacher Nancy Barajas dims the lights, turns on a disco ball and blasts music from her playlist. Her sixth graders dance together as a “pre-celebration” to boost their confidence, then take their exam.

Lately, there’s been a lot to celebrate in elementary schools in Modesto, California. Both reading and math scores have increased consistently over the past several years.

But across the country, results are gloomier. Researchers warn that the U.S. is experiencing a reading recession — a slide predating the pandemic’s disruptions in schooling.

Scholars at Harvard, Stanford, and Dartmouth analyzed state test scores from third to eighth grade for over 5,000 school districts in 38 states, allowing comparisons across school districts and states in a national Education Scorecard.

What they found was sobering: Only five states plus the District of Columbia had meaningful growth in reading test scores from 2022 to 2025. Nationally, students remain nearly half a grade level behind pre-pandemic reading scores and only slightly better in math.

While schools have focused on catching kids up since the COVID-19 pandemic upended education, reading test scores have been falling since 2013 for eighth graders and 2015 for fourth graders, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

“The pandemic was the mudslide that had followed seven years of steady erosion in achievement,” said Thomas Kane, a Harvard professor who helped create the Education Scorecard.

Still, some states and school districts are making progress — largely by shifting toward phonics-based instruction and providing extra support for struggling readers.

The picture is also brighter in math.

Sixth graders read a passage and give constructive feedback to their partners during Nancy Barajas' class at Fairview Elementary School on Wednesday, May 6, 2026 in Modesto, California.

Almost every state in the analysis saw improvements in math test scores from 2022 to 2025. Student absenteeism also declined in most states. In over 400 U.S. school districts, including Modesto, reading or math growth outpaced demographically similar districts in the same state.

A shift toward phonics and extra reading support

Researchers are still debating the reading recession’s causes.

One possible factor, researchers say, is the rise of social media on smartphones and corresponding declines in kids’ recreational reading. States have also backed off on strict consequences for schools whose students fail to make progress on standardized tests, Kane said.

But the states that improved reading scores — notably Louisiana, Maryland, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana — all had one thing in common: They ordered schools to teach with a phonics-based approach known as the science of reading.

For years, schools taught reading using approaches that de-emphasized phonics and encouraged strategies such as guessing words based on context clues. As reading scores tumbled over the past decade, parents, scholars, and literacy advocates pushed for teaching methods that align with decades of research about how kids learn to read — largely by sounding out words.

Along with reforming teaching methods, states have also required schools to screen for learning disabilities such as dyslexia and hire coaches to help teachers improve their reading instruction.

That said, science of reading reforms did not guarantee success. Some states, including Florida, Arizona, and Nebraska, changed parts of their reading instruction but still saw test scores fall.

In Modesto, reading instruction was revamped during the pandemic, and math a couple years earlier. The district created a new department to help students who are still learning English. Schools also ramped up teacher training, paying educators $5,000 to complete an extensive science of reading program called LETRS, or Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling.

Aja Penick, an academic interventionist, works with first graders at Munger Elementary-Middle School on Thursday, May 7, 2026, in Detroit.

Modesto’s test scores grew enough to represent an extra 18 weeks of learning in math and 13 weeks in reading. Nevertheless, the district still has a way to go: Overall scores remain far below grade level.

Getting kids ‘consistently in the seat’ helps Detroit

A focus on reading has also improved scores in Detroit — but so have efforts to get kids in school more consistently. For years, the large urban district struggled with deplorable school conditions, leading to a 2016 lawsuit in which students argued they’d been denied the “right to read.”

The lawsuit ended in a settlement of over $94 million, money that helped move the needle. While the district is still far below the national average, student test scores have grown faster than in similar urban districts in Michigan.

“It took a lot to rebuild systems, and now kids are learning at higher levels, but I’m still not satisfied. And I think that’s the next challenge: continuing to motivate, inspire and change things,” said Detroit Superintendent Nikolai Vitti.

Detroit schools are making real gains in reading and math: 4 strategies that are working

The money has helped Munger Elementary-Middle School, located in a largely Latino neighborhood in Detroit, to employ 18 educators who give kids extra support in small groups. An attendance agent also makes calls to the homes of absent students, even showing up at their doors.

Fifth grader Bella Williams does a diagnostic test on her tablet at Oxmoor Valley Elementary School in Birmingham, Alabama, on Wednesday, May 6, 2026.

Just a few years ago, said first grade teacher Samantha Ciaffone, it was normal for about seven or eight kids to be absent from her class every day. Now it’s usually only one or two.

“It allows us to be better educators to see kids consistently in the seat instead of once or twice a week,” said Ciaffone. “It makes such a difference.”

A bright spot in the South

For the last decade, the South has stood out as a region leading the way on education reforms — bucking an established trend of landing at the bottom of education rankings. Southern states were quick to change to research-based teaching methods, and states have paid to train and coach teachers.

It’s paid off. Louisiana and Alabama were the only states where math scores were higher in 2025 than pre-pandemic. Louisiana is also the only state that beat its pre-pandemic average in reading, with 87% of traditional public school students attending a district where scores are higher than in 2019.

“I’ve used my pulpit to preach a back-to-the-basics approach to education,” said Cade Brumley, Louisiana’s superintendent of education. “We’re not trying to chase every new and shiny thing that’s out there that could distract students and teachers.”

Birmingham City Schools Superintendent, Dr. Mark A. Sullivan, takes a call as he enters the library at Oxmoor Valley Elementary School in Birmingham, Alabama, on Wednesday, May 6, 2026.

Alabama had standout gains in reading following the pandemic, driven by a state law requiring every school to use phonics-based instruction. The Legislature modeled math reforms in 2022 off Alabama’s reading successes. The state’s Numeracy Act standardized math instruction, required regular testing, and mandated intervention for kids who lacked adequate math skills.

Oxmoor Valley Elementary in Birmingham hired a full-time math specialist this year to help struggling kids. The school, which made the state’s “failing” list in 2016, has steadily improved math and reading scores, although a majority of kids still test below proficient in both subjects.

“We can provide all of these supports, but at the same time, hold kids to high expectations,” Birmingham Superintendent Mark Sullivan said.

A note from teacher Nancy Barajas encouraging students in her class at Fairview Elementary School on Wednesday, May 6, 2026 in Modesto, California.

Researchers stress such progress is possible across the U.S., because it’s been done before. Starting in the 1990s, the country saw decades of growth in test scores and graduation rates, while racial disparities declined. That progress continued until the mid-2010s.

“We made enormous progress as a country in terms of educational success from over a 30-year period. Test scores went up dramatically,” said Stanford professor Sean Reardon. “And so I think that says, as a country, we can improve education and educational opportunity.”

At Modesto’s Fairview Elementary, where Barajas teaches, students now practice their reading speed and fluency every day. After a dance break, the class reads a one-page text together in unison for one minute, then students split into pairs to read again. Students learning English are paired with native English speakers, and each child gets a turn reading with Barajas.

“Eventually, you get through the word like it’s water,” one boy said. “You just say it smooth.”

____

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

MSCS third graders must retake TCAP literacy tests on last two days of school

2026-05-08T16:36:07+00:00

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Memphis-Shelby County Schools will require all third grade students to retake state standardized reading tests on the last two days of the school year because of a timing conflict with Tennessee’s data release schedule.

District officials said Thursday that they’re implementing a universal retesting because of the high stakes nature of a 2021 Tennessee law that holds back some third graders who don’t score as proficient on the state test.

The Tennessee Department of Education will release preliminary state testing results on May 20, the day before MSCS closes for summer break. Those late results mean the district wouldn’t have time to determine which students are eligible for retests, which can help underperformers avoid extensive interventions required by Tennessee’s third grade reading law.

Other school districts affected by extensive winter weather closures earlier this year are also grappling with the same issue. Metro Nashville Public Schools is currently considering its options, a spokesperson said.

Out of “an abundance of caution,” said MSCS Accountability and Data Director Bill White, all 5,450 third graders will spend their last two days retaking the literacy portion of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

“These poor third graders are taking a lot of tests. And we recognize that,” White said. “We want any student who may have not been proficient the first time to have the opportunity to hopefully improve their score.”

Retake scores aren’t used in official proficiency data for the district, or in state and federal report cards. But students who pass the second time are exempted from required intervention measures.

Last year, just under 30% of MSCS third graders passed last year’s reading test, known as TCAP. A little over 40% of third graders passed statewide. According to the Tennessee law, all remaining students were required to receive additional tutoring or attend summer school.

Over 150 MSCS third graders were held back last year, and nearly 1,300 were required to attend the district’s Summer Learning Academy, according to an MSCS spokesperson. Around 3,000 students received additional mandated tutoring.

Usually, White said, MSCS uses preliminary data from the Tennessee Department of Education to sift out students who didn’t pass TCAP tests the first time to retake the exams.

Standardized testing was delayed in the district this year because of a February winter storm that shut down classes for two weeks. Educators statewide requested a pushed-back testing schedule, but the state department did not pass a universal schedule change. Districts most affected by the storm, including MSCS, implemented a delay anyway.

“We’re in kind of a scheduling bind,” White said. “With a district our size, the amount of data we’re talking about, that’s really not enough time to identify ‘these are the students who need to take it.’”

Liz Marable, who leads one of Memphis’ teacher groups, said district leaders made the only logical choice in retesting everyone.

Marable said no one is happy about subjecting children to more testing. And she worries that attendance will drop off in the final days of school, meaning some students will miss the opportunity to redo.

“But ultimately, it will hurt them if they don’t do it,” Marable said. “So you have to pick the lesser of two evils.”

The last time MSCS mandated retesting for all third graders was in the first year of the Tennessee law, White said. That year, over 25,000 students statewide were retested.

Nashville public schools are in a similar situation, with their last full day of classes on May 20. In an emailed statement, the district said it’s still considering options for how to move forward.

Amy Maples, MSCS’ director of curriculum and instruction, said the district will offer retesting sites on May 26 and 27 for students who are absent the last two days of school. Most third graders will complete the shortened online version of the literacy test, which doesn’t include a writing portion, on May 20.

“The goal is really to not put any additional hardships on our families,” Maples said.

This story has been updated to include additional data from MSCS officials and quotes from Liz Marable.

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

Tech glitches disrupt state math exams across New York

2026-04-29T20:39:23+00:00

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Students across New York were unable to log in to the digital platform for the state’s grades 3-8 math exam Wednesday morning, raising fresh questions about the transition to computer-based assessments.

The New York State Education Department told schools they could pause or delay the math tests, officials confirmed.

The issue affected schools across the state, including some in New York City where schools were expected to administer the exams sometime between April 28 and May 8.

“More than 116,000 students tested without error this morning, with thousands more expected to complete testing later today,” state Education Department spokesperson JP O’Hare wrote in a statement. “Since the testing window opened, more than two million exams have been successfully submitted.”

Officials declined to provide specific numbers of affected students. But O’Hare said it was a “limited number.”

Upon learning of the problem, O’Hare added, “NYSED immediately contacted our vendor, NWEA, to expeditiously address the issue.”

State officials said schools can administer the exams at a later point during the window, which runs through May 15.

The city’s messaging to caregivers struck a somewhat different tone. A letter principals were encouraged to distribute said “many” students were unable to complete the test and “we are pausing the administration of the Math exam and will reschedule once we receive the assurances we need that no additional disruptions will occur.”

A message to principals encouraged them to postpone state testing scheduled for Thursday.

New York’s multi-year transition to computer-based tests has been marred by tech glitches. This year’s problems come amid a growing backlash against the proliferation of technology in schools, including the amount of time students spend on screens.

After a gradual phase-in, the state fully transitioned from paper-and-pencil tests to computer-based tests this spring. The grades 3-8 English language arts exams have already been administered.

Some principals began receiving notifications Wednesday morning from the city’s Education Department about the login problems with Nextera, the state’s testing platform.

“We are receiving a high volume of escalations about students having trouble logging into Nextera,” city officials wrote in an email obtained by Chalkbeat. “It is happening statewide.” The message said schools could continue testing if students had already logged in, but should cancel testing for the day if students continued to have problems.

Officials at NWEA, the state’s testing vendor, said they “have directed all available internal resources” to fixing the problem and hope to have the system running by Thursday.

“The cause of this has not yet been identified, which means the fix is also pending,” Simona Beattie, a company spokesperson, said in a statement.

At one Brooklyn elementary school, students were unable to log in to start their exams for more than an hour but were eventually able to log in and complete the tests, according to the principal who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“I’m sure there are going to be parents who feel like it’s not going to be the best picture of their child’s performance because of the way it happened today,” the principal said. More broadly, the school leader wishes the state would keep paper and pencil tests, especially for younger students who have to “learn a whole other set of skills” to take them digitally.

At another Brooklyn school, a teacher proctoring the exam for a group of sixth graders with disabilities said that one of the seven students was able to log on. The rest spent two hours trying before the school allowed them to take a break and play basketball in the gym.

“They were frustrated but understood there was nothing we could do,” said the teacher, who requested anonymity since she was not authorized to speak. “They were so patient.”

After their gym break, the students were able to log on and take the test, the teacher said, but she questioned the validity of the results.

“Your purpose is to test them, it’s not to test them after two hours of testing their patience,” she said.

City teachers union President Michael Mulgrew blasted the state Education Department in a statement Wednesday afternoon.

“Once again, students and educators were left scrambling because the state failed in its responsibility to hold its vendors and consultants accountable,” he said.

How did testing go at your school? Let us know at ny.tips@chalkbeat.org.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a senior reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

How dubious high school credentials like ladder safety are boosting Pennsylvania’s graduation rate

2026-04-09T18:39:08+00:00

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When Pennsylvania introduced new graduation requirements four years ago, lawmakers said there would be options for students who struggled with standardized tests to show they were ready for college or careers.

Monica Hawk, CEO of Philadelphia’s One Bright Ray Community High School, understood the aim. But in her role running six accelerated high schools, she also had concerns. Some of her students were months or years behind in school before returning to get their diplomas. Few could pass state tests.

In addition, the new requirements would mean a new bureaucratic headache. And she wouldn’t have more money, staff, or resources earmarked to help.

So Hawk focused her team on a graduation pathway established by the requirements that she called her school’s “fail-safe plan.” Students still have to pass their main classes. But the pathway’s additional requirements have nothing to do with academic achievement.

Instead, it hinges on students presenting three pieces of “evidence” that they’re ready to graduate from a state-approved list. In practice, it means a student can take a couple of quick online courses to earn a few industry-recognized credentials, count those as evidence, and then be dubbed graduation-ready. This pathway has quickly become the most common way Philadelphia students are graduating.

Since the state introduced the “evidence-based” pathway as part of its graduation overhaul, starting with the Class of 2023, graduation rates have improved. But at the same time, high school students’ scores on state math and reading tests have declined. And educators who spoke with Chalkbeat said they’re seeing a troubling trend: Students are getting low-value credentials just to check off requirements, especially in schools with large shares of high-needs students and resource-poor districts.

“Credentials are often the tail that wags the dog,” said Adriana Harrington, managing director of policy at ExcelinEd, a nonprofit that has compiled nationwide data on credentials. “Folks will decide what (career and technical education) programs they want to offer by which credential they think they can get a student to pass.”

Educators did say they appreciated that students who may be poor test takers have another path to graduation, unlike other states where passing state tests is required. And they were glad more students were graduating. A high school diploma means more opportunities and better pay on average.

Still, they worry that schools are incentivized to push students to earn these credentials by state and district officials who want to see graduation rates continue to rise. Many of those credentials — like a popular one in ladder safety — have little value or relevance to students after graduation.

One Bright Ray Community High School's Elmwood campus on April 8, 2026. All but one of the school's 29 graduates last year used the "evidence-based" pathway to fulfill requirements.

It’s unclear whether students are any better off after they graduate because of these changes. Today, no one at the state or district level is analyzing which credentials students submit to meet graduation requirements. Many of the lawmakers who championed the requirements under a state law called Act 158, including former Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf, are no longer in office.

Erin James, press secretary at the Pennsylvania Department of Education, said the state works to ensure all graduation pathways are “equally rigorous.” She said students graduating via the evidence-based pathway can use credentials to “step directly into the workforce.”

“A ladder safety credential is not ‘low value’ if the student wants to be a firefighter or is doing an internship with a roofer. It may actually be required for that student’s job,” James said.

Philadelphia district leaders said they were not focused on analyzing credentials students use to fulfill requirements.

Adam Zeiser, principal of One Bright Ray’s Elmwood campus in Southwest Philadelphia, was blunt about the typical value of many of the credentials students use to fill the evidence-based pathway’s requirements.

“The short answer is, no, I don’t think they help prepare them for much,” he said. “But I think that we help prepare them, as much as we can.”

Pushing Philadelphia students towards credentials now routine

Since the state’s graduation overhaul, graduation rates have improved every year. Last school year, nearly 90% of Pennsylvania students graduated within four years, up two percentage points over three years.

The evidence-based pathway is one of five options students can use to fulfill graduation requirements. It’s quickly become the most popular one in many Pennsylvania districts.

Statewide, around 20,000 students met the requirements through the evidence-based pathway last school year, equal to around one-fifth of all students in districts where data was available. At some schools, more than three-quarters of students used this pathway to graduate, including at several cyber charter schools.

In Philadelphia, around 40% of all graduates fulfilled requirements via this pathway. At One Bright Ray’s Elmwood campus, all but one of last year’s 29 graduates used the evidence-based pathway, according to district data.

The other pathways largely require students to earn certain scores on standardized tests, or to be enrolled in a specific career and technical education program or pre-apprencticeship.

Several Philadelphia high school educators said that creates a simple problem: Many seniors can’t earn those high scores or access those career and technical education programs. But it’s a virtual guarantee students can pass the evidence-based pathway by submitting easy-to-earn credentials.

Many options for “evidence” can count towards the requirements, including a full-time job offer, a dual-enrollment credit, and an AP or IB score. But by far, the most common kind are industry-recognized credentials. Last year, in districts where data was available, 85% of students statewide who graduated via this pathway submitted at least one credential. Some met the requirements solely by submitting credentials.

Researchers have found some credentials do lead to better paying jobs, but they’re often the ones that are more expensive and difficult to get.

At One Bright Ray, Hawk said schools offer credentials in CPR, workplace safety, mandated-reporter training on how to spot and report suspected child abuse, and ladder-safety training. “If we had a really dedicated student, and they absolutely wanted (something else), we would find a way,” she said.

But for the most part, students don’t know of other options. And even if the school helped out a single persistent student access more costly options, doing so for all students is an expense that One Bright Ray can’t afford, she added.

Teachers at several Philadelphia high schools who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak about the issue publicly described similar challenges with the lack of funding and time.

One district teacher said the pathway system created “a host of work arounds that schools have to go through to get kids to graduate.”

Unlike dedicated career-and-technical education programs, for example, standard high schools don’t get money specifically to spend on credentials.

That’s part of why the ladder safety credential — a free, two-hour online course — is so popular, teachers said.

But even though many students take the ladder-safety course, teachers said they’ve had trouble persuading students that the course is truly worthwhile. How do you convince a teen who wants to be a cosmetologist, for example, that ladder safety will be a key step towards that goal?

Pennsylvania does not appear to be studying whether the new pathways have benefitted students, or if more credentials mean better outcomes for graduates. Philadelphia school district officials said they’re not tracking long-term data about the credentials students use to fill graduation requirements.

“I couldn’t answer why a certain school would give them ladder safety, if it’s not linked (to their interests),” said Michelle Armstrong, the district’s director of career and technical education. “But our advice has always been: the certification that you offer young people, try to align to their interest.”

Armstrong said the Philadelphia district consults with industry experts to determine which credentials to offer. For students in career and technical education programs, the district has spent decades ensuring students get credentials that are useful and pays for all of them.

But for students not in those programs, Armstrong said she’s not focused on monitoring which credentials students get. The district leaves that responsibility up to individual schools.

Graduation requirements create unequal burden for Pennsylvania schools

While thousands of Philadelphia students earned credentials to meet graduation requirements last year, they’re not dispersed evenly across the city.

At the city’s most-selective high schools, like Central and Masterman, nearly every student does well enough on state tests to use their scores to meet graduation requirements through test-related pathways.

But for schools where most students do not pass the tests, the alternative graduation requirements require hours of staff time to manage, explain to students, and track.

District data shows that at schools like Strawberry Mansion and Vaux Big Picture, more than three-quarters of students used the evidence-based pathway to fill graduation requirements last year.

State data obtained by Chalkbeat shows a similar trend. In some of the state’s highest poverty districts, like Chester-Upland and York City, the vast majority of students graduated last year via the evidence-based pathway. The majority of those students counted credentials towards the requirements.

But in some districts in Philadelphia’s wealthy suburbs, like Radnor Township and Upper St. Clair, almost no students graduate via the pathway.

Philadelphia teachers at non-selective high schools said the new requirements amount to an additional burden on schools and teachers who are already spread thin.

Some Philadelphia teachers said students get credentials in CPR to meet graduation requirements.

One charter school teacher said many students at his school make up failed courses through quick online credit-recovery programs that experts say are often suspect. Then, those students fulfill Act 158 requirements through additional and easy online modules.

It troubled him that students could get their diploma without meeting any academic standards the school set for them.

“I feel like we’re kind of just saying, you don’t have to learn anything to graduate,” he said.

But others said they saw some value in the new graduation requirements.

One district high school teacher said the requirements meant teachers at least had conversations with students about their plans. And he’s seen that earning credentials can boost students’ confidence.

He wished his school could offer students more mentorship programs and pre-apprenticeship opportunities.

“The idea of some of this is useful,” he said. “But they don’t always set a student up for their own pathway.”

Pressure is acute on high school students close to graduation

It’s not just Pennsylvania dealing with this issue, experts say. Across the country, the number of students earning credentials during high school has shot up as local and federal legislation supports training students for careers.

Studies of workplace credentials have found that many don’t result in more opportunities for those who earn them.

In one recent study of Texas students who earned credentials between 2017-2022, the most popular ones, by far, were credentials in Microsoft Word and “floral skills.”

Matt Giani, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the study’s lead researcher, said in an email that the findings show that “the way we’ve designed accountability systems has allowed schools to game the system and pump out short-term, online, open book, low-hanging-fruit certifications.”

Adam Zeiser, principal of One Bright Ray’s Elmwood campus, and Monica Hawk, One Bright Ray Community High School's CEO, say they support students in ways outside the state's graduation pathways to help them access college and careers.

Because Pennsylvania’s requirements are relatively new, it’s likely to be years before school leaders have any sense of whether Act 158 has meant students are more prepared or successful after graduation.

At One Bright Ray, a poster in the hallway of the Elmwood campus explains the different pathways. Staff check in regularly with students about how they’re progressing with the requirements.

But none of that eliminates the pressure to take the easiest route to a diploma.

“There are some students who are right up against graduation, they need one more piece of evidence,” Hawk said. “And they’re like, ‘let me just do ladder safety.’”

Rebecca Redelmeier is a reporter at Chalkbeat Philadelphia. She writes about public schools, early childhood education, and issues that affect students, families, and educators across Philadelphia. Contact Rebecca at rredelmeier@chalkbeat.org.

Is Memphis pulling too many students with disabilities from taking state standardized tests?

2026-03-30T12:00:00+00:00

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Tennessee education leaders say too many Memphis-Shelby County students with disabilities are being opted out of taking state standardized tests each year, stripping them of the ability to earn traditional high school diplomas.

Disability advocates caution that the increasing number of alternate test-takers is lowering expectations and future opportunities for students with disabilities. It also jeopardizes federal funding to Tennessee, which can trickle down to local districts.

Only students with “the most significant cognitive disabilities” are meant to take alternate versions of the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP, according to the state department of education. The federal government sets a cap for alternate tests at 1% of students in each state.

But MSCS leaders say the federal cap ignores difficult realities faced by the district.

In Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the figure of alternate test-takers is close to 2.4% – meaning just over 2,500 students take the modified test each year. That’s 1,500 more students than it should be, according to the federal cap.

MSCS Superintendent Roderick Richmond said the district is being “scrutinized” by the state for that discrepancy.

“People feel like disproportionately we have too many students being identified as having special needs,” he said in a district budget meeting earlier this month.

Tennessee education leaders can’t require local school districts to hit the 1% threshold. But when the state average exceeds that, the U.S. Department of Education can reject a state waiver and put conditions on Title I funding as it has for Tennessee in the past three years. The state’s percentage of alternate test-takers has hovered around 1.4% since 2017.

If Tennessee’s waiver keeps getting denied, there could be harsher funding consequences that would impact local districts, the Tennessee Department of Education said.

Plus, taking alternate state tests comes with significant consequences for students. They are taught a more limited curriculum, and can’t earn a traditional high school diploma, which stifles future job opportunities.

Karen Harrison, executive director of disability nonprofit TNSTEP, said over-identifying alternate test-takers sets up a “parallel system with lower expectations and fewer opportunities” for an already vulnerable population of students.

“What may begin as an attempt to support a student can, if misapplied, unintentionally restrict that student’s academic growth and future pathways,” Harrison said in an emailed statement.

That’s why districts need to be extra vigilant in following the qualification criteria, said Alison Gauld, manager of disabilities for the Tennessee Department of Education. Students who take alternate tests must have support needs that are “dramatically different” from their peers, she said in a 2024 presentation.

Richmond and other local officials argue that they are following state standards for identifying alternative test-takers. As the largest urban school district in the state, MSCS has high levels of students living in poverty and Black students, who are disproportionately diagnosed with disabilities.

“We’re being penalized for something that we can’t help,” said Shaunta Broadway, the district’s director of student support services, in the early March meeting. “If [students] are coming to us and they have to take the alternative assessment where they are, it’s going to be hard for us to get down to just 1% when they’re coming in at a rate faster than that.”

In an emailed statement, MSCS said its disability education staff meet with TDOE representatives every month to review progress in reducing the alternate test-taking numbers.

The district’s Department of Exceptional Education has also expanded training for all special education teachers and relevant administrators, who make the yearly assessments for who takes the alternative tests.

“Our goal is to increase students participating in the general education curriculum more than 80% of the school day and working toward a general education diploma,” the statement said.

The percentage of MSCS students taking the modified state tests increased from 1.9% in 2020 to 2.4% in the 2023-24 school year. It stayed steady in 2024-25, MSCS said in a statement. The district did not answer questions about what caused that increase.

But Angela Whitelaw, the district’s chief academic officer, said in the March meeting that she expects the percentage to increase this year.

“While our numbers aren’t extremely high, they’re much higher than the federal and state want them to be,” she said.

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

Should you red-shirt your kindergartner? A new analysis suggests it doesn’t help most students.

2026-03-24T04:15:57+00:00

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The practice of red-shirting — having students start kindergarten a year late — appears to have returned to historically normal levels after a post-pandemic bump.

And the students who started kindergarten late in the aftermath of COVID now perform similarly to their slightly younger classmates on standardized tests, according to a new analysis from the testing company NWEA.

The analysis released Tuesday comes amid ongoing concerns about the academic preparedness and progress of young students.

Separate studies by NWEA and other testing companies have found that students who weren’t even in school yet during the pandemic are struggling academically compared with their pre-COVID counterparts. The reasons are not well understood, and theories range from parental stress to missing preschool learning experiences to increased screen time.

Red-shirting refers to the practice of having children whose birthdays are near the cut-off date start kindergarten a year later. This makes them the oldest rather than the youngest students in their class and is widely believed to confer academic and athletic advantages.

Megan Kuhfeld, director of growth modeling and analytics at NWEA, said she wanted to find out if all the chatter about red-shirting in the media and in her social circles showed up in the data.

Kuhfeld discovered it did not.

Kindergarten readiness varies widely by income, new data shows. Cities are stepping in to help.

Most years between 2017 and 2025, a little less than 5% of kindergarten students started school a year late. (Another 1% to 2% were older than their classmates because they repeated kindergarten.)

The exception was the 2021-22 school year, when 6.4% of kindergartners started late. But that increase quickly subsided. Last school year, just 4.4% started late.

NWEA used data from three million kindergartners who took the company’s MAP growth assessment for younger elementary students. This sample comes from schools all over the country but may not be nationally representative.

The typical red-shirted student is a white boy who comes from an economically comfortable household. That hasn’t changed over time. Rural communities have the highest rates of red-shirting, and they saw the largest increase during COVID. Roughly 9% of rural kindergartners started late in the 2021-22 school year.

Students in high-poverty schools have the lowest rate of red-shirting but also experienced notable increases during the pandemic.

Asian American students have consistently low rates of red-shirting, and that didn’t change during the pandemic.

Students who start kindergarten late posted higher test scores in kindergarten than their younger peers, with the gap equivalent to 20% to 30% of a school year’s worth of learning, NWEA found. However, by third grade, that gap evaporates.

Kuhfeld said there could be a number of reasons for this. Teachers tend to teach toward the middle of the pack, and where they differentiate, they tend to focus more on students who are behind. Students who start out ahead of their classmates might also grow bored and not do as well later, she said.

“Holding kids back is not going to undo the COVID impact,” Kuhfeld said.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Parents and educators testify for CMAS assessment time review in hopes of finding ‘balance’

2026-03-17T01:11:54+00:00

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Teachers and students are overburdened by the amount of time the state requires them to spend on standardized testing.

That’s the message Senate Education Committee members heard on Monday from Colorado parents, teachers, superintendents, and school board members who testified in favor of Senate Bill 68, which would create a review committee to recommend cuts to testing time for students in grades 3-8.

After the three-hour hearing, the Senate Education Committee voted 4-3 to approve the bill. The bill will now head to the Senate Appropriations Committee. If approved, the bill will need to pass the full Senate and then House before it heads to the governor’s desk.

Kelly Jones-Wagy, a parent in Jeffco Public Schools and teacher in Cherry Creek School District, applauded lawmakers for approving the bill. She believes students, including her own, spend far too much time on state testing. The bill isn’t about ending school accountability but instead “lowering the amount of hours,” she said.

“The more time we take students out of classes,” Jones-Wagy said, “the more time we take them away from their teachers.”

State Sen. Chris Kolker, a Centennial Democrat and a sponsor of the bill, said he filed the bill over concerns from superintendents about the average time students spend on standardized tests.

The state estimates students in grades 3-8 spend about eight to 11 hours a year on required Colorado Measures of Academic Success, or CMAS, math and reading assessments. Meanwhile, high school students spend about three and a half hours on the PSAT and SAT.

The legislation, which has bipartisan support, was also sponsored by state Sen. Byron Pelton, a Sterling Republican, Rep. Eliza Hamrick, a Centennial Democrat, and Rep. Lori Garcia Sander, an Eaton Republican.

This marks a second attempt by Kolker to get the state to address this issue. He filed a bill in 2023 that called for a similar review. The bill didn’t pass, and lawmakers approved House Bill 1241 to create a comprehensive review of the state’s school accountability system.

The 1241 task force review yielded 30 recommendations, including a call to modernize the state’s CMAS exams.

The recommendations included offering the standardized test in Spanish as well as English, returning test results to teachers faster, and breaking CMAS into smaller sections. Lawmakers filed a bill last year to start the implementation of the recommendations. Some of that work is still underway, and another report on the state’s accountability system is expected in November.

The 1241 task force found a need to reduce testing time and discussed the potential for adaptive tests to accomplish that goal. The task force also left the recommendation open to further study.

Some lawmakers who voted against Senate Bill 68 bill, however, said they felt it was duplicative of the 1241 review.

A Colorado Department of Education official also testified that they believe the bill would be redundant. And a group of education advocates have mounted opposition to the bill, including FaithBridge, Ready Colorado, and the Colorado Children’s Campaign.

Teacher Tim Nelson, a former TeachPlus Colorado policy fellow who opposed the bill, said the CMAS test helps him guide instruction by honing in on what students should know. TeachPlus is a national nonprofit that trains teachers to advocate for policy change.

“Using that information, I redesigned lessons and planned new units of study to create more opportunities to practice,” Nelson said.

Supporters who testified in support of the bill included the Colorado Education Association, the American Federation of Teachers Colorado, the Colorado Association of School Boards, and the Colorado Association of School Executives.

Superintendents who testified in favor of the bill said parents have the ability to opt out of the grades 3-8 tests, but more parents might opt in if the amount of time spent on test taking was reduced.

And Harrison School District 2 Superintendent Wendy Birhanzel, who is also president of CASE, said the bill wouldn’t stop the state from administering tests or keep teachers from using them to inform instructions. She said tests are an important part of helping students learn.

“However, we must also be mindful of balance,” Birhanzel said.

More American students are attending private school. Why do so few take NAEP?

2026-03-13T10:52:00+00:00

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The National Assessment of Educational Progress is known as the nation’s report card. But as more students leave public schools, the test risks becoming less representative of the nation’s students.

Unlike public schools, private schools aren’t required to participate in the test, which is administered every two years to a representative sample of roughly half a million American students. Not enough private school students take the test to report distinct results for that group, even at the national level. Home school students aren’t included at all.

This isn’t a new problem — the last time NAEP reported separate private school results was 2013. But as more students attend private school or home school with public money, the significance of the information gap will only grow, NAEP governing board members and independent researchers told Chalkbeat.

“I see it as the most significant challenge facing the NAEP program in the medium term,” said Martin West, a Harvard University education professor and vice chair of the National Assessment Governing Board, “because it threatens our ability to speak with confidence about states’ success in supporting student learning.”

A dispute in Florida over the state’s 2024 NAEP results hints at a future where more states question the validity of their scores and where comparisons among states are trickier. When results were released in early 2025, Florida students’ performance had dropped to its lowest point in 20 years. Then-Florida Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr. wrote a letter to the U.S. Department of Education that blamed the decline, in part, on excluding private school students.

“This issue only stands to grow, as Florida has chosen a path that puts students and families before teachers unions and provides universal school choice,” Diaz wrote, before concluding with a call to “make NAEP great once again.”

Observers said the increase in Florida’s private school enrollment between 2022 and 2024 simply wasn’t large enough to account for the decline, but state education officials remain concerned.

Thomas Kane, a Harvard economist who frequently works with NAEP data, said “what happened in Florida in 2024 is a harbinger of the future as private school enrollment grows. It will become increasingly plausible for states to say that our public school results aren’t representative of our achievement.”

“If NAEP is the nation’s report card, then questions about private school achievement will become the dog that ate the homework,” added Kane, who is not involved in administering the test. “It will be a source of evasions and spin.”

Low private school NAEP participation leaves information void

NAEP is considered the gold standard in student assessment, a no-stakes test that allows reliable comparisons over time and between states.

The drop in NAEP scores after pandemic disruptions put the test in the public spotlight in a new way, fueling competing calls for greater investment in public schools — or more pathways out of them.

Congress intended for public and private school students to take the test, but federal law only requires public schools to participate in the main NAEP reading and math tests administered to fourth and eighth grade students.

Private schools make up about a quarter of American schools and educate about 9% of K-12 students, according to recent federal data. But a much smaller share of private school students take NAEP. In 2024, they accounted for about 1.3% of students who took the main tests.

Low participation means that NAEP doesn’t have enough data from private school students to report separately on how they perform. State results only reflect public school students in those states.

That lack of information already complicates state-by-state comparisons. The most recent national data shows private school students account for 15% of Wisconsin students and 13% of students in Florida, Louisiana, and New York, but just 2% of students in Utah and Wyoming.

Higher private school participation would allow their NAEP results to be reported separately at the national level and incorporated into state-level results. That could help answer questions about whether changes over time or differences between states are driven by the share of students in private school, West said.

It would take dramatically higher participation to report private school results separately at the state level. That’s not a high priority, West said, because NAEP data isn’t as useful for comparing the effectiveness of public and private schools.

Meanwhile, 1.2 million students participated in some sort of publicly funded school choice program in the 2024-25 school year, according to data from EdChoice, an advocacy group.

That’s still less than 3% of K-12 public school enrollment, but the numbers have surged in the last few years and are expected to continue to grow.

Private school leaders have mixed feelings about NAEP

Catholic schools participate at much higher rates than other private schools, and their NAEP results are reported separately. Catholic school students also showed some declines during the pandemic, but they have continued to post higher average scores than public school students.

“I’m not sure why people wouldn’t do it,” said Steven Cheeseman, president and CEO of the National Catholic Education Association. “The reality for us as Catholic schools is that we’ve always felt like it’s an important accountability measure.”

Michael Schuttloffel, executive director of the Council for American Private Education, said in an email that many private school leaders find the prospect of taking time out of the school day for a test that doesn’t directly benefit them “daunting.”

NAEP tries to minimize the burden on schools by handling all the logistics. Officials hope a Next Gen NAEP initiative can find ways to reduce testing burden further and make results more useful.

Some private schools also may have a “philosophical disposition against the idea of a standardized test — especially one administered by the federal government — being the principal measure of student learning or school success,” Schuttloffel wrote.

Schuttloffel said he shares that perspective, but added: “Nonetheless, knowing whether kids can read and do math is an important piece of the picture when we are trying to get our arms around what, and how well, our kids are learning.”

Ron Reynolds, who represents non-public schools on NAEP’s governing board, believes private schools are not only “shirking their responsibility” but also missing “a magnificent opportunity for private schools to tell their story writ large.”

The leaders of private school organizations are generally on board with administering NAEP, Reynolds said, but “the challenge is delivering the message effectively to school site leadership and inducing buy-in at the site level.”

A new report from the Bipartisan Policy Center calls for Congress to charge NAEP’s governing board with increasing participation across all school types. Reynolds said he would support making participation a condition of receiving money from the new federal tax-credit scholarship. While he would prefer not to see a mandate, public money brings with it certain responsibilities.

But parents likely would object strongly to mandates as federal meddling, Schuttloffel said.

Rob Enlow, the president and CEO of EdChoice, has used NAEP data to argue that public schools are failing students, but he sees less value in it for private schools. Parents and the public might learn more, he said, if those schools shared more data they already have.

If policymakers want more private school students to take NAEP, incentives such as automatic accreditation would be more appropriate than mandates, he said.

“Everyone says they want apples-to-apples comparisons, but we’ve had rotten apples for years and done nothing about it,” Enlow said.

Ultimately, the case for participating in NAEP is to contribute to reliable information and good policymaking, West said.

“It’s an appeal to the good of the nation or the quality of data we have for everyone,” he said.

The 2026 test administration is currently underway and expected to wrap up later this month. Results for math and reading are expected in early 2027.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Should students spend less time testing? Some Colorado lawmakers want a statewide review.

2026-02-28T01:14:20+00:00

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A group of bipartisan Colorado lawmakers want to reduce the time Colorado students in grades 3-8 spend on state standardized tests.

State Sen. Chris Kolker, a Centennial Democrat, said he talked to superintendents and principals across the state and heard complaints about the disparities in testing time among grades. The state estimates students will spend about eight to 11 hours on required Colorado Measures of Academic Success, or CMAS, math and reading tests. Meanwhile, high school students spend about three and a half hours on the PSAT and SAT.

The purpose of a bill Kolker is sponsoring, Senate Bill 68, is “to shorten the seat time for third through eighth graders on our CMAS,” he said. But the bill wouldn’t do that outright. Instead, it would set up a review committee to study the idea because he wants to get educator input about possible changes.

The bill is sure to add fuel to the ongoing debate about the state’s school accountability system and how it tests students. Kolker sponsored a similar bill about three years ago that failed.

Already, Colorado education advocacy groups have questioned the necessity of the new bill. The state is still in the midst of a comprehensive review of its school accountability system ordered by a bipartisan 2023 law, and some groups think that review should wrap up before lawmakers propose additional changes to standardized tests.

The so-called 1241 task force met for over 150 hours and dozens of meetings and created 30 recommendations, including a call to modernize the state’s CMAS exams. The recommendations included offering the standardized test in Spanish as well as English, getting test results to teachers faster, and breaking CMAS into smaller sections.

The implementation is still underway, with another bill approved in 2025 enacting or phasing in some of the recommendations while calling to further study others. The 26-member committee never recommended shortening exam times.

Kolker said his bill would create a separate 12-member review committee. He wants shorter tests that still meet federal requirements. The guidelines don’t say how long these tests should take, but mandates reading and math tests in grades 3-8 and at least once in high school.

Jamita Horton, who is the executive director of Teach Plus Colorado, said Colorado already tests students near the federal minimum requirements. Teach Plus Colorado is the state affiliate of a national nonprofit that trains teachers to advocate for policy change.

She said she understands the bill’s intent, but the 1241 task force didn’t tackle the testing times because it wasn’t viewed as a problem.. The teachers she works with aren’t as concerned about it, she said. (Teach Plus’ former executive director served on the task force.)

The state should instead build a better system that proves to families that tests are an important part of the classroom experience, she said. Recommendations from the 1241 task force seek to create less administrative burden and get usable information back to teachers faster. She doesn’t want the state to lose focus on that work.

“I think it’s important that we honor those conversations,” she said.

But Kolker said he hopes shorter tests could lead to fewer parents opting out their kids from the exam and cost savings because the state would spend less money on administering the tests. He said that would help the state during a time when it faces budget challenges.

He also has a personal tie to the bill’s goals. His daughter needs test accommodations, and she spends more time on average on exams than other students, he said.

For some students with disabilities, he said the test is “just a nightmare.”

Colorado Children’s Campaign also has expressed skepticism about whether this is necessary right now. The nonprofit organization advocates for policies that focus on helping kids.

Madi Ashour, the organization’s director of K-12 education policy, said standardized tests are important because they help educators and families understand where learning deficiencies exist among different groups of students.

“We did a lot of work to come to consensus recommendations. We’re still implementing and studying,” Ashour said. “I don’t know if it would produce a different result.”

Others disagree. Prairie School District R-11J Superintendent Chris Burr said he’s long been skeptical of the time spent on standardized tests and supports the review.

He said too much time passes between when the students take the test and when teachers get the results, making them unhelpful for targeting instruction. He’s skeptical about whether students should take the exams but certain the state can test students “in way less time.”

The bill is scheduled to be heard on March 9. Other sponsors include state Sen. Byron Pelton, a Sterling Republican, and state Reps. Eliza Hamrick, a Centennial Democrat, and Lori Garcia Sander, an Eaton Republican.

The downside of ending snow days

2026-01-29T15:45:00+00:00

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In New York City, and some other parts of the country, snow days are turning into a relic of the past. As snow buried New York over the weekend, the country’s largest school system shifted to remote learning on Monday rather than calling off school altogether.

Kate Gutwillig, a fifth grade teacher at P.S. 134 in Manhattan, said about 70% of her students showed up for virtual instruction. It proved challenging to quickly pivot to remote learning.

“You can’t teach these kids all these social norms on Zoom today,” she said. About half the students who logged in to her virtual classroom kept their cameras off. Gutwillig noted it has been years since the pandemic, when students were consistently on Zoom for school.

She largely did not cover new material since attendance was lower than usual. Instead, Gutwillig made time for her students to read independently, then delivered brief review lessons on how to write a conclusion to a literary essay and how to find the area of a rectangle with fractions. All things considered, she said, the day went well.

Research suggests that Gutwillig’s decision not to cover new topics was a wise one. A major 2014 study found that a small number of snow days did not have any noticeable effect on test scores. On the other hand, keeping schools open on snowy days when attendance was low did seem to harm learning.

This research points to the limits of replacing snow days with virtual instruction. At worst, doing so could backfire if teachers spend time covering new material when student engagement is low, as was the case in New York City. At best, it might be an opportunity for teachers to review prior topics, but not move forward with regular instruction.

The New York City Department of Education gave schools discretion over how to approach remote instruction, including introducing new content or focusing on review, according to teachers and principals. A spokesperson for the district said that teachers “thoughtfully adjusted content to meet the needs of their students in a remote environment.”

To study the effects of snow days, Joshua Goodman, now a professor at Boston University, examined a rich set of data on weather, attendance, and test scores in Massachusetts from 2003 to 2010.

Goodman compared test scores in years where there was more or less snow. A year with lots of heavy snow (days with more than 10 inches) had no effect. Yet math scores were lower in years with more days of moderate (4-10 inches) snow.

These counterintuitive results can be explained by how schools responded to different levels of snow. Heavy snow meant more snow days. Moderate snow meant more days when schools stayed open but attendance was sharply down, particularly among low-income students.

In other words, snow days did not seem to set students back much; missing regular school days due to snowy conditions did.

The takeaway is not that schools can close indefinitely without consequence, and Goodman did find some small negative effects of closures for high-poverty schools. But the study suggests that a few snow days won’t be terribly harmful because teachers figure out ways to adapt.

Yet when schools are open and a big chunk of students are missing, teachers are in a tough spot. Some may continue teaching new material, and then try to help students who missed the original lesson catch up. This creates a dual challenge, though: The makeup work isn’t quite as effective, and teachers’ time and energy is diverted from moving everyone else forward.

“Snow days, maybe surprisingly, are less disruptive than other forms of lost instructional time,” said Goodman. “Coordinating everyone being absent at once is actually easier to deal with than the messiness of other kinds of lost instructional time.”

Other studies have broadly backed up these findings. Individual student absences affect achievement more than schoolwide calendar changes. Some research has found that students also learn less when their peers are frequently absent, perhaps because that makes whole-class teaching less effective. (This could help explain some of America’s current achievement challenges at a moment when student absences have spiked.)

Although there doesn’t appear to be much or any research on the relatively new phenomenon of virtual snow days, the pandemic showed that remote learning was challenging for many students.

In New York City, parents, teachers, and students also reported technical glitches and disengagement on Monday. About 1 in 5 students didn’t sign on for virtual instruction at all. (Attendance was similarly low on Tuesday when schools reopened.) Manhattan mom Tiffany Rodriguez-Noel elected not to log her kindergarten twins on for remote learning due to their hyperactivity and speech delays.

“I wish they could just let a snow day be a snow day,” Rodriguez-Noel said. But she noted the experience was relatively smooth for her sixth grade son and she understands the desire to avoid missing an entire day of instruction.

With engagement and attendance sporadic, the research suggests that teachers shouldn’t feel bad about focusing on review during virtual learning days. This also offers guidance to state policymakers as they consider what should count toward instructional-day minimums. Virtual school days may be an opportunity to help a subset of students review old material, but they’re unlikely to move instruction forward in many cases.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

Test scores are down, but experts don’t know exactly why

2026-01-08T22:30:00+00:00

Welcome to Chalkbeat Ideas, a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Next week we have an online event with Education Department official Lindsey Burke. You can sign up to join here.

It’s hardly breaking news that American students are behind academically from where they used to be.

But the specifics can get lost in a haze of headlines and data points. To start the new year, I wanted to level-set on where we stand on learning loss and recovery — to unpack what we know and don’t know. To speak to this, I reviewed multiple pieces of testing data.

In sum: Test scores have been trending down for over a decade. There are some signs of recovery in math, but not many in reading. Learning declines are not a distinctly U.S. phenomenon and are not even limited to schoolchildren. Researchers are only just beginning to wrap their heads around the causes of this.

Confident claims about what’s going on here are unwarranted, though policymakers can’t wait for perfect evidence to act.

“We should resist the notion of trying to put our finger on the one thing we can change that will solve this problem,” says University of Virginia researcher James Wyckoff, who recently released a paper on declining achievement. “I think it really results from many things in and out of school.”

Here are some key takeaways from my review of the data.

Learning declines have been substantial and pervasive.

Consider one example from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP: In 2013, 74% of American eighth graders scored at the basic or above level in math, the highest figure since the test started in 1990. In the most recent round that number fell to 61%, hitting levels last seen in 1996. Scores have fallen in other grades and subjects, too.

Despite a small handful of relative bright spots, these declines have been remarkably widespread. Eighth grade math scores fell in almost every single state during this period; no states saw increases. Although schools that were closed longer during the pandemic tended to experience bigger declines, even those that quickly reopened have been hit hard by learning loss.

This trend started before the pandemic.

Test scores, particularly in math, had generally been marching upwards for a few decades until about 2013. Then a period of stagnation and decline hit. The aftershocks of the Great Recession on families and school budgets may have been an initial cause. Yet even by 2019 there was still no sign of recovery. Then the bottom fell out further after the pandemic.

Two groups have been hit hardest: low performers and girls.

On a wide variety of tests, starting before the pandemic, the gap between the lowest- and highest-performing students has grown. That’s not because high performers have surged ahead but because low performers have fallen further behind.

More recently, since the pandemic, girls’ scores have tended to fall more sharply than boys’.

Some good news: Math scores are starting to trend up again.

Every state with consistent testing data shows that more students are reaching proficiency in math now compared to 2021. Math results have also ticked up on the NWEA exam and on the fourth grade (but not eighth grade) NAEP. Still, most data indicates that these scores have not bounced back to pre-pandemic levels.

There’s been inconsistent recovery at best in reading.

Reading and math results have followed curiously different trajectories. On the most recent NAEP, reading scores actually fell even further. On state exams, reading achievement has been all over the map. Pennsylvania, for instance, has had solid recovery in math, but reading scores have kept sliding downward.

The U.S. is hardly alone in its achievement woes.

Many other countries are grappling with falling test scores too. This has shown up on an exam of 15-year-olds known as the PISA, as well as on the TIMSS, a math and science test of fourth and eighth graders. Relative to the rest of the world, the U.S. trends look a bit worse on TIMSS, but a bit better on PISA.

The U.S. is unusual in its sharply growing gap between highest- and lowest-performing students.

Also: Test scores may be lower among adults and very young children

Some data indicates that children who are just entering school are doing so with lower levels of readiness in reading and math. Another study of adult skills showed drops across the age distribution between 2017 and 2023 in literacy and numeracy.

This adds a new wrinkle. “Factors outside of school might play a considerable role” in learning declines, writes Nat Malkus of the American Enterprise Institute in a report from last year.

How concerned should we be? Pretty concerned!

When children know more, as measured on tests, they tend to lead more productive lives. Countries with higher test scores tend to see stronger economic growth. These scores are incomplete measures of students’ skills, but they do matter.

Test scores are not in entirely uncharted territory, though. A long-running test of 13-year-olds shows that math scores in 2023 were at the lowest point in recent decades but remain comparable to scores from the ‘80s and early ‘90s and higher than those in the ‘70s. Reading scores have dipped to levels last seen in the early 2000s.

So what explains all this? Researchers aren’t quite sure.

Two detailed analyses, by Wyckoff and Malkus, have tried to parse what is driving these trends. Neither concluded with definitive answers. “There is remarkably little understanding of the nature of either the sustained achievement gains prior to 2013 or the subsequent losses thereafter,” writes Wyckoff in his paper, titled “Puzzling Over Declining Academic Achievement.”

That said, it’s very likely that the pandemic and its associated disruptions to life in and out of school played a significant role. Another theory is that easing off school accountability pressure — which research found drove learning gains in the early 2000s — has contributed to recent score declines.

Perhaps the leading hypothesis is the proliferation of phones and screens, although Wyckoff notes that “direct causal evidence” on this question “is limited.” That’s beginning to change.

One recent study linked school phone restrictions to better test scores.

These learning challenges are not particular to American schools and may not even be largely caused by changes within schools. Yet they remain a challenge that schools and educators must confront.

I expect to be writing about potential ideas and solutions for these challenges throughout this year. Feel free to send yours to mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

Can better schools help address affordability?

2026-01-06T15:52:13+00:00

Happy New Year and welcome to Chalkbeat Ideas! This is a monthly ideas roundup. If you’re not signed up for the newsletter, you can do so here.

The debunking that wasn’t

A small corner of the internet briefly lit up last month when Columbia statistics professor Andrew Gelman suggested in a blog post that Mississippi’s much-discussed reading gains might have been artificially inflated by holding back struggling readers.

As avid readers know, I don’t think we fully understand the “southern surge” or “Mississippi miracle,” but this critique doesn’t make much sense. The key point, which I discussed in a 2023 piece, is that retained students eventually move forward and sit for standardized tests. Retention might explain short-run improvements but not the long-run gains seen in Mississippi. Kelsey Piper at The Argument also debunked the debunking. In a follow-up, Gelman partially walked back his initial post.

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More Memphis schools are passing the state’s report card. Here’s a closer look.

2025-12-19T19:45:32+00:00

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Memphis-Shelby County Schools earned higher marks overall on this year’s state report card, with more schools earning a C or higher and fewer earning Ds in the 2024-2025 school year.

But the number of schools earning the lowest grade, an F, stayed relatively stagnant from last year at 23 total. That’s around 11% of the district’s schools. In a press release Thursday, MSCS leaders celebrated one school — Rozelle Elementary, an arts-focused school in Midtown — for climbing from an F grade to a B in one year.

“These ratings provide a meaningful snapshot of how schools are serving students and where strong progress is emerging,” the district statement said.

This is the third year that the Tennessee Department of Education has released school letter grades in an effort to give parents more easily accessible data on school performance. But the grading system has faced backlash because of its focus on proficiency instead of student growth. MSCS leaders have said that emphasis disadvantages schools serving predominantly students from low-income families.

And as of 2023, the grades can mean consequences. Schools earning Ds or Fs could face state Board of Education hearings, be required to submit corrective action plans, or undergo a state audit.

About half of MSCS schools earned the same letter grade as last year, while one-third improved by at least one letter grade. Two-thirds of the district’s schools earned a C or higher, representing an almost 6 percentage point increase from the 2023-2024 school year.

Sixteen MSCS schools earned As, the same number as last year, which lags behind the state average of one in five schools earning the top grade.

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

What the internet backlash over remedial math at UC San Diego misses

2025-12-09T12:00:00+00:00

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An obscure university report has unleashed a cascade of criticism over high school grade inflation and university admissions standards.

Last month, a committee at the University of California San Diego described a sharp increase in the number of college students there who need remedial math, in some cases even below middle school levels. The report pointed to California’s decision to drop standardized tests from admissions and the increasing number of students from the state’s high-poverty public schools.

“Admitting large numbers of students who are profoundly underprepared risks harming the very students we hope to support, by setting them up for failure,” warned the 13-person committee of faculty and administrators. This report caught fire across the internet because to critics it represents something bigger: an example of lower standards in education and equity efforts run amok.

The learning declines in American schools are indeed alarming and present new challenges for colleges. I want to focus, though, on a specific claim in the report and many associated commentaries: that students with weak math scores are harmed by being admitted into UCSD.

In reality there is a significant body of research that suggests precisely the opposite, says Zachary Bleemer, a Princeton University economist who has studied University of California admissions extensively. “There’s no advantage to the student to being pushed into a less selective university,” says Bleemer. “Instead, you’re just taking away the advantages that a school like UC San Diego offers them.”

This suggests that selective universities like UCSD aren’t helping underprepared students by rejecting them, even though that might be the easier option for professors and administrators.

In one paper, Bleemer examined a policy from the early 2000s that automatically admitted students to certain UC schools, including UCSD, based on their high school class rank, without regard to their SAT scores.

At first glance, these good-GPA, low-SAT students, who were typically from high-poverty high schools, struggled in college. They had lower grades and were less likely to graduate than their UC peers.

But that’s not the right point of comparison, says Bleemer. The better question is what would have happened to those students had they not been admitted to a UC school. He was able to disentangle this by comparing them to an essentially identical group of students who just missed getting in.

Here the results flipped on their head: Attending a UC school increased students’ chances of graduating college on time by several percentage points and their early career wages rose by several thousand dollars annually.

This undermines the notion that students suffer if they are admitted to selective schools where they may have weaker preparation than their peers. In the context of affirmative action, this is often referred to as a potential “mismatch.” In another paper, Bleemer examined this directly. He found that banning race-based affirmative action in California hurt underrepresented students’ chances of earning a college degree as well as their income later in life. Again no evidence of mismatch — just the opposite.

A separate study of Bleemer’s looked at a more narrow access question. In 2008, UC Santa Cruz’s economics department set a GPA threshold for majors of 2.8. The likely logic here was understandable: Students who couldn’t manage even a B average in introductory economics weren’t well equipped to major in the subject. Yet Bleemer found that students who were just short of the GPA cutoff earned substantially less money in their early 20s as a result.

I’ve focused on Bleemer’s work because it’s on the UC system. Other research generally finds similar results.

Jack Mountjoy, an economist at the University of Chicago, studied students in Texas who were denied admissions to certain public colleges because their test scores were too low. Several years later, he found, those students were less likely to hold a degree and made less money compared to all-but identical students who barely reached the admissions threshold.

The students who did get in were typical high school graduates, not academic superstars. Some didn’t graduate or struggled in college. Yet overall their “outcomes are significant improvements over the typical trajectories these marginal students would have experienced had they been rejected instead,” writes Mountjoy.

Although there remains some debate about the mismatch theory, an overview from the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, acknowledged that in the undergraduate context “students are at least as likely to graduate if they attend more elite schools—indeed, often more so.”

The takeaway from these papers is the same: Limiting students’ access to colleges or courses because they are deemed underprepared does not seem to do them any favors. It actually just holds them back, at least in many contexts where this has been studied.

This makes sense. Selective colleges tend to have more resources, so may be better equipped to help students who need remediation. Students themselves are opting into these schools, so they apparently think it’s the best choice.

All of this is relevant to the current discussion over the admissions standards at UCSD and other selective schools. Obviously we want high schools to better prepare students academically. (I spend much of my time writing about how K-12 schools can improve.) But when students graduate lacking specific skills, as inevitably will be the case for some, colleges have to decide how to respond.

The UCSD committee recommends more aggressively screening out students who struggle in math. It also proposes scaling back the number of students from high-needs public schools. This figure has increased particularly sharply at UCSD recently and accounts for some of the rise in remediation.

The report emphasizes the university’s “limited instructional resources.” Yet less-selective public universities in the state tend to have even less funding than UC schools.

A spokesperson for UCSD did not make someone from the committee available for an interview and declined to respond to written questions.

For his part, Bleemer understands the preferences of faculty for fewer students who need extra help or who attended higher-needs high schools. “There’s nothing easier than teaching a class where everyone gets an A,” he says. (“I’m at a university that passes the buck. I should emphasize my own hypocrisy here,” acknowledges Bleemer, who teaches at Princeton.)

In competitive college admissions, there are many potential objectives for a school. Some applicants will always lose out. Faculty and staff at UCSD are free to make the case for whatever admissions standards they like. But we should be skeptical of the suggestion that students are being rejected for their own good.

Correction: A prior version of this story imprecisely described a study’s conclusion about the effect of attending a UC college. The study found that attending such a school increased students’ chances of graduating on time, not their chances of ever graduating college.

Matt Barnum is Chalkbeat’s ideas editor. Reach him at mbarnum@chalkbeat.org.

New Jersey 2025 state tests: Student performance improves statewide as Newark trails behind

2025-12-09T11:00:01+00:00

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Newark Public Schools students continued making gradual gains on standardized tests this year but still rank below statewide passing rates, according to new data released by the state last week.

A closer look at New Jersey’s largest school district shows improvements across the district and in certain schools and student subgroups — signs that local efforts to boost student skills in reading and math may be paying off.

The New Jersey Student Learning Assessments, commonly referred to as NJSLA, are administered annually in the spring for grades 3-9 in English language arts and math.

Statewide, just over half – 53% – of students passed the English language arts section, while 41% passed the math portion of the test, representing a nearly 1 percentage point increase from 2024. This year’s rate is still behind the 2019 proficiency rate of 57.6% by roughly 4.6 percentage points, according to the state’s analysis.

In Newark’s traditional public and charter schools – which are publicly funded but privately managed – less than half of the city’s students, 41.7%, passed the English language arts test, while 27% passed math this year, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

According to the new data, 34% of Newark Public Schools students passed the English language arts test – roughly a percentage point under the 2019 score – while 21% of students passed math. In spring 2024, 31% of students passed the English portion of the test, while 17.7% passed the math assessment.

Newark Public Schools regained control of its schools after 25 years of state oversight and has struggled to recover from the effects of the pandemic, particularly on students, where more than 90% identify as Black or Latino.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka in 2023 declared an urgent literacy crisis across the city as the district created a literacy plan that implemented new approaches to teaching phonics, explicit writing strategies, and professional development rooted in the science of reading.

During last week’s State Board of Education meeting, Education Commissioner Kevin Dehmer said the results represent an “important snapshot of student learning” across the state and “serve as a critical tool” for guiding the department’s “next steps.”

”Understanding where students are thriving and where additional support is needed will all help us in focusing our initiatives for maximum impact,” Dehmer said.

The new results come five years after the COVID-19 pandemic and mark the first time New Jersey students’ scores have returned to pre-pandemic levels in one subject: science. The rollout of a new adaptive state test this school year could also impact how students perform.

Dehmer, during the board of education meeting last week, cautioned that “statewide assessments are not the sole measure of success, but they are a valuable data point in our broader system of continuous improvement. They allow us to monitor progress over time, identify trends, and ensure that resources are directed where they can make the greatest difference.”

Statewide achievement gaps narrow among racial groups

Across the state, student performance increased in nearly all grade levels, showing how state and local efforts to boost student skills in reading, writing, and math have fared.

Gaps between the highest and lowest performing student racial groups in English language arts persist, but this year, they are the smallest they’ve been since 2016 at 43.4%, compared to 48.3% in 2022, state leaders said. In math, the gap grew to 56.6% in 2022 but dropped slightly to 55.2% this year.

In English language arts, Black students saw the highest increase — a 1.6% bump — from 2024, state officials noted last week. White students saw the second-highest performance increase at 1.4%, according to the state. In math, all student racial groups showed a 2% improvement or higher.

The state’s gradual improvements in test scores follow broader efforts aimed at strengthening how students learn and how schools measure progress.

This school year, New Jersey is introducing a new “adaptive” version of its standardized test where the difficulty of test questions is adjusted based on student responses.

The state also launched the new Literacy Framework this school year, which requires public school districts to screen students in grades K-3 for reading difficulties. In Newark, the city’s public schools are using Amira Learning, an AI-powered tool, as a universal screener to assess students’ ability to read, sound out words, and identify areas needing support.

The story continues after the data table.

Newark’s youngest learners make slow gains

In Newark, the state’s largest city, test scores show student performance gradually improving, especially among early learners.

Public school scores in English language arts went up across all elementary grade levels, but math scores, although improving, are growing at a slower pace than reading. Across the city’s public schools, 27.7% of third graders reached proficiency levels in English language arts, up from the 2024 rate of 23.4%, according to a Chalkbeat data analysis. Between 2022 and 2024, third graders scored the lowest in reading among all grades.

Third graders in two district schools exceed the state and district’s average in English language arts, including Michelle Obama Elementary School at 79.4% and Sir Issac Newton Elementary School at 54.8%, the Chalkbeat analysis found. A handful of Newark public schools scored below the state and district proficiency rate in the same subject, including First Avenue, Oliver Street, Belmont Runyon, Roberto Clemente, and Dr. E. Alma Flagg elementary schools.

Among charter schools, third graders in four schools — Maria L. Varisco-Rogers, Gray, Robert Treat, and North Star Academy Charter School — surpassed the state and district’s English language arts proficiency rate, according to the Chalkbeat analysis. Third graders at Marion P. Thomas, Roseville, and Team Academy charter schools scored below the state’s rate of 53%, but remained above the district’s average of 34% in English language arts.

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois State Board of Education extends timeline for public comment on school accountability overhaul

2025-12-03T20:38:25+00:00

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State Superintendent Tony Sanders is extending the timeline for the public to weigh in on the proposed overhaul of the state’s accountability system for schools.

In early November, the Illinois State Board of Education announced plans to change what data is used to categorize schools and to tweak the five labels used to define performance.

Sanders wrote in a weekly message on Tuesday that the Illinois State Board of Education will keep the current public comment window open until Jan. 7, instead of Dec. 7. There will also be opportunities for the public to weigh in on the proposal’s drafts between January and April.

Under the new timeline, state board members would discuss the final plan during the March board meeting and vote on new accountability metrics in April, instead of discussing the plan in December and voting in January.

The agency plans to send a final draft to the U.S Department of Education by April 17 under the extended timeline. The goal to implement the new system in October for the state’s 2026 report card remains the same.

“We cannot stretch the timeframe further without jeopardizing our federal approval, but we are happy to extend our schedule to make sure we get such a significant change right,” Sanders wrote.

The announcement to extend the state’s timeline comes after state board members and community members raised concerns about changes to the accountability system during the November board meeting.

Advance Illinois, a nonprofit state education advocacy organization, asked the state board to allow more time for public comment during last month’s meeting. A spokesperson for Advance Illinois said the organization “applauds” the Illinois State Board of Education for taking more time to get feedback because it is “critical that the agency get it right.”

“This system is a tool that represents the state’s commitment to transparency, equity, readiness, and continuous improvement,” the statement read. “Done well, it focuses schools, parents, and communities on important outcomes and indicators in a way that supports good practice, identifies areas of strength and/or concern, and prioritizes those schools that need specific resources.”

In November, the Illinois State Board of Education proposed changing the five labels used to assign schools. The new system would label schools as Exemplary, Commendable, Approaching, Developing, or Comprehensive.

The current proposal also removes the 9th Grade On-Track metric from the calculation used to label schools. This metric measures the percentage of first-year high school students likely to graduate based on grades. While this metric will continue to be reported on the state’s annual report card, advocates were concerned about removing it from the data.

The agency plans to host several virtual listening sessions on Jan. 15, Jan. 21, Feb. 11, and March 16 between 4-6 p.m., according to Sanders’ weekly message.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org

Would more emphasis on high-stakes testing help address America’s learning woes? Here’s what the evidence says.

2025-12-02T22:30:36+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

A striking wave of nostalgia is rippling through the education world these days.

A number of commentators and advocates have harkened back to the early aughts when test scores were rising and No Child Left Behind was the law of the land.

“This was an era when elected officials from both political parties came together around a reform agenda,” Harvard University professor Marty West said at a U.S. Senate hearing earlier this year. “That approach had plenty of critics and, as implemented, some real flaws, but it produced results.”

Federally imposed high-stakes testing kept the heat on schools, but after the repeal of No Child Left Behind, we’ve let them off the hook, say these accountability hawks. This is one reason, they argue, why test scores were stagnant before the pandemic and have fallen since.

To keep reading click here.

We’re still fighting about pandemic-era school closures — but do they still matter?

2025-11-13T22:47:41+00:00

Chalkbeat Ideas is a new section featuring reported columns on the big ideas and debates shaping American schools. Sign up for the Ideas newsletter to follow our work.

In the fall of 2020, many school systems remained closed for in-person instruction citing concerns over the still-raging COVID-19 pandemic. Some did not fully reopen until the following school year.

It was an unprecedented decision that sent political, societal, and educational shockwaves that are still rippling. This was intensely debated then and continues to be a source of scrutiny now. Studies have found that schools that stayed closed longer experienced greater drops in student test scores.

Is that still true? In short, yes, though the lasting effect is smaller than might be suspected considering the large role school closures continue to play in the American psyche and in our politics.

Read the rest of the story here.

NYC’s digital SHSAT debut goes smoothly for most test takers

2025-11-13T22:18:51+00:00

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For the first time, the Specialized High School Admissions Test went digital this year, and the transition went smoothly, Education Department officials said.

Of the roughly 19,500 eighth graders who took the exam Wednesday at their middle schools, just four, so far, will be taking the test this weekend or next week due to a technical issue with extended time accommodations, officials said.

“We’re pleased to report that the shift to digital SHSAT testing on Wednesday was successful,” Education Department spokesperson Isla Gething said in a statement. “There were no citywide or schoolwide issues and we are working with schools to address the small number of technical issues that arose.”

The Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, is the sole basis of entry for eight of New York City’s top high schools, including Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. Students at all standalone middle schools could take the test in school on Wednesday. Eighth graders at 6-12 schools, charters, and private schools will be able to take the test at central locations this weekend. (Ninth graders can take the test on Nov. 22 or Nov. 23.)

Students with disabilities who have extended time to take the test ran into some glitches at Manhattan’s M.S. 104, also known as Simon Baruch middle school. The test clock said these students had three hours for the test — but it should have said six hours.

After about 20 minutes of trying to troubleshoot, someone from the Education Department told the school to reset the exams to correct the timer, according to a letter sent to parents. That took about an hour.

“The students were obviously frustrated by this,” wrote Principal Chris Comparetto in the letter. “I know how important this exam is for families and how much time and effort goes into it.”

He offered the students the option to restart the test or take it on Nov. 18. (Three students opted for the make-up day, he noted.) Comparetto told families that the same issue happened at more than 15 Manhattan middle schools.

Comparetto did not respond to questions from Chalkbeat.

Many students spend months studying for the exam, with some families paying thousands of dollars for tutors or classes to help them prepare. The city approved a contract for the new exam last school year. Before the test, the Education Department provided middle schools with a 45-minute digital SHSAT “readiness” activity so students could practice logging on, confirm accommodations, and navigate the new online features.

Some studies have found that students in general tend to perform worse when taking tests on computers and tablets. But the research is not definitive, experts have told Chalkbeat.

Most students are accustomed to taking exams digitally, however. Students take MAP assessments online three times a year, and all students in grades 3-8 by this spring will be taking computer-based state reading and math tests.

Next year’s SHSAT is expected to be computer-adaptive, meaning that the level of difficulty of subsequent questions changes based on a test-taker’s responses. (This year’s test was not computer-adaptive.)

Last year, 25,933 students took the SHSAT, and 4,023, or 15.5%, received offers to the eight selective schools, according to Education Department data.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana is a step closer to a new grading system for schools. Here’s the latest draft.

2025-10-15T18:30:19+00:00

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State education leaders want to measure schools by what students achieve, not punish schools for what students don’t. And they want to grade schools on more than test scores.

A second draft of an accountability system for Indiana schools was presented to the State Board of Education by Indiana Department of Education officials on Wednesday. The board has until the end of 2025 to approve the new framework, per state law, and is expected to vote on a new framework at its Dec. 10 meeting. Schools would receive grades no later than December 2026.

The proposed grading system assigns points to students based on their academic mastery, measured through test scores, and gives them additional points for other knowledge, skills, and experiences that state education leaders say students need for future success. That includes earning workforce credentials and skills like work ethic and communication and collaboration.

Each student’s overall score is then averaged with other students for a school’s overall grade. Schools are not docked additional points for students who don’t pass tests or master specific skills. Schools receive a letter grade based on a scale of zero to 100 points, with 90 points and above graded as an A and 59 and below as an F.

The blend of academics and skills in the proposed accountability model is the biggest change from previous models, and one that board members and Indiana’s education chief defended during the meeting, saying there are some people who want Indiana to focus just on academic mastery.

“There are other things that matter as well, and this is representative of what we’re really driving towards,” said Katie Jenner, Indiana secretary of education.

She said the new model would prioritize academic mastery and skill development, and stressed that “academic mastery, assessment and accountability matter in Indiana, regardless of what the federal government does or does not do.”

“For people in our country who think that if we have all humans take a test and if they pass or not that determines their success, you are fooling yourself because there are leaders in seats all over our country who probably couldn’t pass the test,” Jenner said. “We have to see the full human picture.”

School grading framework focuses on individual students

Indiana schools have not been graded since 2018 due to changes in state testing and the pandemic. In 2022, Indiana created the Graduates Prepared to Succeed dashboard that includes a profile of each school, but not a single grade. But some families found it too complex. So officials also want the new accountability system to be transparent and easier for people to understand.

By assigning scores to each student first, the proposal incentivizes schools to work with individual students to increase their school grade, instead of focusing on increasing the average of one metric, said Ron Sandlin, chief innovation officer for the state education department, who presented the draft to the board on Wednesday.

That approach to maximizing outcomes for every individual student is a “fundamental shift,” he said.

Overall, the second draft of the accountability model is largely similar to the first draft officials presented to the state board in June. Students who are proficient in a subject on a state exam earn points, but so do students who are approaching proficient – just a lower amount.

However, it does include additional opportunities for students to earn points based on work that schools are already doing to help students who are not reaching milestones.

For example, a student who is deemed to not be where they should be academically in ninth grade, but is able to get back on track in 10th grade would earn points to reflect the work the student and school did. Points are also earned for students who are identified at risk for not passing IREAD as second graders, but pass the test in third grade.

The proposal awards points for the readiness seals in the new high school diplomas. But it also includes a way for students to earn points for the old high school diplomas, as schools transition students from one diploma format to the other.

State education board member Kristin Rentschler said she works with students on a daily basis as a social studies teacher, and while school accountability frameworks are not something students think about, this draft would shift the conversation that educators have with students.

Specifically, it would give hope to students who struggle with test taking because educators can say “that’s not the only thing you are being measured on kiddo,” Rentschler said.

Next up is a public comment period before the final draft in December. An online public comment period is now open through Nov. 17. A public hearing for feedback will be held at 11 a.m. on Nov. 17 in the history reference room at the Indiana State Library, 315 W. Ohio St. in Indianapolis.

MJ Slaby oversees Chalkbeat Indiana’s coverage as bureau chief. Contact MJ at mslaby@chalkbeat.org.

Math gaps narrowing, but reading scores remain stagnant, new research shows

2025-10-14T04:02:00+00:00

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U.S. students are doing slightly better in math, and test score gaps that widened in the aftermath of the pandemic are narrowing, according to new data from testing organization NWEA.

But reading scores remain stubbornly stagnant, reflecting a concerning trend on other major national tests.

The data released Tuesday comes from MAP Growth Assessments given three times a year to more than 7 million students in grades three through eight in 20,000 schools.

These students attend schools that choose to give the MAP test, while students who take the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, reflect a statistically representative sample. The MAP data comes from the 2024-25 school year, while the most recent NAEP results come from spring 2024. NWEA weighted the results for students from certain subgroups to ensure the results were more representative.

The results add to our understanding of student academic progress — or lack thereof — in the wake of COVID disruptions and other societal changes, such as the increase in children using tablets and cellphones.

In math, student performance has steadily improved since the low point of 2021, though most students are still performing below their pre-pandemic counterparts.

Gaps in math test scores based on race and ethnicity as well as household income remain large but appear to be narrowing. For example, the gap between students at high-poverty schools and the national average in third-grade math shrank by about a third from spring 2021 to spring 2025. The gap for Hispanic students in third-grade math shrunk by about 41%, while the gap for Black students was about 27% smaller.

In each case, students in those groups made more progress than students in other groups instead of the gaps narrowing because some students did worse.

In reading, scores remained near their low points in 2021 for all groups and for most grade levels. Only eighth graders showed slight improvement from the previous school year.

In the immediate aftermath of school closures, math scores took a bigger hit than reading, but in the years since, math has shown improvement, while reading scores have remained stagnant or on some tests even declined further.

Researchers aren’t entirely sure why. Math learning may be more responsive to classroom intervention, while reading recovery may be hampered by trends outside the classroom, including the effects of technology on attention.

Gaps between high- and low-performing students started to widen before the pandemic, but COVID disruptions appear to have accelerated the trend. Recovery has been slow, with data from other assessments showing even students who weren’t in school yet during COVID closures struggling.

Third-grade students who took MAP tests last year entered kindergarten in fall 2021.

Karyn Lewis, vice president of research and policy partnerships at NWEA, said the results reflect “something systemic about education has changed.”

“This speaks to the lingering impacts, the shock to the system as a whole,” she said.

Correction: This article has been updated to reflect the correct year that last year’s third graders entered kindergarten.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica atemeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Mamdani wants to rethink gifted and talented in NYC. The program has already seen big shifts.

2025-10-10T23:33:20+00:00

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Mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani reignited the debate over New York City’s gifted and talented system earlier this month when he signaled his intention to shake up the program by eliminating admission for kindergartners.

The gifted programs, which enroll nearly 18,000 elementary students across 140 schools, have long been a lightning rod for questions about diversity, fairness, and academic achievement. Roughly 2,500 students are currently admitted in kindergarten and remain in separate classes or schools through fifth grade.

Both of Mamdani’s opponents, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent, and Republican Curtis Sliwa, quickly countered with proposals to preserve and expand gifted classes. And on Friday, four lawmakers from southern Brooklyn introduced state legislation that would require the city’s Education Department to expand gifted programming.

Lost in the recent political volley: New York City’s gifted and talented system has already changed in recent years, with a meaningful increase in the number of Black and Latino students, children from low-income families, and students with disabilities.

Those demographic shifts are the result of a move from a test-based admissions system to one based primarily on teacher recommendations, along with Mayor Eric Adams’ administration opening dozens of new gifted and talented programs starting in third grade in underserved areas.

The changes have opened gifted education to a much wider swath of students, but also have created new challenges for schools that have long enrolled a much narrower range of students, some educators and parents said.

The gifted system’s trajectory under Adams also shows the challenges of growing: Many of the new third-grade gifted classes struggled to attract enough applicants, forcing schools to backfill the open seats with students who didn’t formally apply, according to a Chalkbeat review of city data and Education Department officials.

Mamdani’s proposal, which would preserve classes that start in third grade, seems to be sparking discussion within the city Education Department.

Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos told families at a Staten Island parent town hall on Monday that she’s “concerned” about the current admission process, and that the Education Department in recent days has started talking about possible changes.

How to structure the program is a challenge that has vexed multiple city mayors. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio in the final months of his tenure proposed eliminating separate gifted classes altogether, but Adams halted that plan.

“It’s a really important problem to solve, and a really hard one too,” said Tamara Sussman, a parent of a Queens student in a gifted program. It requires “balancing an equitable education with one that feels challenging and appropriate.”

From testing to recommendations: A more diverse gifted and talented

The city’s gifted programs long relied on standardized exams administered to 4-year-olds to determine admission, with roughly a quarter of test-takers qualifying for a spot in 2019.

Under the teacher recommendation system, which launched during the pandemic, that equation shifted dramatically. Last year, 85% of applicants to gifted programs were deemed eligible.

At River Park Nursery School on the Upper West Side, Director Maria Nunziata estimates around 80% of her preschool families apply for gifted spots — and she recommends virtually all of them.

“Every child brings to us some kind of gift and talent,” she said.

In other parts of the city, far fewer students even apply. Just 76 students from the Bronx’s District 9 applied last year, compared to 718 students from Upper West Side’s District 3, even though the latter district has 5,000 fewer students.

With far more eligible students than available seats, the city gives first priority to siblings of existing students. Some schools also set aside seats for students from underrepresented groups. The remaining seats are determined by a lottery.

Under the test-based system, children had to score above the 90th percentile to qualify for the vast majority of programs, which are separate gifted classes within neighborhood schools.

To be eligible for one of five standalone gifted schools — including New Explorations into Science, Technology and Math; Talented and Gifted School for Young Scholars; and The Anderson School — students had to score above the 97th percentile.

But the test helped drive sharp racial and economic segregation: In 2020, the last year it was administered, just 12% of kindergartners in gifted programs were Black or Latino.

After the city nixed the test, the demographics began to change.

In the 2023-24 school year, 30% of kindergartners in gifted programs were Black or Latino, officials said at a recent City Council hearing. The share of students from low-income families in gifted programs citywide rose to 47% last year, up from 34% in 2019, according to Education Department data.

“We are proud to host increasingly diverse [gifted and talented] classes that reflect the diversity of our city,” said Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle, who noted that the city also incorporated the gifted application into the normal kindergarten application to streamline the process for families.

A changing population brings new possibilities and challenges

Some parents and educators say the admissions changes have opened access to students with learning disabilities who would have been screened out by the test but nonetheless benefit from an accelerated program. Citywide, the share of gifted students with disabilities rose to 5% last year from 3% in 2019. (About 22% of students citywide have a disability.)

At Talented and Gifted School for Young Scholars in East Harlem, “taking away the test made it so we attracted students who were more neurodivergent,” said Elaine Tang, a special education teacher. The school recently opened its first classes with both a special and general education teacher.

“It’s kind of forced us to question: What does it mean to be gifted anyways?” she said.

She noted the school’s proficiency rates on state tests had remained in the high 90s. (Across all five standalone gifted schools, reading and math proficiency rates on state exams were in the mid-to-high 90s last school year, with little change from past years.)

As a wider set of students are now eligible for gifted seats, however, several parents and educators said some programs are straining to accommodate students with a broader range of academic abilities.

“Children feel like there’s something wrong with them when really they’re not ready for a curriculum that’s a year past their grade level,” said one staffer at a gifted program, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

At New Explorations into Science, Technology and Math, some parents are also noticing differences.

“When you go into the classroom, it’s louder,” said one parent who has two children who attended the school, one of whom was admitted after the new admissions changes went into effect. “It’s a stark contrast to when I used to go for the older one. They could sit. They could pay attention more. They could keep up.”

Other educators wondered whether pandemic disruptions have also altered students’ academic readiness and behavior.

“It’s hard to pull apart how it would have looked if none of these kids had been learning at home for the first half of their elementary experience,” said Leigh Ercole, who teaches fourth and fifth graders in the gifted program at Manhattan’s P.S. 165.

She continues to believe in the importance of having a gifted track, but would like to see an admissions overhaul.

Ercole believes the city should use a mix of teacher nominations and other assessments to measure whether students are prepared for gifted classrooms. Students should be universally screened to ensure everyone has a fair shot at admission, she said, adding that at a previous job in the Bronx, she saw few parents who knew about gifted programs.

“I don’t think the answer is to say, ‘No one is gifted,’” she said. “I think it’s going to do a disservice to students in the city.”

Sussman, the Queens mom, said her children, both of whom attended a gifted program at P.S. 150Q, benefited from math instruction that moved at a faster pace. But she was open to other methods of providing accelerated instruction, including “schoolwide enrichment” models.

Those programs provide accelerated opportunities for students based on their strengths and interests without tracking them into separate classrooms. An advisory group under de Blasio proposed schoolwide enrichment as a replacement for gifted tracks.

Ultimately, Sussman agreed with Mamdani’s plan to phase out gifted programs for kindergartners.

“It is really young to start dividing kids,” Sussman said.

One study finds NYC gifted programs boost learning

Amid heated debates about gifted education, there is limited research on a basic question: Do the programs boost student learning?

One study focused on New York City suggests the answer might be yes.

A group of University of Pennsylvania researchers found that the city’s gifted programs appear to significantly increase state test scores — with some of the largest gains among Black and Latino children. Still, strong students who did not attend gifted programs still performed well, suggesting they were unlikely to be harmed if they didn’t attend.

A separate review conducted by the city’s Education Department was less conclusive. “There is no clear trend or indication that G&T enrollment is associated with student achievement,” according to an analysis of math and reading scores obtained by Chalkbeat through a public records request. (Both studies were conducted when the city relied on the admissions exam.)

Allison Roda, an associate professor at Molloy College who has studied the city’s gifted program, emphasized that there is enormous variation in how they are implemented.

“There isn’t a standard curriculum and so you might get enrichment, you might get acceleration,” she said. “It really depends on the school district and the teacher.”

Moreover, New York City’s approach of diverting gifted students to separate schools and classrooms starting as early as kindergarten makes it an outlier nationally. Tang, the Manhattan gifted teacher, taught in three New Jersey districts before moving to the city and never saw standalone gifted classes.

Separate gifted programs in the suburbs are “very rare,” she said. “I think we have to wonder why that is.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael atmelsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex atazimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

NYC high school applications: Your essential guide to navigating the admissions process

2025-10-07T17:30:09+00:00

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The clock is ticking.

New York City’s high school applications opened Tuesday, giving families of eighth graders two months to sort through 700 programs at 400 schools across the five boroughs.

Navigating the process often requires time and savvy to sign up for tours and open houses and figure out what might be the best fit for your child. And not to stress out families even more, but if you’re only starting now, you’re a bit behind. Tours started in September. Open houses at many schools have already filled up.

“Don’t wait for a counselor or PTA meeting; or a DOE information session to start your research,” said Laura Zingmond, senior editor at InsideSchools, a free resource that offers nuanced reviews of schools across the city. “Exploring schools should be your main focus throughout October and November.”

Applications are due Dec. 3, and offers are expected to be sent by March 5, 2026.

Families might have their make-or-break criteria: Do they want their kids to stay local or can they commute more than an hour each way? Is a volleyball team a must-have? Do they want a school with a strong robotics program?

But a family’s wants or needs aren’t the only factor given the level of competition for certain schools, many of which screen students based on GPAs from seventh grade.

With such a labyrinthine admissions process, many families are hungry for information and often seek help from their school’s counselors, other parents, or even through paid consultants.

“NYC high school admissions are citywide, but support is hyperlocal and uneven,” Zingmond said. “Knowing the rules and deadlines is only half the battle.Figuring out which schools to apply to is the real work.”

Chalkbeat talked to experts with years of experience helping families to help make sense of the process, and provide insights on what questions to consider when ranking schools.

New York City has lots of selective programs with different entry requirements

The city is home to more schools that screen students based on academic performance than other large school districts nationwide.

Roughly 120 programs “screen” students based on seventh grade GPAs in core subjects. About two dozen also use essays and interviews. Roughly two dozen programs require auditions. Eight schools base admissions solely on the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, and the application process for these schools, along with LaGuardia High School, is completely separate from the rest of the process.

About 45 schools are part of the city’s “Diversity in Admissions” program, setting aside a portion of seats for students from low-income families, English learners, or other underrepresented groups. Schools also set aside a certain number of seats for students with disabilities.

You can rank an unlimited number of high school programs, but make an ‘informed list’

Like last year, families can rank an unlimited number of schools on their list.

To help build those lists, families should understand their child’s “random” number, often referred to as a “lottery” number. Their child’s “tier” also can help families understand their odds at certain selective schools, with children in tier 1 having a better chance. (The tier cutoffs were tweaked slightly this year, with tier 1 for students in the top 15% of their school’s eighth graders or with a GPA above 94.33 in seventh grade core classes.)

“The hardest part of admissions is the research,” said Joyce Szuflita, a consultant with NYC Schools Help. “Reaching beyond the usual suspects is a challenge for even the most experienced and energetic families.”

While specific school names or interests can help students identify schools, many 12- and 13-year-olds don’t have a deep interest yet, she said. They just want “a nice normal well-rounded school.”

MySchools includes a helpful applicant-to-offer ratio for general education students as well as for students with disabilities. For example, Eleanor Roosevelt High School, a coveted school on the Upper East Side that gives priority to families living in Manhattan, had 29 applications per seat for general education students, and six applications per seat for students with disabilities.

MySchools also shows your odds of getting into various programs.

Once your MySchools account is active and complete — along with your child’s grades sorted into the “tiered” groups for screened schools, ED Opt group (needed for certain schools), and random number — you will be able to see up to three bars, showing whether you have a high, medium, or low chance of getting into a particular program.

While it’s fine to list programs that show a low likelihood of getting in — no matter what order you rank them — Szuflita advises families to have at least three programs showing a high likelihood somewhere on your list “to make sure that you get a placement from the schools you prefer.”

Go on NYC school tours — and take your child when possible

Many middle schools know their eighth graders might miss class for high school tours, and some schools organize their own tours. It’s not always easy to get time off of work for school visits, but experts agree that it can be helpful to see schools in person.

Pamela Wheaton, a co-founder of InsideSchools who now runs School Scout NYC, suggested buddying up with other families to spread the work, sharing information and offering to take their child on tours when you can and vice versa.

“There’s nothing like seeing a school in action and getting a feel for the building and vibe, as well as the commute,” Wheaton said. “I look at the work on the walls and also the bulletin boards which list upcoming activities. You get such a good sense of the school’s energy.”

Consider schools a little out of your comfort zone — and cover your bases

That’s the advice Szuflita gives to families.

“If your child has only been in small progressive schools, consider something a little bigger and more traditional or vice versa,” she suggested. “Many parents feel like if it is not broken, don’t fix it, but if your child can potentially do well in a different environment, a view of a wider world (different population, commute, size, pedagogy) is as much a part of their education as the subjects they will be studying.”

The variety of experiences, she said, can help provide students with insights into their strengths and preferences when considering their next steps to college and beyond.

Wheaton advises families to cover their bases if their child has an arts talent or is willing to prep for the SHSAT.

“That way they will have more chances at acceptances and may end up being able to choose between several schools,” she said, adding “There are a few good charter high schools too and that gives yet another option.”

Don’t dismiss the academics at arts programs

Parents of very academic — and talented — kids might think that schools requiring auditions don’t focus enough on academics or that such schools might not be a good fit for a college-bound kid who isn’t interested in an arts career.

But that’s not so, Wheaton said.

“Many audition schools offer excellent academics and are a good place for kids to excel in both,” she said. “Taking arts classes leads to a well-rounded college applicant and helps students become more focused and happy.”

A lot of schools have gender imbalances

Families are often surprised to learn that many programs have significant gender imbalances. Arts programs, for instance, skew female, while tech-focused schools skew male.

Roughly 17% of the city’s high schools were at least 65% male or female, meaning boys outnumbered girls 2 to 1 or vice versa, a 2023 Chalkbeat analysis found.

“It may not make a big difference for some students, but it is something that is worth being aware of when looking at school culture,” Szlufita said.

There’s more to a school than its graduation rate

A high graduation rate might not translate into a strong academic program, Zingmond said. She’s talked to families at schools that don’t offer physics or their children have to take language or advanced courses online. There are also a lot of great career and technical programs, but at some, not many students graduate with the CTE endorsement, she said.

Zingmond’s preferred metric to look at: the College and Career Readiness, or CCR, rate, which takes into account how students do after four years at the school in terms of their grades, advanced courses completed, and certifications earned for CTE schools. She advises to look for schools that have a College and Career Readiness rate at or above the citywide average of 52%.

“And yes, there are plenty of schools that don’t screen for grades with strong academics reflected in good CCR scores,” she said, noting that InsideSchools includes the stat on all high school profile pages.

Parents and students: Double-check your application

Some parents may not realize that they can apply separately to different programs at one high school, Wheaton said.

“If there’s a school you really like, apply to as many of the programs as makes sense for your child. It will improve their chance of acceptance,” she advised.

Zingmond’s main advice: Seek help.

“Everyone — parents and students — needs help,” she said. “Talk to your counselors and families in your community. Check out school websites; attend open houses and borough fairs.”

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Newark Public Schools’ state test scores near pre-pandemic levels in English language arts and math

2025-10-07T10:00:01+00:00

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Newark Public Schools students inched closer to pre-pandemic levels on statewide assessments this spring, with English language arts and math scores up by roughly 3 percentage points over last year, according to a district analysis presented last week.

On average, 34% of district students in grades 3 to 9 passed the English language arts test – roughly a percentage point under the 2019 score – while 21.1% of students passed the math test, according to the district’s overview of spring 2025 New Jersey Student Learning Assessment scores. In spring 2024, 31% of students passed the English portion of the test, while 17.7% passed the math assessment.

Former English language learners continue to be the highest performing subgroup across all student populations in English language arts, according to the district. The results indicate that Newark students are continuing to recover from pandemic-era learning disruptions, but the majority are still falling short of state standards. In recent years, district leaders have bolstered tutoring, summer and Saturday school efforts, and introduced a new reading and writing curriculum to help further students’ academic recovery.

The new scores come five years after the emergence of COVID-19 and are the fourth round of tests given to students since then. They also coincide with the district’s fifth year of local control, following 25 years of state oversight of Newark’s public schools.

The state Education Department has not yet released statewide scores publicly. Newark’s analysis is based on state test results given to school districts ahead of time.

Newark’s scores this year are in line with national trends, said Superintendent Roger León, during the September board meeting when scores were presented.

“Students who are in the older grades are able to demonstrate better recovery than the students that are in the younger grades, and English language arts is moving a whole lot faster than the area of mathematics,” León added.

Students who were in grades 5 and 6 in 2020 may need about five years to fully recover, and even longer for those entering eighth grade or high school now, according to the Northwest Evaluation Association, a nonprofit that develops assessments to measure K-12 schools’ student achievement. Students from different racial and ethnic groups, such as Black and Latino, and low-income backgrounds were among the hardest hit by the pandemic’s effects. In Newark, more than 90% of students identify as Black or Latino.

The results are filled with “bright spots” but “do not eclipse the real work that we still have to do,” said Rochanda Jackson, executive director of the Office of Data and Research, who presented the scores last week.

Of the district’s roughly 41,000 students, 3,892 students moved up at least one proficiency level in English language arts since last year, while 3,225 did so in math, according to the district’s analysis.

Students who stayed enrolled from third to fourth grade and seventh to eighth grade saw their average pass rate increase between 2 and 2.5 percentage points, Jackson added. Those who stayed enrolled from fourth to fifth grade and from fifth to sixth grade saw a 3 percentage point increase, while students from sixth to seventh grade saw the largest gain at nearly 8 percentage points, Jackson said.

“These seventh graders were babies in the pandemic. In 2020, they were in the second grade. They spent nearly two years getting foundational math knowledge and virtual classroom experiences they didn’t know,” Jackson added.

Since students began taking the state test after the pandemic, all grades have seen steady growth in English language arts, Jackson said. In 2019, just under 35% of Newark students reached proficiency levels in English, while about 24% of students did so in math.

In comparison to last year, scores in English language arts went up across all elementary grade levels, Jackson said. Students’ math skills are also improving, but more slowly than English language arts, according to the district’s analysis.

As the district continues to work on students’ academic recovery, Jackson said that “with time, rigor, and consistency,” the district can “change the trajectory of students’ lives.”

“We need to keep these at the forefront of our thoughts as we continue to strategize on what needs to be done to accelerate beyond pre-pandemic performance to mastery and sustained academic excellence,” Jackson added.

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee lawmaker and school choice advocate to lead national standardized test board

2025-10-01T22:06:08+00:00

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The next chair of the governing board that oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress standardized test is a Tennessee lawmaker at the center of some of the state’s most contentious education battles.

Rep. Mark White (R-Memphis) will lead the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the NAEP, known as “the nation’s report card.” The test measures reading and math proficiency for fourth and eighth graders every two years, among other subjects.

White’s appointment comes at a critical juncture for the testing program. Education Secretary Linda McMahon has promised that the main NAEP test will be protected, even as the federal government has canceled some auxiliary tests and fired most of the staff at the Education Department’s research arm, which also supported the test.

Democrats and Republicans have questioned the value of standardized testing even as researchers say NAEP provides the best benchmark for whether students are learning critical skills.

The Trump administration and conservative education advocates have seized on dismal NAEP scores to argue that public schools are failing students, even as not enough private schools opt into the test to provide reliable data. Which students are included in the testing sample is an increasingly important question, as school choice means more students are learning somewhere other than a traditional public school.

But White told Chalkbeat that NAEP is “highly needed” as the federal government pushes more control over education to individual states.

“We need a high standard of accountability for all 50 states to make sure that each state is performing well and we can compare ourselves with each other,” he said.

In Tennessee, White chairs the influential House Education Committee and has represented his Shelby County district since 2010. He was previously a science teacher and principal at a Tennessee private school and remains a vocal advocate for increasing school choice in the state.

White said he hopes to convince more private schools to use NAEP during his tenure as chair.

“A lot of the pushback when we were trying to pass legislation to allow school choice and private schools is people saying, ‘Well, there’s no accountability with a private school,’” he said. “So if we believe, and most people do, that private schools do better than public schools, it would be nice to know that.”

White has served as a member of the National Assessment Governing Board, or the NAGB, for the past five years.

He told Chalkbeat that he believes NAGB should remain “totally nonpartisan.” To help achieve that goal, White said he plans to continue urging Congress to put NAEP results back on an odd-year release schedule. The testing schedule shifted during COVID-19 lockdowns.

“During an election year, someone will use the results to come out and say, ‘Oh, well, this politically will benefit or to hurt either party,” White said. “We always wanted to keep it on odd years, because we do not want NAEP to ever become political.”

White is one of two Republican lawmakers who have been pushing to establish a state-controlled board of education to take over Memphis-Shelby County Schools. That move has received heavy pushback from MSCS leaders.

Chalkbeat National Editor Erica Meltzer contributed to this story.

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

AI, tutors, parents: Why this NYC school is forcing students to write admissions essays in person

2025-09-30T21:38:23+00:00

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In the dog-eat-dog world of New York City high school admissions, some eighth graders have figured out ways to get a leg up when it comes to the essays coveted schools require.

Some students turn to ChatGPT. Some hire writing tutors. Some have help from their parents.

Now, at least one school is trying to fight back against this tide: Manhattan’s Beacon High School tweaked its admissions process this year to require that applicants complete their essays in person rather than at home.

Beacon, which last year saw 4,210 applicants vie for 282 seats, is making the move due to concerns that students have been getting help on their essays from several sources, whether artificial intelligence, families, or paid tutors, educators at the school said.

“It became disheartening to see in the past couple of years, we’re reading things that don’t feel authentic,” said a Beacon teacher, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the change. The school’s teachers grade the application essays and increasingly found examples of “excellent” writing that garnered high scores under their grading system, but didn’t feel like they were written by 12- or 13-year-olds, the educator said.

The school posted a note about the shift on its website this weekend, and is expecting to soon share “several dates” in November for eighth graders to come to its campus to complete two 500-word essays. The school has already shared the essay prompts, along with the rubric on how the writing will be graded.

The high school application process runs from Oct. 7 through Dec. 3. Offers are expected to be sent March 5, 2026. Last year, the Education Department tweaked the process to allow students to rank an unlimited number of schools, which may have increased the number of students applying to Beacon.

Though the school didn’t yet mention how much time students will get, it mentioned that students with disabilities will receive extra time if they are entitled to such accommodations.

The school’s educators said the principal informed them of the change at a staff meeting last week. Beacon’s principal did not respond for comment.

The changes sent “shockwaves” through families of prospective high school applicants, said Elissa Stein, who runs High School 411, which aims to help families navigate the admissions process.

“While I always tell families that schools want to hear from kids in their own voices, no doubt some worked with tutors or coaches or had parent input in essay writing,” Stein said. “Having the essay take place in person can certainly cause anxiety for both parents and students, both from a content point of view but also it introduces performance stress.”

Requiring students to come in person can bring additional challenges, whether because of distance or availability — though it could help families understand the realities of the commute to the school.

Beacon also changed how much weight the essay carries for the application. The essay will now count for 50% of the application, with the rest based on grades from seventh grade core classes. Previously, the essay counted for 80%, Stein said.

“For students who didn’t have a strong random number, having an essay count for the majority of a rubric opened opportunities up to a wider range of students,” she said. “This is closing that door a bit.”

Beacon is not the first school to have in-person assessments. Pre-pandemic, the school conducted in-person interviews along with a pre-written essay for admissions, Stein said. Last year, the schools run by Bard Early College went back to in-person assessments.

Out of New York City’s roughly 700 programs at 400 public high schools, roughly two dozen use some criteria, such as essays, on top of students’ scores from seventh grade core classes. Nearly 24 schools have programs that require students to audition. And eight schools base admissions on the Specialized High School Admissions Test.

Last school year, multiple schools that require auditions or essays — including Beacon — emailed applicants asking them to resend materials, raising concerns that technical snafus may have prevented schools from viewing materials submitted by hundreds of students.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Tennessee educators ask lawmakers to dial back or amend state testing

2025-09-26T05:46:45+00:00

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Tennessee educators are asking state lawmakers to dial back or alter state testing schedules and requirements, with one reading specialist testifying this week that 10-year-olds are not “developmentally ready” to handle the two-week testing block that schools face each year.

“It is a madhouse during testing, and we’re a small school district,” said Angel Moore, the Perry County High School guidance counselor, of the two-week window in April when Tennessee schools administer the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program.

Moore was among several educators who testified Wednesday before the Joint Advisory Committee on Innovations in K-12 Education. They described scheduling upheaval, teachers stretched thin, and kids stressed to the point of physical discomfort in the leadup to state testing.

Dr. Kevin Schaaf, a Metro Nashville Public Schools reading specialist, said students are often fatigued and disengaged in class, stressed by the emphasis on test performance.

“The two weeks of TCAP in April skews our efforts throughout the rest of the school year,” Schaaf said.

Schaaf suggested students should be screened before taking TCAP’s reading assessment, arguing there is no need to test a student if they have already demonstrated in the classroom and other testing that they cannot read at level. He also recommended splitting TCAP into three parts throughout the year.

“Imagine the difference when teachers are saying, ‘Next week we have an important math test on Thursday,’ instead of “The next two weeks are dedicated to TCAP,’ ” Schaaf said. “Ten-year-olds are not developmentally ready to endure two straight exam weeks as if they’re in college, so why are we putting them through it?”

Rep. Mark Cochran, a Republican from Englewood, also asked the education department to consider spreading TCAP testing out.

David Laird, Tennessee’s assistant education commissioner of assessment and accountability, said many states that attempted to spread out testing ultimately abandoned the practice “because it essentially enforces a statewide version of a pacing calendar, which is wildly unpopular in a lot of places.” Education officials also said it could impede local control to set school calendars.

High school testing requirements are also too stringent or ill-suited for certain students, some educators testified on Wednesday. Monroe County Schools federal programs director Lee Anne Strickland suggested the state eliminate its Algebra II “end of course” exam for 11th graders, maintaining the course requirement but dropping the test needed to get a high school diploma.

“That’s something we hear so frequently from our parents and our community: We test too much,” Strickland. “Now, I’m a firm believer in accountability, so I don’t want to suggest that we shouldn’t be held accountable for what we do in public schools.”

The Algebra II exam is given in the same grade Tennessee students are required to take the ACT. The dueling tests are not needed for students on career technical paths, Strickland argued, and it’s not “logical” to prepare students for two different standardized tests during the same school year.

Tennessee in recent years eliminated similar end-of-course exams for 11th grade chemistry and English.

Sen. Bo Watson, a Republican from Hixson, pushed back on Strickland’s testimony, saying students and teachers should be accountable for an end-of-course exam in the same way they would be for a final exam.

Some legislators appeared more amenable to Strickland’s suggestions.

“At some point, do we have to ask ourselves, are we giving a Tennessee EOC just for the sake of giving it? Or should we make something that is more aligned to the ACT?” Cochran said.

Some changes to state testing are already in the works, education officials said.

Tennessee elementary schoolers will begin taking their state TCAP tests online as early as spring 2027, a move education officials hope will accelerate grading and the release of results to schools and families.

Elementary schoolers will continue to receive paper writing tests, which could require schools to administer the writing test earlier in the school year to allow for a shipping and grading window.

Laird told lawmakers that students will continue to use physical materials on reading comprehension tests, even if the test questions will be on a computer.

“If they’re taught all year to work with paper products, highlighting and underlining as they read, we’re going to give them the materials to use those strategies while they take the test,” Laird said.

The committee plans to meet again in October to consider potential recommendations yielded from the Wednesday testimony and previous meetings. Lawmakers expect to prepare a report with specific policy proposals when lawmakers return to session in January.

Melissa Brown is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact Melissa at mbrown@chalkbeat.org.

NAEP scores for class of 2024 show major declines, with fewer students college ready

2025-09-09T04:17:09+00:00

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Students from the class of 2024 had historically low scores on a major national test administered just months before they graduated.

Results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, released Tuesday show scores for 12th graders declined in math and reading for all but the highest performing students, as well as widening gaps between high and low performers in math. More than half of these students reported being accepted into a four-year college, but the test results indicate that many of them are not academically prepared for college, officials said.

“This means these students are taking their next steps in life with fewer skills and less knowledge in core academics than their predecessors a decade ago, and this is happening at a time when rapid advancements in technology and society demand more of future workers and citizens, not less,” said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board. “We have seen progress before on NAEP, including greater percentages of students meeting the NAEP proficient level. We cannot lose sight of what is possible when we use valuable data like NAEP to drive change and improve learning in U.S. schools.”

These results reflect similar trends seen in fourth and eighth grade NAEP results released in January, as well as eighth grade science results also released Tuesday.

In a statement, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the results show that federal involvement has not improved education, and that states should take more control.

“If America is going to remain globally competitive, students must be able to read proficiently, think critically, and graduate equipped to solve complex problems,” she said. “We owe it to them to do better.”

The students who took this test were in eighth grade in March of 2020 and experienced a highly disrupted freshman year of high school because of the pandemic. Those who went to college would now be entering their sophomore year.

Roughly 19,300 students took the math test and 24,300 students took the reading test between January and March of 2024.

The math test measures students’ knowledge in four areas: number properties and operations; measurement and geometry; data analysis, statistics, and probability; and algebra. The average score was the lowest it has been since 2005, and 45% of students scored below the NAEP Basic level, even as fewer students scored at NAEP Proficient or above.

NAEP Proficient typically represents a higher bar than grade-level proficiency as measured on state- and district-level standardized tests. A student scoring in the proficient range might be able to pick the correct algebraic formula for a particular scenario or solve a two-dimensional geometric problem. A student scoring at the basic level likely would be able to determine probability from a simple table or find the population of an area when given the population density.

Only students in the 90th percentile — the highest achieving students — didn’t see a decline, and the gap between high- and low-performing students in math was higher than on all previous assessments.

This gap between high and low performers appeared before the pandemic, but has widened in most grade levels and subject areas since. The causes are not entirely clear but might reflect changes in how schools approach teaching as well as challenges outside the classroom.

Testing officials estimate that 33% of students from the class of 2024 were ready for college-level math, down from 37% in 2019, even as more students said they intended to go to college.

In reading, students similarly posted lower average scores than on any previous assessment, with only the highest performing students not seeing a decline.

The reading test measures students’ comprehension of both literary and informational texts and requires students to interpret texts and demonstrate critical thinking skills, as well as understand the plain meaning of the words.

A student scoring at the basic level likely would understand the purpose of a persuasive essay, for example, or the reaction of a potential audience, while a students scoring at the proficient level would be able to describe why the author made certain rhetorical choices.

Roughly 32% of students scored below NAEP Basic, 12 percentage points higher than students in 1992, while fewer students scored above NAEP Proficient. An estimated 35% of students were ready for college-level work, down from 37% in 2019.

In a survey attached to the test, students in 2024 were more likely to report having missed three or more days of school in the previous month than their counterparts in 2019. Students who miss more school typically score lower on NAEP and other tests. Higher performing students were more likely to say they missed no days of school in the previous month.

Students in 2024 were less likely to report taking pre-calculus, though the rates of students taking both calculus and algebra II were similar in 2019 and 2024. Students reported less confidence in their math abilities than their 2019 counterparts, though students in 2024 were actually less likely to say they didn’t enjoy math.

Students also reported lower confidence in their reading abilities. At the same time, higher percentages of students than in 2024 reported that their teachers asked them to do more sophisticated tasks, such as identifying evidence in a piece of persuasive writing, and fewer students reported a low interest in reading.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

NAEP scores in 8th grade science drop, gender gap returns

2025-09-09T04:11:17+00:00

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American eighth graders posted their lowest science scores since 2009 on a major national test, one more indication of the hit that learning took during the pandemic.

Average scores declined for all students, but the decrease was particularly pronounced for low-performing students, according to results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, science test released Tuesday. The gap between high and low performers was the largest it has been in the history of the test.

In addition, more students scored below the basic level and fewer students scored above the proficient level.

These trends were also reflected in national math and reading scores from fourth and eighth graders during the same time period in early 2024, and in other recent math and science results from U.S. and international tests.

Scores for lower performing students actually started to decline before the pandemic, for reasons that are not entirely clear. But the gaps between students doing well in school and those struggling are now larger.

As in math, a gender gap in science test scores that had largely closed before the pandemic has widened, with girls’ scores declining more steeply.

“These results should galvanize all of us to take concerted, focused action to accelerate student learning,” said Matt Soldner, acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics.

One bright spot was scores for English learners. In other standardized tests, English learners seemed particularly hard hit by pandemic disruptions and time spent out of school, but their NAEP science scores increased an average of 6 points.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement that the results “confirm a devastating trend” and show federal spending has not improved education.

The test results come as the Trump administration has cut funding for science education and is reducing the role of the federal government in sharing best practices and improving teacher training. They also come amid significant turmoil for the National Center for Education Statistics, which oversees NAEP administration. NCES and the Institute of Education Science were decimated by U.S. Department of Education layoffs and contract cancellations. These science scores originally were supposed to be released in June.

NAEP scores for class of 2024 show major declines, with fewer students college ready

These eighth graders were in fourth grade when schools closed in March 2020 and experienced an especially disrupted fifth grade year marked by remote learning and quarantines. Since then, schools have been under intense pressure to improve reading and math test scores.

Compared with their pre-pandemic peers, students who took the science test in 2024 were less likely to report engaging in inquiry-based learning, such as using evidence from an experiment to explain why something happens. They were also less likely to report they enjoyed their science classes, and less likely to say they felt confident in their abilities.

But students who did well on the test were more likely to say they had the opportunity to do hands-on learning and more likely to enjoy science class.

NAEP not fully aligned with many states’ standards

Some 23,000 eighth graders in about 600 public and private schools took the science test between January and March 2024. It was the first NAEP science test administered since the pandemic. Students were tested in physical sciences, life sciences, and earth and space sciences. Average scores declined 3 to 4 points in each content area.

Scores are reported on a scale from zero to 300. A score of 170 is considered NAEP Proficient, a higher level of competency than the proficiency bar on most state standardized tests. A score of 141 is considered NAEP Basic. A student who scores at the basic level might recognize kinetic energy, while a student who scores at the proficient level could describe how kinetic energy changes when an object is in motion.

In 2024, just 29% of students scored proficient, a similar share as in 2009 and a decline of four percentage points from 2019. Some 38% of students scored below NAEP Basic, a five percentage point increase from 2019 and the highest share since the current framework was adopted in 2009.

The NAEP test provides a snapshot of student learning, but it is not designed to answer why students seem to be learning less.

Science educators who spoke with Chalkbeat without having seen the NAEP results said they are just one measure of student learning, but that the trends NAEP identifies are worth paying attention to.

More than 40 states now have science standards and use curriculum that are based to some degree on Next Generation Science Standards, which emphasize inquiry and building conceptual understanding over learning specific sets of facts. NAEP is not yet fully aligned with Next Generation standards but does include questions based on scenarios that require students to show scientific reasoning.

A gender gap in STEM widened during the pandemic. Schools are trying to make up lost ground.

Science education is less dependent on sequential learning than, for example, math, where each unit builds on skills learned in the previous unit, said Christine Royce, a past president of the National Science Teachers Association and a professor at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania. The Next Generation standards also provide avenues to circle back and rediscover concepts students may have missed, she said.

But engaging students in doing science to learn science, as called for in the Next Generation standards, takes time that often is in short supply, said Amanda L. Townley, executive director of the National Center for Science Education.

It doesn’t help that the Trump administration has cut funding for museums, public media, and other institutions that often partnered with schools to support science education, she said, or that even topics like vaccines and infectious disease have become politically contentious.

Students still need a grounding in the basics of science and scientific thinking to do more advanced work in middle school, both Royce and Townley said.

A 2018 report found that the average elementary student gets just 20 minutes of science instruction a day, compared with 60 minutes of math and 90 minutes of literacy. Among older elementary students, just 35% had science every day of the school year.

That means schools are missing out on a key window when kids have a natural curiosity that could be harnessed for science, said Royce, who helps train future science educators.

Elementary school, she said, is “where kids have questions, where they ask why. They really want to know.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

A gender gap in STEM widened during the pandemic. Schools are trying to make up lost ground.

2025-09-05T04:01:00+00:00

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IRVING, Texas – Crowded around a workshop table, four girls at de Zavala Middle School puzzled over a Lego machine they had built. As they flashed a purple card in front of a light sensor, nothing happened.

The teacher at the Dallas-area school had emphasized that in the building process, there is no such thing as mistakes. Only iterations. So the girls dug back into the box of blocks and pulled out an orange card. They held it over the sensor and the machine kicked into motion.

“Oh! Oh, it reacts differently to different colors,” said sixth grader Sofia Cruz.

In de Zavala’s first year as a choice school focused on science, technology, engineering, and math, the school recruited a sixth grade class that’s half girls. School leaders are hoping the girls will stick with STEM fields. In de Zavala’s higher grades — whose students joined before it was a STEM school — some elective STEM classes have just one girl enrolled.

Efforts to close the gap between boys and girls in STEM classes are picking up after losing steam nationwide during the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic. Schools have extensive work ahead to make up for the ground girls lost, in both interest and performance.

In the years leading up to the pandemic, the gender gap nearly closed. But within a few years, girls lost all the ground they had gained in math test scores over the previous decade, according to an Associated Press analysis. While boys’ scores also suffered during COVID, they have recovered faster than girls, widening the gender gap.

As learning went online, special programs to engage girls lapsed — and schools were slow to restart them. Zoom school also emphasized rote learning, a technique based on repetition that some experts believe may favor boys, instead of teaching students to solve problems in different ways, which may benefit girls.

Old practices and biases likely reemerged during the pandemic, said Michelle Stie, a vice president at the National Math and Science Initiative.

“Let’s just call it what it is,” Stie said. “When society is disrupted, you fall back into bad patterns.”

The pandemic upended progress toward closing the gender gap

In most school districts in the 2008-09 school year, boys had higher average math scores on standardized tests than girls, according to AP’s analysis, which looked at scores across 15 years in over 5,000 school districts. It was based on average test scores for third through eighth graders in 33 states, compiled by the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University.

A decade later, girls had not only caught up, they were ahead: Slightly more than half of districts had higher math averages for girls.

Within a few years of the pandemic, the parity disappeared. In 2023-24, boys on average outscored girls in math in nearly nine out of 10 districts.

A separate study by NWEA, an education research company, found gaps between boys and girls in science and math on national assessments went from being practically non-existent in 2019 to favoring boys around 2022.

Studies have indicated girls reported higher levels of anxiety and depression during the pandemic, plus more caretaking burdens than boys, but the dip in academic performance did not appear outside STEM. Girls outperformed boys in reading in nearly every district nationwide before the pandemic and continued to do so afterward.

“It wasn’t something like COVID happened and girls just fell apart,” said Megan Kuhfeld, one of the authors of the NWEA study.

Initiatives to boost girls’ confidence in STEM lost traction

In the years leading up to the pandemic, teaching practices shifted to deemphasize speed, competition, and rote memorization. Through new curriculum standards, schools moved toward research-backed methods that emphasized how to think flexibly to solve problems and how to tackle numeric problems conceptually.

Educators also promoted participation in STEM subjects and programs that boosted girls’ confidence, including extracurriculars that emphasized hands-on learning and connected abstract concepts to real-life applications.

When STEM courses had large male enrollment, Superintendent Kenny Rodrequez noticed girls losing interest as boys dominated classroom discussions at his schools in Grandview C-4 District outside Kansas City. Girls were significantly more engaged after the district moved some of its introductory hands-on STEM curriculum to the lower grade levels and balanced classes by gender, he said.

When schools closed for the pandemic, the district had to focus on making remote learning work. When in-person classes resumed, some of the teachers had left, and new ones had to be trained in the curriculum, Rodrequez said.

“Whenever there’s crisis, we go back to what we knew,” Rodrequez said.

There are exceptions, though, with girls still scoring higher than boys in cities such as Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Columbus, Ohio. The Philadelphia district has spent millions in recent years overhauling its math curriculum. Several universities and nonprofits in the city have also developed programs specifically meant to support girls’ math education.

Pennsylvania as a whole also had one of the smallest gaps in test score changes between girls and boys, as did Illinois. Even so, girls in Pennsylvania on average scored three-quarters of a grade level below their pre-pandemic peers, while boys scored just half a grade level below.

In Illinois, girls’ scores fell 27% of a grade level while boys’ scores stayed about even.

Bias against girls in STEM persists

Despite shifts in societal perceptions, a bias against girls persists in science and math subjects, according to teachers, administrators, and advocates. It becomes a message girls can internalize about their own abilities, they say, even at a very young age.

In his third grade classroom in Washington, D.C., teacher Raphael Bonhomme starts the year with an exercise where students break down what makes up their identity. Rarely do the girls describe themselves as good at math. Already, some say they are “not a math person.”

“I’m like, you’re 8 years old,” he said. ”What are you talking about, ‘I’m not a math person?’”

Girls also may have been more sensitive to changes in instructional methods spurred by the pandemic, said Janine Remillard, a math education professor at the University of Pennsylvania. Research has found girls tend to prefer learning things that are connected to real-life examples, while boys generally do better in a competitive environment.

“What teachers told me during COVID is the first thing to go were all of these sense-making processes,” she said.

A school district renews its commitment

At de Zavala Middle School in Irving, the STEM program is part of a push that aims to build curiosity, resilience, and problem-solving across subjects.

Coming out of the pandemic, Irving schools had to make a renewed investment in training for teachers, said Erin O’Connor, a STEM and innovation specialist there.

The district last year also piloted a new science curriculum from Lego Education. The lesson involving the machine at de Zavala, for example, had students learn about kinetic energy. Fifth graders learned about genetics by building dinosaurs and their offspring with Lego blocks, identifying shared traits.

“It is just rebuilding the culture of, we want to build critical thinkers and problem solvers,” O’Connor said.

Teacher Tenisha Willis recently led second graders at Irving’s Townley Elementary School through building a machine that would push blocks into a container. She knelt next to three girls who were struggling.

They tried to add a plank to the wheeled body of the machine, but the blocks didn’t move enough. One girl grew frustrated, but Willis was patient. She asked what else they could try, whether they could flip some parts around. The girls ran the machine again. This time, it worked.

“Sometimes we can’t give up,” Willis said. “Sometimes we already have a solution. We just have to adjust it a little bit.”

Lurye reported from Philadelphia. Todd Feathers contributed reporting from New York. Chalkbeat Senior Data Editor Thomas Wilburn contributed additional analysis. Chalkbeat reporter Rebecca Redelmeier contributed from Philadelphia.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

Back-to-school: 6 things to watch as NYC students return to class

2025-09-03T16:01:43+00:00

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As the new school year begins, the nation’s largest school system stands at the center of major changes at the local, state, and federal policy levels.

New York City is bracing for a possible shift in leadership with the mayoral election approaching in November. As scandals continue to plague Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, he faces increasingly long odds to remain in office — which means the city’s Education Department could come under the helm of a new mayor and chancellor midway through the school year.

The city’s public schools are also contending with big directives from the state, including meeting the caps required under the class size reduction law and the new school cellphone ban.

This will also mark the first full academic year of President Donald Trump’s second term. In its first seven months, his administration announced executive orders and other policy changes related to public education at a dizzying pace.

Here are the six things we’ll be watching this school year:

A pivotal mayoral election approaches

As the November election approaches, Adams is polling in the single digits. If Adams loses, his successor would likely replace Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos. It also opens questions about the future of the mayor’s major initiatives, including the math and literacy curriculum overhauls.

The frontrunner in the mayoral election, Queens state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, has a relatively thin record on K-12 education. The Democratic primary winner’s most attention-grabbing proposal so far has been scaling back the mayoral control system that grants city executives far-reaching authority over public schools.

Mamdani faces Adams and former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who are running as independents, as well as Republican Curtis Sliwa — at this point.

If Mamdani wins, his chancellor would play a key role in one of his signature policy proposals: a free child care program from birth to 5. (The city Education Department oversees most of the existing city-funded child care system.)

Class size bill compliance grows tougher

Under the class size law, 60% of New York City’s classrooms this school year must meet the caps mandated by the state, which range from 20-25 students, depending on the grade.

Many schools have gone on hiring sprees: 750 of the city’s nearly 1,600 schools received money to hire about 3,700 teachers to comply with the law. (That’s on top of the roughly 4,000 to 5,000 teachers hired in a typical year.) The city has spent $450 million this year to meet the mandate, Aviles-Ramos recently said on WNYC.

How will this affect schools? Educators and advocates are hopeful that smaller class sizes will improve instruction as well as teacher morale and classroom management. But training a wave of new teachers might also be a lift. There are also equity concerns, including warnings from experts that high-poverty schools could experience an uptick in teacher turnover as more affluent campuses hire thousands more teachers.

The city also has to start laying the groundwork for the 2026-27 school year, when 80% of classrooms must comply with the mandate — a goal that may be hard to achieve without adding new buildings.

Statewide ‘bell-to-bell’ cellphone ban takes effect

Roughly half of the city’s public schools already have some restrictions on cellphone use, but starting this week, all schools must bar students from using them from bell to bell. The details are up to individual schools as to whether they collect students’ internet-enabled devices (including smart watches, iPads, or other personal devices), have students carry their devices locked in pouches, or mandate students keep their devices in their lockers.

The bell-to-bell ban means students cannot use devices on campus during the school day, including during lunch, in the school yard, or on athletic fields. Students who go off-campus for lunch, however, will be allowed to get their phones — potentially causing some logistical headaches. And there are exemptions for medical conditions, translation needs, and special education. Student caregivers might also be allowed to keep their devices on a case-by-case basis.

The city sent more than $16 million to schools to implement the ban, according to budget documents.

No ban is foolproof: Some kids find ways around the policies, whether storing dummy phones, or buying magnets to unlock the pouches.

While school officials can’t suspend solely for using devices during the school day, they can for repeated refusal to surrender or store phones.

The ongoing toll of immigration enforcement

In May, Dylan Lopez Contreras became the first known New York City public student to be arrested by Immigration Customs and Enforcement, or ICE, since Trump’s second term began. Since then, several schools across the city have already seen students or their parents detained, and sometimes deported, as the Trump administration has ramped up ICE arrests to meet its goal of the “largest deportation program in American history.”

Advocates worry that deportation threats will keep immigrant students home from school or extracurriculars. And immigration is now on the decline: The nation’s foreign-born population fell by 1 million people as of June, marking the first decline since the 1960s, according to the Pew Research Center.

The implications for the school system could be significant. The influx of immigrants over the past few years has propped up New York City’s shrinking enrollment. Declining immigration will not only affect the city’s “international schools,” which exclusively serve newcomers to the country, but will likely affect many other schools across the system that have welcomed migrant students.

Expanding curriculum mandates to upper grades

The Adams administration has made overhauling literacy and math curriculums the centerpiece of its educational agenda.

As all elementary schools start either their second or third year under the reading curriculum mandates, the system continues to expand the approach to older grades as well as requiring intervention programs to specifically support struggling readers.

Roughly 100 middle schools across eight districts this year will be required to use city-approved reading curriculums their superintendents selected.

For math, 84 middle schools in six districts are being added to the mandate. That’s on top of 100 schools that were already part of the mandate. (There are about 530 middle schools in all.)

Students line up for their first day of school at John F. Hylan P.S. 257 Magnet School of the Performing Arts on Sept. 5, 2024.

City officials pointed to rising state tests scores for grades 3-8 as proof of the reading overhaul’s effectiveness. The city’s rosy framing is complicated, however, by other data: Districts in other parts of the state without similar mandates also saw their significant gains. New York City’s charter schools, which also are not part of the curriculum mandate, saw their scores rise even more dramatically than schools run by the city’s Education Department.

Graduation requirements are getting overhauled

As part of the state’s multi-year effort to rethink graduation requirements, education officials are continuing to define what students in the coming years will need to earn their diplomas.

This summer, the Board of Regents approved a new framework, known as the “portrait of a graduate,” to define the general goals for high school graduates as the state phases out Regents exams as a graduation requirement beginning in the 2027-28 school year.

In the future, students will have a variety of ways to show they meet six characteristics — that they are academically prepared, creative innovators, critical thinkers, effective communicators, global citizens, and “reflective and future focused.”

They might, for instance, demonstrate critical thinking skills by participating in debates or research projects, or complete service learning projects to show their commitment to global citizenship.

Educators and families are still awaiting more details on what the new system will look like in practice and how students will be assessed once the Regents exams are no longer required.

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Alex Zimmerman contributed.

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael atmelsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy atazimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado’s PSAT and SAT 2025 scores: How did your school or district perform?

2025-08-21T19:02:24+00:00

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More Colorado 11th graders met or exceeded state expectations on the SAT this spring. But student proficiency on the ninth and 10th grade PSAT showed mixed results.

The testing data was released Thursday by the Colorado Department of Education. Instead of using a state-created standardized test, Colorado opts to gauge how well students are learning through the widely used SAT and PSAT.

“We see some overall mixed results,” said Christina Wirth-Hawkins, Colorado Department of Education chief assessment officer.

Colorado’s 2025 CMAS results: See how your school and district performed

While the results varied by grade level, challenges from previous years remained. The tests once again showed that students scored higher on reading and writing tests than on math. Large score gaps remain based on students’ race, family income, and other factors, such as whether students are learning English as a second language or have a disability.

Improvements on the SAT reading and writing tests were a highlight for the state, with 61.5% of students meeting or exceeding expectations. That’s up from 57.6% last year, or a jump of 3.9 percentage points — the highest increase of any test.

The reading and writing increases on the SAT spanned almost every student group.

The percentage of students considered proficient went up to 60.6% for boys and 62.4% for girls. Among different ethnic and racial groups, only Asian American students scored below last year, a negligible tenth of a percentage point.

In math, the percentage of students meeting or exceeding expectations on the SAT increased by 1.4 percentage points to about 32.5% of students.

On the PSAT ninth grade reading and writing test, scores were basically flat with 65% of students meeting or exceeding expectations. That’s up just 0.4 percentage points from last year.

Student proficiency on the PSAT ninth grade math test backslid by 2 percentage points, with 37.5% meeting or exceeding expectations. Every racial and ethnic student group scored lower than last year.

On the PSAT 10th grade test, fewer students met or exceeded expectations in reading and writing, down 2.5 percentage points to 63.5%. However, more students tested higher on math. The percentage who met or exceeded expectations was up 2.5 percentage points to 36.4%.

Black students were the only student group with gains on both the PSAT 10th grade reading and writing tests.

On all tests, white and Asian American students continue to score proficient at higher rates than their peers.

Senior reporter Ann Schimke contributed to this report.

Colorado’s 2025 CMAS results: See how your school and district performed

2025-08-21T19:01:52+00:00

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The good news is that Colorado elementary and middle school students are now performing at or above their pre-pandemic achievement levels in most grades and subjects — with math gains a particular bright spot.

The bad news is that some groups of students, most notably English learners, are still achieving far below grade level.

These are some of the findings state education officials shared Thursday as they released results from last spring’s state tests, called the Colorado Measures of Academic Progress or CMAS, taken by students in grades 3 through 8. The release includes district and school level results, along with results for special populations, including English learners, students with disabilities, and students eligible from free or reduced-price meals, an indicator of poverty.

In some grades, only a tiny fraction of Colorado’s English learners — about 80% of whom speak Spanish as their first language — met or exceeded expectations in math or literacy.

For example, on math and English language arts tests, less than 3% of sixth grade English learners were proficient. Spanish-speaking students who were tested in Spanish didn’t fare much better: Only 16.5% of third graders and 13.1% of fourth graders met or exceeded expectations on the Spanish language arts test.

In several grades, English learners who took state tests last spring not only have proficiency rates well below their pre-pandemic counterparts, but their rates have slipped even lower than their 2024 peers.

Susana Córdova, Colorado’s education commissioner, said during a media briefing Tuesday that English learners have had a slower post-COVID recovery for various reasons, including because many attended schools that returned to in-person learning more slowly.

She noted that many English learners have enrolled in Colorado schools relatively recently and “are furthest from having proficiency in English.”

During the 2023-24 school year, thousands of migrant students arrived from South America.

Córdova said education department officials have also heard anecdotally about attendance problems among English learners, and that attendance data set to come out in a few weeks could shed more light on that issue.

Colorado’s PSAT and SAT 2025 scores: How did your school or district perform?

Colorado also administers standardized science tests to students in grades 5, 8, and 11. Students did better on the science tests this year compared to their counterparts in 2024.

Eighth graders made the biggest improvements, with about 36% meeting or exceeding expectations compared with about 32% the year before. A new state science test based on revised science standards was unveiled in 2023.

“This really speaks to the really good work that Colorado educators are doing, wrapping their heads around these science standards, and really teaching with fidelity,” said Christina Wirth-Hawkins, chief assessment officer for the Colorado Department of Education.

Many school districts saw test score gains

Statewide, the aggregate scores for all students in grades 3 through 8 show that 44.8% of students met or exceeded expectations on the CMAS literacy tests and 35.9% did so on the math tests. Both of those percentages are higher than in 2024.

Many Colorado school districts also saw their test scores tick up. For instance, 99 of the state’s 178 districts had the same or higher percentages of students meeting expectations on CMAS literacy tests this year than last year, with 69 districts seeing a decrease. Some districts did not have enough data for the state to publicly report aggregate scores across grade levels.

In math, 107 districts had the same or higher percentages of students meeting expectations, while 57 districts had lower percentages. Again, some districts didn’t have enough data.

About 42% of students in Denver Public Schools met or exceeded expectations on the CMAS literacy tests this past spring. That’s an increase from last year and nearly as high as the 42.8% of students who met expectations in 2019, before the pandemic.

In math, about 33% of Denver students met or exceeded expectations on CMAS this year, bringing the district’s math scores to just above pre-pandemic levels.

Jeffco Public Schools also surpassed its pre-pandemic scores, with 52.5% of students meeting or exceeding expectations in literacy this year and 42.8% doing so in math.

Aurora Public Schools, Adams 12 Five Star, Adams 14, Mapleton Public Schools, and the Brighton-based 27J district saw improvements in both literacy and math this year, but their scores remain below pre-pandemic levels.

Cherry Creek School District saw an improvement in math, bringing the district’s math scores nearly to what they were before the pandemic. But Cherry Creek’s literacy scores were essentially flat and still below pre-pandemic levels.

Some districts, including Harrison 2 in Colorado Springs, saw decreases in both subjects.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Plenty of schools have no-zeroes policies. And most teachers hate it, a new survey finds

2025-08-20T04:01:00+00:00

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About one in four teachers say their schools don’t give students zeroes. And nearly all of them hate it.

The collection of practices known as equitable grading, which includes not giving students zeroes, not taking off points for lateness, and letting students retake tests, has spread in the aftermath of the pandemic. But it wasn’t known how widespread the practices were.

A new nationally representative survey released Wednesday finds equitable grading practices are fairly common, though nowhere near universal. More than half of K-12 teachers said their school or district used at least one equitable grading practice.

The most common practice — and the one that drew the most heated opposition in the fall 2024 survey — is not giving students zeroes for missing assignments or failed tests. Just over a quarter of teachers said their school or district has a no-zeroes policy.

Around 3 in 10 teachers said their school or district allowed students to retake tests without penalty, and a similar share said they did not deduct points when students turned in work late. About 1 in 10 teachers said they were not permitted to factor class participation or homework into students’ final grades.

Only 6% of teachers said their school used four or more equitable grading practices.

That was surprising to Adam Tyner, who co-authored the new report for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank, in partnership with the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization. He expected more schools would be following a “whole package” of grading reforms supported by advocates like former teacher and education consultant Joe Feldman, who wrote the influential book “Grading for Equity.”

“It’s not like this has swept the country,” said Tyner, who has studied grading practices. He argues that some policies meant to create equity lead to grade inflation and don’t benefit students.

The findings come as many schools are rethinking what students should have to do to get a high school diploma, and how much emphasis should be put on grades. At the same time, many schools continue to struggle with student disengagement and historically high rates of absenteeism following the pandemic. As a result, they’re trying to hold students accountable for their work without making it impossible to catch up on missed assignments.

Though ideas about how to grade students more fairly predate the pandemic, several large districts started rethinking their grading practices following that disruption, as more students struggled to meet strict deadlines or do their homework.

Proponents of equitable grading say it’s important for students to be able to show what they know over time, and that just a few zeroes averaged into a grade can make it difficult for students to ever catch up. When students don’t see a path to passing a class, it can make them less motivated or stop trying altogether.

Still, some teachers have pushed back, arguing that no-zeroes policies can hurt student motivation, too.

That showed up in the recent survey.

Eight in 10 teachers said giving students partial credit for assignments they didn’t turn in was harmful to student engagement. Opposition to no-zeroes policies came from teachers of various racial backgrounds, experience levels, and who worked with different demographics of students.

No-zeroes policies can take various forms but often mean that the lowest possible grade is a 50 on a 100-point scale. Some schools use software that will automatically convert lower grades to a 50, one teacher wrote on the survey.

Schools that enrolled mostly students of color were more likely to have no-zeroes policies, the survey found. And middle schools were more likely than high schools and elementary schools to have no-zeroes policies, no-late-penalty policies, and retake policies.

Researchers weren’t sure why those policies popped up more in middle schools.

But Katherine Holden, a former middle school principal in Oregon’s Ashland School District who trains school districts on equitable grading practices, has some guesses.

High schools may be more worried that changing their grading practices will make it harder for students to get into college, Holden said — a misconception in her eyes. And districts may see middle schoolers as especially likely to benefit from things like clear grading rubrics and multiple chances to show what they know, as they are still developing their organization and time-management skills.

In the open-ended section of the survey, several teachers expressed concerns that no-zeroes policies were unfair and contributed to low student motivation.

“Students are now doing below-average work or no work at all and are walking out with a C or B,” one teacher told researchers.

“Most teachers can’t stand the ‘gifty fifty,’” said another.

More than half of teachers said letting students turn in work late without any penalty was harmful to student engagement.

“[The policy] removes the incentive for students to ever turn work in on time, and then it becomes difficult to pass back graded work because of cheating,” one teacher said.

But teachers were more evenly divided on whether allowing students to retake tests was harmful or not.

“Allowing retakes without penalty encourages a growth mindset, but it also promotes avoidance and procrastination,” one teacher said.

Another said teachers end up grading almost every assignment more than once because students have no reason to give their best effort the first time.

The report’s authors recommend getting rid of blanket policies in favor of letting individual teachers make those calls. Research has shown that other grading reforms, such as grading written assignments anonymously or using grading rubrics, can reduce bias.

Still, teachers don’t agree on the best approach to grading. In the survey, 58% of teachers said it was more important to have clear schoolwide policies to ensure fair student grading — though the question didn’t indicate what that policy should look like — while the rest preferred using their professional judgment.

“There are ways to combat bias, there are ways to make grading more fair, and we’re not against any of that,” Tyner said. “What we’re really concerned about is when we’re lowering standards, or lowering expectations. … Accountability is always a balancing act.”

Nicole Paxton, the principal of Mountain Vista Community School, a K-8 school in Colorado’s Harrison School District 2, has seen that balancing act in action.

Her district adopted a policy a few years ago that requires teachers to grade students on a 50-100 scale. Students get at least a 50% if they turn in work, but they get a “missing” grade if they don’t do the assignment. Middle and high schoolers are allowed to make up missing or incomplete assignments. But it has to be done within the same quarter, and teachers can deduct up to 10% for late assignments.

Paxton thinks the policy was the right move for her district. She says she’s seen it motivate kids who are struggling to keep trying, when before they stopped doing their work because they didn’t think they could ever bounce back from a few zeroes.

“As adults, in the real world, we get to show what we know and learn in our careers,” Paxton said. “And I think that kids are able to do that in our building, too.”

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Illinois lowers state test proficiency cut scores in math, English language arts

2025-08-13T18:11:16+00:00

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The Illinois State Board of Education approved changes to the cut scores used to determine proficiency on state standardized tests Wednesday.

The scores needed to be considered proficient in math and English language arts on the Illinois Assessment of Readiness will decrease, while the cut scores will increase for the Illinois Science Assessment. High school juniors will need to score an 18 in English language arts, a 19 in math, a 19 in science on the ACT college entrance exam to be considered proficient. The ACT scores range from 1-36.

The new cut scores will be applied to assessments taken by students during the spring and reported publicly in October. Data shared in a presentation Tuesday indicates that more students will be labeled as proficient than were last year.

Comparisons to achievement in past years, including to pre-pandemic performance, now will be difficult due to the shifting benchmarks.

Under the new cut scores, 53% of students would be considered proficient in English language arts, up from 41% last year; 38% would be proficient in math, up from 28% last year; and 45% would be in science, down from last year.

Illinois State Superintendent Tony Sanders said the move is not a lowering of standards, but rather adjusting to better match the reality of students’ abilities.

Sanders said data showed that many students in Illinois who scored at the old cut score could have entered college without remediation and earned a C or higher in credit-bearing courses.

The measure passed unanimously and board of education members spoke briefly to praise Sanders and the agency’s staff for running a thoughtful process that engaged teachers and other school staff over the past 18 months.

Becky Vevea is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Chicago. Contact Becky at bvevea@chalkbeat.org.

Indiana middle schoolers’ English scores have fallen. These schools are bucking the trend.

2025-07-28T11:00:00+00:00

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Like their peers nationwide, students at Crawford County Middle School in southern Indiana struggled academically in the pandemic’s wake. Principal Tarra Carothers knew her students needed help to get back on track.

So two years ago, she decided to double instructional time for math and English. Students now spend two periods per day in these critical subjects. Carothers believes the change has been a success, and a key trend backs her up: Crawford’s ILEARN scores in English language arts increased by over 8 percentage points from 2024 to 2025.

But overall, Indiana middle schools are heading in the opposite direction when it comes to English. In fact, despite gains in math, middle schoolers are struggling more than students in other grade levels in English, state test scores show. Since 2021, ILEARN English proficiency rates in seventh and eighth grades have fallen, with the dip particularly pronounced for seventh graders. And while their scores are up slightly compared with four years ago, sixth graders’ performance fell over the past year.

Indiana has made significant and much-publicized investments in early literacy, relying heavily on the science of reading, as many states have in the last few years. But that instructional transformation has come too late for current middle schoolers. Meanwhile, ILEARN English scores for third and fourth graders have risen by relatively small levels since the pandemic, although this improvement has been uneven.

The Board of Education expressed specific concerns about middle schoolers’ performance at a July 16 meeting. “We’ve gotta pick it up and make sure all of our middle school kids are reading, provide those additional supports,” said Secretary of Education Katie Jenner.

Some middle school leaders say strategies they’ve used can turn things around. In addition to increasing instructional time for key subjects, they point to participation in a pilot that allows students to take ILEARN at several points over the school year, instead of just once in the spring. Educators say relying on these checkpoints can provide data-driven reflection and remediation for students that shows up in better test scores.

Middle school an ‘optimum time’ for students’ recovery

Katie Powell, director for middle level programs at the Association for Middle Level Education, said she often asks teachers if middle schoolers seem different since the pandemic and “heads nod,” she said. These post-pandemic middle schoolers are harder to motivate and engage, self-report more stress, and are less likely to take risks academically, Powell said.

When the pandemic hit, “they were young, at the age of school where they’re developing basic reading fluency and math fact fluency,” she said. Current eighth graders, for example, were in second grade when the pandemic shut down schools and many learned online for much of their third grade year. Third grade is when students are supposed to stop learning to read and start “reading to learn,” Powell said.

Powell noted that middle schoolers are in the stage of rapid development with the most changes for the brain and body outside of infancy.

“This is actually an optimum time to step in and step up for them,” she said. “It is not too late. But it’s critical that we pay attention to them now.”

Crawford County Middle School has nine periods every day, and students spend two periods each in both math and English. While many schools have some version of block scheduling, many have a model in which students only go to each class every other day. But at Crawford, students attend every class every day. Their version of block scheduling results in double the amount of instructional time in math and English.

To make this switch, sacrifices had to be made. Periods were shortened, resulting in less time for other subjects. Carothers worried that student scores in subjects like science and social studies would decrease. But the opposite occurred, she said. Sixth grade science scores increased, for example, even though students were spending less time in the science classroom, according to Carothers.

“If they have better math skills and better reading skills, then they’re gonna perform better in social studies and science,” she said.

Meanwhile, at Cannelton Jr. Sr. High School, on the state line with Kentucky, the first three periods of the day are 90 minutes, rather than the typical 45. Every student has English or math during these first three periods, allowing for double the normal class time.

Cannelton’s sixth through eighth grade English language arts ILEARN scores increased by nearly nine percentage points last year.

Schools use more data to track student performance

Cannelton Principal Brian Garrett believes his school’s reliance on data, and its new approach to getting it, is also part of their secret.

Students take benchmark assessments early, in the first two or three weeks of school, so that teachers can track their progress and find gaps in knowledge.

This year, the state is adopting that strategy for schools statewide. Rather than taking ILEARN once near the end of the year, students will take versions of the test three separate times, with a shortened final assessment in the spring. The state ran a pilot for ILEARN checkpoints last school year, with over 70% of Indiana schools taking part.

The Indiana Department of Education hopes checkpoints will make the data from the test more actionable and help families and teachers ensure a student is on track throughout the year.

Kim Davis, principal of Indian Creek Middle School in rural Trafalgar, said she believes ILEARN checkpoints, paired with reflection and targeted remediation efforts by teachers, “helped us inform instruction throughout the year instead of waiting until the end of the year to see did they actually master it according to the state test.”

The checkpoints identified what standards students were struggling with, allowing Indian Creek teachers to tailor their instruction. Students also benefitted from an added familiarity with the test; they could see how questions would be presented when it was time for the final assessment in the spring.

“It felt very pressure-free, but very informative for the teachers,” Davis said.

The type of data gathered matters too. In the past, Washington Township middle schools used an assessment called NWEA, taken multiple times throughout the year, to measure student learning, said Eastwood Middle School Principal James Tutin. While NWEA was a good metric for measuring growth, it didn’t align with Indiana state standards, so the scores didn’t necessarily match how a student would ultimately score on a test like ILEARN.

Last year, the district adopted ILEARN checkpoints instead, and used a service called Otis to collect weekly data.

It took approximately six minutes for students to answer a few questions during a class period with information that educators could then put into Otis. That data allowed teachers to target instruction during gaps between ILEARN checkpoints.

“Not only were they getting the practice through the checkpoints, but they were getting really targeted feedback at the daily and weekly level, to make sure that we’re not waiting until the checkpoint to know how our students are likely going to do,” Tutin said.

Both Davis and Tutin stressed that simply having students take the checkpoint ILEARN tests was not enough; it had to be paired with reflection and collaboration between teachers, pushing each other to ask the tough questions and evaluate their own teaching.

“We still have a fire in us to grow further, we’re not content with where we are,” Davis said. “But we’re headed in the right direction and that’s very exciting.”

Samantha Camire is a summer reporting intern covering education in the Indianapolis area. Contact Samantha at scamire@chalkbeat.org.

Memphis-Shelby County students show ‘steady growth’ in state reading, math tests

2025-07-09T00:12:44+00:00

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Students in Memphis-Shelby County Schools continue to improve on state standardized tests post-pandemic, with growth in scores in most categories in the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, or TCAP, released Tuesday.

In an emailed statement, Memphis-Shelby County schools celebrated “steady growth” across almost all grades and subjects.

But reading and writing still pose a challenge for two key groups. High school English proficiency in the state’s largest district dropped and the majority of third grade students did not hit a critical reading benchmark.

These results are a bright spot for the district following a state legislative battle over control of MSCS. In the spring, Republican Rep. Mark White proposed a bill to create a state-appointed board to manage the district for at least four years, sharply criticizing its management and performance. The effort faced harsh criticism from Memphis locals, and eventually stalled in the Tennessee legislature.

“The 2025 TCAP results reflect more than a single year’s progress,” the district said in its statement. “They affirm a long-term trajectory of improvement and a deep-rooted belief that every student can achieve.”

The MSCS statement said district leaders “recognize areas of opportunity, particularly in the slight decline in English I and II,” the high school level reading and writing courses.

The district reported that 24.6% of all students met or exceeded expectations on TNReady reading assessments. That’s compared to 23.7% of students last year.

And just over 29% of students in grades 3-5 passed in reading. Tennessee law requires students to be held back or sign up for additional tutoring if they don’t hit those reading proficiency marks, though previous state data shows very few students are retained after completing intervention benchmarks like summer programs and tutoring.

Over 21% of all MSCS students also tested on track for math, up from 18.7% in 2024, MSCS leaders said. Algebra I and II students posted the largest gains.

“These increases reflect the district’s continued emphasis on algebra readiness, including the availability of 8th-grade Algebra I and summer Bridge Camps to prepare students for early success in advanced math,” MSCS said in the statement.

Statewide, around 40% of students met or exceeded TCAP proficiency in both reading and math. The six independent school districts that surround Memphis continue to outperform MSCS across the board.

Last year, well over half of the suburban students passed both math and reading sections. Here’s this year’s breakdown, for students in grades 3-8:

Bartlett City Schools: 48.6% passed TCAP reading, 55.6% passed in math
Germantown Municipal School District: 69% passed reading, 76.3% in math
Arlington Community Schools: 69.8% in reading, 72.8% in math
Millington Municipal Schools: 31.9% in reading, 33.4% in math
Collierville Schools: 69.2% passed in reading, 73.5% in math
Lakeland School System: 63.8% in reading, 66.4% in math

Interim Superintendent Dr. Roderick Richmond said in a statement that “growth is not optional” for the Memphis school district.

“At MSCS, we’re not waiting on greatness; we’re growing it,” he said. “The data confirms what we already know: we’re heading in the right direction. But good is not our goal.”

Bri Hatch covers Memphis-Shelby County Schools for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Reach Bri at bhatch@chalkbeat.org.

Math a bright spot, literacy mostly flat on Colorado state tests, preliminary results show

2025-06-11T22:26:26+00:00

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A larger share of Colorado students met or exceeded state standards on math tests in fourth through eighth grade this year compared with 2024. Literacy growth was mostly flat at the elementary level, with bigger gains for middle schoolers.

These findings were among the preliminary CMAS results presented to the State Board of Education Wednesday.

“Math is a pretty exciting story for us to dig into,” Christina Wirth-Hawkins, chief assessment officer for the Colorado Department of Education, told the board Tuesday.

“We see that across the board we are higher than we were pre-pandemic, and so we’re really at a new baseline,” she said.

The preliminary results paint a picture of slow but steady improvement over the last four years — enough to help Colorado students surpass their pre-pandemic performance on eight of 12 core tests in elementary and middle school. On the remaining four tests, the gap between 2019 and 2025 proficiency rates varies. It’s minimal for fifth grade literacy, a bit larger for eighth grade literacy and math, and largest for fourth grade literacy.

Fourth graders who took state tests this spring were preschoolers when the pandemic began.

The new data doesn’t reveal how different student groups — for example, English learners or students with disabilities — fared on state tests or the size of gaps between them. It also doesn’t include district or school level results. That data will come out in August.

The preliminary results show improvements in science, especially for eighth graders whose proficiency rates jumped to 36%, up four percentage points from 2024. Students take state science tests in three grades: fifth, eighth, and 11th. Participation is particularly low for 11th graders, with only half opting to take the test.

Participation on the PSAT and SAT, the other state tests given at the high school, is much higher — generally about 85%.

After a couple board members asked about the participation disparity between science and the other tests, Wirth-Hawkins said students tend to see the PSAT and SAT as more relevant because the exams help with college entrance. The science test, which is required by both the federal and state governments, feels less relevant, she said.

In general, preliminary 2025 PSAT and SAT results were a mixed bag. On the plus side, a larger share of 11th graders were proficient on the reading and writing section of the SAT — nearly 62%, compared to about 58% in 2024. That bump represents a rebound from last year, when scores dipped with the move to an all-digital test.

Besides switching to a computer-based format in 2024, the testing time was shortened and reading passages were shortened to one paragraph, with more passages and only one question per passage.The new test also was adaptive, which means that based on how students do on the first section, they get either an easier or harder second section.

Colorado 11th -graders also did a bit better on the math portion of the SAT this year, but they’re still lagging behind their proficiency rates from 2023 prior to the all-digital test. Statewide, only about one-third of students met or exceeded expectations in math, according to the preliminary data.

Ninth graders, who take the PSAT 9, did about the same on the reading and writing portion of the test compared with last year, and worse on the math portion. Only 38% scores proficient in math in 2025, a 12 percentage point difference compared with pre-pandemic scores.

The news is a bit better for 10th graders in math: Proficiency rates jumped by 2.5 percentage points. That’s still below what students achieved pre-pandemic, but the gap is narrowing. Meanwhile, the gap reopened for 10th graders on the reading and writing section of the PSAT 10. It had disappeared last year, but returned as proficiency rates dropped to 63.5% compared with 66% last year.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

NYC high school admissions and the SHSAT: Here’s where the mayoral candidates stand

2025-05-28T18:36:10+00:00

This is part of a series in which Chalkbeat asked the mayoral candidates questions about important education issues that will likely define the next four years. The primary is June 24, with early voting from June 14-22.

The New York City high school process is notoriously complicated.

And a small piece of it that occupies an outsized amount of attention — the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, which is needed to get into eight of the city’s most prestigious schools — is often considered a political third rail.

The application algorithm (for schools other than the specialized high schools) is meant to make the system fair by opening up schools across the city to students, but it favors families with the wherewithal to navigate the system. The level of screening in schools across the five boroughs is unparalleled, exacerbating the city’s dubious distinction as one of the most segregated districts in the nation.

Last year, out of nearly 71,000 high school applicants, about 19,000, or 27%, received offers at the dozens of selective schools that base admissions on grades. Fifty-one percent of those offers went to Black and Latino students, who make up about 60% of students citywide.

Nearly 26,000 students took the SHSAT, with roughly 4,000, or about 16% of test-takers, receiving offers to the city’s eight specialized high schools that base admissions solely on the test. Of those offers, 12% went to Black and Latino students.

So how can New York City make admissions more equitable? And what happens to the system as a whole when there’s a group of schools that can select their students based on grades, while others can’t?

Mayor Eric Adams’ response has been to further embrace sorting students, pushing to open more “academically accelerated” schools in historically underserved neighborhoods.

Many of the mayoral candidates seem to agree with that approach, calling for opening additional specialized or screened schools. One suggested the new schools would draw the top students from every middle school across the city. Nearly all would keep the SHSAT (which is enshrined in state law) but called for expanded test prep access. One candidate mentioned the importance of ensuring that non-specialized schools have access to more challenging curriculums.

Chalkbeat sent a questionnaire to the leading candidates on March 25 to find out their views on seven pressing issues. A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams said he declined to participate since he isn’t in the primary.

We asked each of the candidates how they would approach screened admissions and whether they supported the SHSAT. Here’s what they told us.

Responses may have been edited for formatting or trimmed for length, but otherwise each candidate’s answers are as submitted, including hyperlinks.

Illinois considers lowering scores students need to be considered proficient on state exams

2025-05-15T21:29:19+00:00

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Illinois education officials are considering lowering the scores students need to get to be classified as proficient in a subject on a state standardized test.

They say the current benchmarks are too high and the results often don’t accurately reflect whether high school students are college and career ready.

“Our system unfairly mislabels students as ‘not proficient’ when other data — such as success in advanced coursework and enrollment in college — tell a very different story,” state schools chief Tony Sanders wrote in a message to school leaders this week.

The Illinois State Board of Education agreed Wednesday to move ahead with a process to change the state’s testing system, though the exact details still are being worked out. That process will include creating new “cut scores,” or the lowest score needed for a student to be sorted into broad categories of achievement on state assessments.

If approved in August, the new cut scores would be applied to the tests taken by students this spring and reported publicly in October. The changes are likely to send the public a very different message about how students are doing on reading and math tests.

Proposed changes to the state’s testing system come at a time when schools in Illinois and around the country are still dealing with the academic fallout of the COVID pandemic. Other states, including Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Alaska, and New York, have made similar changes to their testing systems, according to The 74.

Third to eighth graders in Illinois saw progress in reading last year — even exceeding proficiency levels pre-pandemic — but math scores still lagged behind past years, according to the state’s 2024 report card. Scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, remained stagnant.

State officials acknowledged Wednesday that it would be difficult to compare proficiency rates on the October 2025 report card to previous years if the benchmarks are lowered. The move would likely result in more students across the state being considered proficient on state standardized exams. For instance, if a test has 1,000 possible points a student can score and last year a student needed to score 700 or above to be considered proficient and they scored 680, but the following year the cut score moved to 650 that student would be considered proficient.

Sanders argued, however, that changes to the state’s testing system are long overdue.

In his message to school leaders this week, he said the state’s current benchmarks are some of the highest in the nation. He pointed to a 2022 study by the National Center for Education Statistics that looked at how state accountability systems match up to NAEP, a national exam given periodically to a representative sample of American students in fourth and eighth grade. Illinois was among the states whose cut scores aligned with higher levels of performance on the national exam.

Sanders said in an interview with Chalkbeat that the cut scores for the college entrance exam have been higher than what the College Board, an organization that created and administers the SAT and Advanced Placement courses and exams, recommended as “college ready” on the SAT test in previous years — and that “it just does not make sense.”

“When we look at how actual students are performing, we have so many examples of kids who have graduated, gone on to college, and persisted and been successful in college, yet, if they made decisions in their life based on the data that we gave them, they would never have gone to college,” said Sanders.

Given that Illinois switched the high school test to the ACT, Sanders said the state board wants to ensure scores on the October 2025 report card accurately reflect where students are.

In changing the state’s testing system, state officials said they are aiming for greater “coherence” between assessments. Currently, there are different proficiency levels for the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, an exam taken by students in third to eighth grade in reading and math, the Illinois Science Assessment, taken by students in fifth, eighth, and 11th grades, and the high school college entrance exam, taken by students in 11th grade.

State officials also noted in documents from Wednesday’s board meeting that the state’s academic standards, or what students are expected to learn, would not change.

Jennifer Kirmes, director of policy at Advance Illinois, a nonprofit statewide advocacy organization, said that she believes there was a real call for change from school leaders, especially those teaching high school students, because some students were excelling in advanced classes but were classified as not proficient on state standardized tests.

“But in fact, those students have lots of other indicators that they are, in fact, college and career ready, which is ultimately what we’re trying to measure at the high school level,” said Kirmes. “They might have taken and passed several AP courses and exams, they might have dual credit.”

Kirmes said getting proficiency levels right matters because schools are judged based on the results of standardized exams. In Illinois, schools can be labeled as Exemplary, Commendable, Targeted, Comprehensive, and Intensive. Based on what a school is labeled can determine what resources and support they will receive from the state. Federal law requires states to provide summative designations to schools based on students’ test scores since the early 2000s. Sanders also told Chalkbeat that the state is working on changing the school accountability system for 2026.

Educators, testing experts, and advocates have mixed feelings about changing the state’s assessment standards. Some worry the new changes will not have any significant effect on teaching and students’ learning.

Monique Redeaux-Smith, from the Illinois Federation of Teachers, one of the state’s largest teacher unions, said the union is not opposed to changing the cut scores, but they are concerned about the weight placed on state standardized assessments. The tests don’t provide enough information for teachers about where students might need a helping hand, she said.

“What teachers do in the classroom is more valuable because they’re actually seeing students explain. They’re actually seeing students show their work. They’re actually able to see where students might be getting stuck in their understanding,” said Redeaux-Smith.

Paul Zavitkovsky, instructor and leadership coach at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said he doesn’t think the changes will affect student learning if teachers are not given good information from the tests.

“Until we start reporting information from whatever kind of testing we do in a way that teachers, school level people look at and go, … ‘This is much more useful in terms of helping me better understand what I am and am not doing well,’” said Zavitkovsky.

In response to the criticism, Sanders said in an interview with Chalkbeat that state assessments are meant to generate the state report card and show how Illinois is performing. But he agrees that state assessments “will likely never be a useful tool to teachers to be able to improve their teaching.”

The Illinois State Board of Education is hosting listening tours around the state for school leaders, educators, parents, students, and others interested in changes to the state assessments. The next one will take place in Chicago from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. on May 22 at the Chicago World Language Academy.

Samantha Smylie is the state education reporter for Chalkbeat Chicago covering school districts across the state, legislation, special education and the state board of education. Contact Samantha at ssmylie@chalkbeat.org.

The gender gap in math is back. The pandemic isn’t the only reason.

2025-05-13T06:51:06+00:00

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Girls had closed long-standing gender gaps in math test scores and were doing about as well as boys on standardized tests in the years leading up to the pandemic.

But the gender gap in math has come roaring back. And according to a new analysis from the testing and research organization NWEA, girls seem to have fallen further behind since students returned to in-person school.

NWEA also found that fewer girls were enrolling in algebra in eighth grade than before the pandemic. Because taking algebra in eighth grade sets students up to take calculus by the end of high school, it’s an important indicator of whether students will be able to pursue STEM fields in college and beyond.

The finding comes as most American students still have not recovered from the effects of disrupted pandemic learning and as the federal government is pulling back its support for research, particularly research that focuses on disparities.

The analysis draws from eighth grade scores on major international and national tests coupled with data from two million students who took NWEA’s MAP Growth Assessment.

The gender gap returned on the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS, a test given every four years in 64 countries, and on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, a test often referred to as the nation’s report card.

Among eighth graders who took NWEA’s assessments, boys did better than girls in math.

“All these indicators that we’re seeing across these different tests, they’re giving flashing warning signs that there’s something big happening here,” said Megan Kuhfield, director of growth modeling and analytics at NWEA and lead author of the report.

A Wall Street Journal analysis of state test scores found similar trends.

NWEA’s analysis can’t explain why this is happening. Researchers and educators have tended to focus on the ways the pandemic affected girls differently than boys. Girls’ mental health suffered more, and older girls especially took on more responsibility at home, doing housework or caring for siblings when schools were closed.

“When I first started looking at this, I thought, ‘Well, COVID changed everything,’” Kuhfeld said. “When we started digging into it, the fact that the gaps really started to widen from 2022 to 2024 more so than from 2019 to 2022, made that theory less strong to me.”

By 2022, most students were back in school. And girls continue to outperform boys in reading.

“Maybe it’s less about these global impacts on girls’ mental health and more about the classroom dynamics with students and teachers,” Kuhfeld said.

NWEA found that the math gender gap was more pronounced for higher performing students, with boys scoring much higher than girls on average. Among the lowest performing students, girls did better than boys in both reading and math.

“There needs to be a focus in middle school on making sure girls who are potentially interested in science and math get support to stay on those trajectories,” she said. “At the same time, we can’t lose sight of the boys at the bottom who are struggling.”

Research has found that teachers tend to judge math mistakes more harshly among girls and students of color and are more likely to attribute those students’ errors to lack of innate ability. Teachers who believed that gender inequality was no longer a problem were especially likely to penalize female students’ work.

“What we are finding over and over again is that when there is a mistake, when the answer is not fully correct, teachers assume that girls don’t have the math ability, or they are less capable than boys,” said Yasemin Copur-Gencturk, an associate professor of teacher education at the University of Southern California who has studied bias in teacher perceptions. “So girls could be receiving more implicit messages about not belonging in math classrooms, or they don’t have the capacity to do the work.”

Copur-Gencturk, who was not involved in the NWEA study, said it’s frustrating to see the gender gap return, but she’s glad to see data highlighting the issue. “That could be the problem and the solution, to raise awareness that it is not a done deal,” she said.

At the same time, she’s concerned that deep cuts to federal education research, and in particular to studies that touch on issues such as implicit bias and gender, mean there will be less information about what works going forward.

Algebra enrollment could be a warning sign

Kuhfeld worries that today’s gaps will grow over time. NWEA also found that fewer girls are taking eighth grade algebra than before the pandemic, which could mean fewer girls pursuing STEM majors in college. Last year, 24% of eighth grade boys and girls enrolled in algebra in the schools NWEA surveyed, but before the pandemic, 26% of girls took algebra in middle school. Boys’ participation has stayed steady.

Last year’s eighth graders were in fourth grade when schools closed in spring 2020. The years when they should have mastered foundational skills like fractions — critical to understanding algebra — were deeply disrupted.

“Eighth grade achievement is a lagging indicator for elementary school math,” Kuhfeld said. “It might mean that they’re not as prepared academically. Absent of COVID and these big changes, there’s a whole class of girls who might have been academically prepared who were routed out of these things.”

Enrollment in eighth grade algebra has been declining for years, said Elizabeth Huffaker, a research fellow at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education and author of a brief on algebra access and placement. Curriculum changes saw more algebra content incorporated into middle school integrated math courses, making it harder to move some students ahead earlier. And “algebra for all” policies have not had the results advocates hoped for.

Girls’ absolute decline in algebra enrollment is small, and other surveys find slightly higher enrollment. But Huffaker said the decline should serve as a warning sign, especially when coupled with test score declines that defy easy explanation.

States such as Texas and North Carolina have statewide initiatives to use test scores to place students in eighth grade algebra, she said. Historically such policies have helped more girls take algebra early, but if girls now are doing worse on tests, they could have the opposite effect.

Huffaker said she would not have predicted that the pandemic would have led to widening gaps between girls and boys, and the trend deserves more investigation.

Schools should consider multiple ways of determining whether students are ready for algebra, not just test scores, she said. Tutoring and summer programs could help some students who are close to qualifying be more prepared for algebra.

But ultimately, Huffaker said, the best way to improve test scores and algebra readiness for all students, including girls, would be to make sure they learn math well in elementary and early middle school.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

NYC students to take state tests this week after upstate’s bumpy rollout on the computer-based exams

2025-04-21T20:43:44+00:00

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It’s testing season for New York City’s public school students in grades 3-8, and after computer glitches plagued other parts of the state’s test takers, all eyes will be on what happens in the nation’s largest school system.

Schools are planning to administer the computer-based version of the English Language Arts between Tuesday and May 2. Computer-based math tests will be administered from May 6-16. All students except those in third and seventh grade are required to take the tests digitally this year as the state phases out paper-based exams. City officials estimate about 280,000 students will take digital ELA and math exams this spring.

By next year, all grades will take computer-based exams.

When students in other parts of the state took the ELA exams earlier this month, some schools faced problems for two days with the tests’ computer platform that prevented them from administering the exams. New York state education officials said that NWEA, the testing vendor, addressed the issues, and the company promised to not have a repeat performance.

“To date, across New York State, over 400,000 computer-based testing sessions have been successfully submitted by students,” state Education Department spokesperson JP O’Hare said in a statement. Officials extended the computer-based testing window by one week to offer additional time for affected schools.

Officials from NWEA said they identified and “permanently” fixed the technical issues that caused delayed logins and system times.

“We coordinated with the New York State Department of Education to provide details on the cause and steps we have taken to ensure this does not happen moving forward,” an NWEA spokesperson said in a statement.

New York City education department officials said they did not have concerns about the tech for the tests.

There’s widespread movement toward computer-based testing: The SAT is digital, and most Advanced Placement tests are also going digital this year or will be hybrid (with multiple choice questions online and handwritten free responses). The Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, which is the sole basis of admission for eight prestigious high schools, including Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, will be digital next school year. And many students across the city are giving English and math assessments three times a year on computers to help schools target instruction and interventions.

Many educators have raised concerns about equity around computer-based testing. Some students have less access to devices at home and at school, and may be less comfortable with tech and typing than others. Even within schools, some students might have access to laptops while others use tablets — and those experiences could potentially affect test-taking experiences.

The jury is still out on how the move to digital exams will affect student performance. Some studies have found students in general tend to perform worse when taking tests on computers or tablets. But experts have told Chalkbeat that research isn’t definitive.

In March, the city’s Education Department instructed elementary schools to provide extra test prep for students in grades 3-5 who were just on the cusp of passing the state tests based on their mid-year assessments. About 67,000 students were identified for this “sprint,” or roughly 38% of public school students in grades 3-5, Chalkbeat previously reported.

The city spent about $1 million on the push, giving each school $1,290 for the test prep, according to public records.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Bill to change Colorado’s school ratings system undergoes major amendments as it advances

2025-03-28T21:52:06+00:00

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A proposed overhaul of Colorado’s school accountability system got an overhaul itself this week when state lawmakers approved substantial amendments to a bill that would make big changes.

House Bill 1278 is largely based on 30 recommendations from a task force that worked for more than a year on how to improve Colorado’s school accountability system. Nicknamed “the clock” because it ticks toward state intervention, the system mostly uses standardized test scores to rate schools and school districts. Colorado law requires the State Board of Education to step in when a district or school has received five years of low ratings.

The original draft of the bill proposed many changes, including raising the bar for districts to earn the highest rating, doing more to encourage student participation in state tests, and requiring the Colorado Department of Education to look for early indicators of distress to provide support to struggling schools and districts sooner.

The House Education Committee on Wednesday approved seven amendments that in some cases completely rewrote sections of the bill. Among other changes, the amendments would:

Create a new option for when schools or districts have five years of low ratings. Instead of more drastic measures like closing schools, the new option would allow schools and districts to follow a “pathway plan” of their own design. Actions under that plan could include “contracting with external support partners, using contractors or resources provided by the (state education) department, engaging in cross-district progress monitoring, or comprehensive school redesign.”
Require the state to translate state tests into languages other than English and Spanish if there are more than 1,500 English language learner students at a particular grade level statewide who speak and receive instructional support in that language.
Divide the state tests into smaller sections for students with disabilities.
Require all students to take the state tests on a computer, except for students whose special education plans require that they take paper-and-pencil tests.
Require schools or districts where student participation in state tests is so low that the state doesn’t have enough data to calculate a rating for three years in a row to submit a corrective action plan to the State Board of Education.
Exempt online schools from having to submit a corrective action plan for low test participation for the 2025-26 and 2026-27 school years.
Make external management organizations that are partnering with schools or districts on improvement efforts subject to the Colorado Open Records Act.
Make technical changes to the way high schools are evaluated based on their students’ standardized test scores, graduation and dropout rates, and the college credits and work-based learning credentials their students earn while in high school.

State lawmakers on the House Education Committee approved most of the amendments without discussion or objection. Only a few lawmakers expressed concerns.

Rep. Jacque Phillips, a Thornton Democrat, said she disagreed with online schools being granted a two-year exemption from having to submit a corrective action plan for low state test participation because “I hear often about online schools that need more accountability.”

Rep. Anthony Hartsook, a Parker Republican, said he objected to external management organizations being subject to the state’s open records law because they are private companies.

And Rep. Tammy Story, a Conifer Democrat, expressed general concerns about “the validity and reliability” of standardized tests.

“It is well known that in many cases these tests are very focused … on wealthy white students,” Story said. “When it’s directed in that way, we are setting students up for failure on tests that they won’t be able to overcome, and then we’re using that data as if it matters to make all of these judgement calls about whether schools are performing well or not.”

A few lawmakers also balked at the bill’s fiscal note, which says it would cost nearly $18 million over the next three years to make the changes proposed in the bill.

The House Education Committee ultimately approved the bill on a 12-1 vote, with Rep. Dusty Johnson, a Fort Morgan Republican, casting the sole no vote. Johnson said she voted against the bill in part because of its price tag.

The bill now moves to the House Appropriations Committee.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Legisladores están considerando cambios al sistema de calificación de escuelas de Colorado

2025-03-20T22:35:16+00:00

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Los legisladores de Colorado están proponiendo cambios significativos en el sistema de rendición de cuentas de las escuelas del estado. Muchas de las recomendaciones provienen de un grupo de trabajo que trabajó durante más de un año en sugerencias para mejorar el sistema.

Sin embargo, algunos de los cambios propuestos van más allá de las recomendaciones del grupo de trabajo. Uno de ellos otorgaría más opciones a la Junta Estatal de Educación al decidir qué hacer con las escuelas y distritos que no han mostrado mejoras académicas en más de cinco años.

El proyecto de ley que propone estos cambios, Proyecto de Ley de la Cámara 1278, tuvo su primera audiencia en el Comité de Educación de la Cámara la semana pasada. Sin embargo, el comité decidió posponer la votación, ya que se espera que gran parte del lenguaje del proyecto de ley cambie.

Esto se debe, en parte, a que la estimación fiscal inicial del proyecto calcula que los cambios propuestos costarían al estado casi 18 millones de dólares en tres años, en un momento en el que los legisladores están tratando de recortar aproximadamente 1,000 millones de dólares del presupuesto estatal de este año.

Pero también es porque diversos grupos aún están presionando para que se realicen modificaciones.

Actualmente, el sistema de rendición de cuentas de las escuelas del estado, en uso desde 2009, se basa principalmente en los resultados de las pruebas estandarizadas para calificar el desempeño de las escuelas y distritos. A las escuelas secundarias también se les califica en función de sus tasas de graduación y de cuántos estudiantes continúan con estudios postsecundarios.

Las escuelas pueden recibir una de cuatro calificaciones, mientras que los distritos pueden recibir una de cinco. La ley requiere que la Junta Estatal de Educación intervenga cuando un distrito o escuela ha recibido cinco años consecutivos de bajas calificaciones. Sin embargo, la Junta Estatal tiene opciones limitadas, como: cerrar una escuela, convertir una escuela autónoma o comunitaria otorgar estatus de innovación, que permite a una escuela o grupo de escuelas obtener exenciones de leyes estatales o contratos sindicales y probar nuevos enfoques. El estado también puede ordenar a una escuela o distrito que entregue la gestión a un grupo externo, o puede despojar a los distritos o escuelas de su acreditación.

Un nuevo lenguaje que está siendo redactado en una enmienda de 12 páginas permitiría a los distritos que han llegado a este límite de cinco años “tomar otras acciones comparables o que tengan un impacto más significativo… según lo propuesto por el distrito escolar”.

“Las acciones incluyen, pero no se limitan a, contratar a un socio de gestión externa, utilizar contratistas o recursos proporcionados por el departamento, involucrar a distritos escolares para trabajar juntos en el monitoreo del progreso y brindar asistencia, o rediseñar completamente la escuela”, establece el borrador de la enmienda.

El grupo de trabajo estuvo unánime en sus 30 recomendaciones, la mayoría de las cuales están reflejadas en el proyecto de ley propuesto. Sin embargo, el informe del grupo de trabajo, publicado en noviembre, no mencionó cambiar las acciones que el estado puede tomar cuando una escuela o distrito alcanza cinco años de bajas calificaciones, también conocido como “el final del reloj”.

La representante Meghan Lukens, una de las patrocinadoras del proyecto y demócrata de Steamboat Springs, además de maestra, dijo que el grupo de trabajo tenía el objetivo de dar más flexibilidad a las escuelas y distritos. Otros líderes involucrados en la redacción del proyecto de ley argumentan que la enmienda está relacionada con una de las recomendaciones del grupo de trabajo para “apoyar a las escuelas y distritos que buscan soluciones audaces para mejorar”. Sin embargo, el informe del grupo de trabajo explica esta recomendación como una sugerencia para que el estado proporcione más financiamiento para esfuerzos de mejora en los distritos.

Entre quienes testificaron en la audiencia de la semana pasada, algunos se opusieron al proyecto, argumentando que el sistema de rendición de cuentas sigue siendo injusto y que las escuelas siguen sin recibir fondos suficientes. No obstante, la mayoría de los líderes educativos que testificaron se mostraron a favor de los cambios, aunque algunos pidieron modificaciones adicionales.

“El borrador actual tiene un gran potencial, pero su expansión y énfasis en las pruebas estandarizadas es simplemente insensible,” dijo Kara Smallwood, patóloga del habla y una de varias educadoras que testificaron en nombre de la Asociación de Educación de Colorado (CEA, por sus siglas en inglés). “Si bien la intención es buena, pedimos a las compañías de pruebas, legisladores y padres que nos escuchen cuando decimos que duplicar las pruebas estandarizadas no mejora la experiencia de los estudiantes en la escuela ni su preparación para el futuro.”

El presidente de la CEA, Kevin Vick, dijo a los legisladores que el sindicato apoya modificar el proyecto de ley para garantizar que el estado no incremente las pruebas estandarizadas y que la retención de maestros sea una prioridad.

El abogado del distrito Adams 14, Joe Salazar, exlegislador, dijo al comité de educación de la Cámara de Representantes que su distrito ha sido tratado como un experimento dentro del sistema de rendición de cuentas.

Adams 14 es el único distrito en el estado que ha recibido bajas calificaciones durante más de una década, lo que ha activado las sanciones más severas del sistema.

La administración anterior del distrito desafió las órdenes estatales y logró que el estado retirara una solicitud para reorganizar el distrito, lo que podría haber significado su disolución o la fusión con distritos vecinos. Los distritos vecinos se unieron a Adams 14 para rechazar la orden estatal.

Ahora, los líderes del distrito dicen que están logrando mayores avances trabajando en colaboración con el estado, en lugar de enfrentarse a él, aunque las calificaciones aún no han mejorado.

“Lo que hemos soportado desde 2018 ha sido punitivo y contraproducente,” dijo Jason Malmberg, presidente del sindicato de maestros de Adams 14. “Ha creado caos en un sistema ya vulnerable.”

Malmberg elogió la enmienda L6, que agrega nuevas opciones para distritos al final del reloj, diciendo que representa “un paso importante hacia adelante” en el sistema de rendición de cuentas.

Otros cambios propuestos en el Proyecto de Ley 1278

Traducción de pruebas estandarizadas a otros idiomas o adopción de pruebas en otros idiomas para estudiantes que aún no dominan el inglés. Este componente del proyecto de ley es el más costoso, con un costo estimado de hasta 4 millones de dólares en el primer año. Se está redactando una enmienda para reducir este requisito y abaratar costos.
Mayor énfasis en la participación en pruebas estatales, aclarando cómo las escuelas y distritos pueden fomentar la participación de los estudiantes y requiriendo que la información enviada a los hogares incluya declaraciones del estado sobre la importancia de tomar las pruebas.
Estudio sobre la eficacia de los socios de gestión externa, para evaluar su impacto y determinar qué necesitan para ser efectivos.
Creación de un “super subgrupo” que agrupe a estudiantes con discapacidades, aprendices de inglés y estudiantes de bajos ingresos para que las escuelas sean evaluadas por ellos solo una vez.
Planes de mejora en el “final del reloj” que incluyan estrategias financieras.
Nuevos requisitos para obtener la calificación de “distinción”, asegurando que ningún subgrupo de estudiantes tenga el nivel más bajo de desempeño en ninguna categoría.

Traducido por Rossana Longo-Better, Colorado Community Media

Yesenia Robles es reportera de Chalkbeat Colorado que cubre distritos escolares K-12 y educación multilingüe. Comuníquese con Yesenia en yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado lawmakers are drafting a bill to change the state’s school ratings system

2025-03-19T02:18:19+00:00

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Colorado lawmakers are proposing big changes to the state’s school accountability system. Many of the recommendations come from a task force that worked for over a year on suggestions for how to improve the system.

But some of the proposed changes go further than the task force recommendations. One would give the State Board of Education more options when deciding what to do with schools and districts that have failed to show academic improvement for more than five years.

A bill proposing the changes, House Bill 1278, had its first hearing in the House Education Committee last week. But the committee held off on voting, because so much of the bill’s language is expected to change.

In part that’s because the bill’s initial fiscal note estimates the proposed changes would cost the state almost $18 million over three years, at a time when lawmakers are struggling to cut about $1 billion from this year’s state’s budget.

But it’s also because various groups are still pushing for changes.

Currently, the state’s school accountability system, in use since 2009, mostly uses standardized test scores to rate schools and districts. High schools are also rated on their graduation rates and on how many students move on to postsecondary options.

Schools can earn one of four ratings, while districts can earn one of five. The law requires the State Board of Education to step in when a district or school has reached five years of low ratings, but the State Board is limited to ordering changes that include: closing a school, turning a school into a charter school or community school, or granting innovation status, which allows a school or group of schools to get waivers from state laws or union contracts and try new approaches. The state can also order a school or district to turn over management to an external group, or can strip districts or schools of accreditation.

New language being drafted in a 12-page amendment would allow districts that have reached this five-year point to instead “take other actions that are comparable or that have a more significant effect…as proposed by the school district.”

“Actions include, but are not limited to, contracting with an external management partner, using contractors or resources provided by the department, engaging school districts to work together to monitor progress and provide assistance, or comprehensive school redesign,” the amendment draft states.

The task force was unanimous in its 30 recommendations, which are mostly all reflected in the proposed bill. But the task force report, published in November, didn’t mention changing the allowable state actions for when a school or district has reached five years of low ratings, also known as the end of “the clock.”

Here’s how a task force suggests changing the way schools and districts are rated in Colorado

Rep. Meghan Lukens, one of the bill sponsors who is a Democrat from Steamboat Springs and also a teacher, said that the task force did have a goal of giving schools and districts more flexibility. Other leaders involved in drafting the bill say the amendment is related to one of the task force recommendations to “support schools and districts pursuing bold solutions to turnaround.” But the report from the task force explains that recommendation as suggesting the state provide more funding for more district improvement efforts.

Among those who spoke at the hearing last week, a few were opposed to the bill, stating that the accountability system is still inequitable and that schools are still underfunded, while most education leaders who spoke were in favor of the changes. Some asked for a few more.

“The current draft shows significant promise but its expansion of and emphasis on standardized testing is simply tone deaf,” said Kara Smallwood, a speech language pathologist who was one of several educators to speak on behalf of the Colorado Education Association. “While well intentioned, we urge testing companies, legislators, and parents to hear us when we say that doubling down on standardized testing does not improve students’ experience in school nor their preparedness for the future.”

CEA President Kevin Vick told lawmakers that the union supports amending the bill to ensure that the state doesn’t double down on testing, and that teacher retention is a focus.

Vick also said they are working with bill sponsors on amendments so the system “prioritizes community-led approaches over more punitive state-led actions such as mass firings, use of external managers or other things that devalue the efforts of the people in our respective districts on the clock.”

Adams 14 lawyer and former lawmaker Joe Salazar told the House education committee last week that the Adams 14 district has felt like the state’s guinea pig for the accountability system.

Adams 14 is the only district in the state that has earned low ratings for more than a decade, triggering all of the system’s most severe consequences.

The latest district administration pushed back against state orders and managed to get the state to back off a request that the district reorganize, which could have meant dissolving the district or merging parts of it with neighboring districts. The neighboring districts united with Adams 14 in rejecting the state order.

Now, district leaders say they are making better progress working with the state in a collaborative relationship, as opposed to an adversarial one, but state ratings have yet to improve.

“What we have endured since 2018 has been punitive and counterproductive,” Jason Malmberg, Adams 14 teacher union president, told the committee. “It created chaos in an already vulnerable system.”

Malmberg spoke of the amendment, titled L6, adding new options for schools and districts at the end of the clock, saying that it takes “an important step forward,” by shifting the focus of the accountability system.

“I urge you to learn from the mistakes of the past,” Malmberg said.

The current draft of the bill also proposes, as recommended by the task force, translating standardized tests into other languages, or adopting tests in other languages, for students who are still not fluent in English.

This component of the bill is the most expensive, estimated at possibly $4 million in the first year alone.

An amendment is being drafted to narrow the requirement and lower the cost.

Another part of the bill requires the state to do more to encourage participation in state tests, by clarifying how schools and districts can encourage students to take the test, and by requiring that information sent home include statements from the state about the importance of taking the test.

Colorado’s annual performance ratings show more schools, districts earning better marks

Here are some of the other changes proposed by HB 1278:

Requiring a study on the effectiveness of external management partners, which are consultants the state has required districts to hire to help improve achievement, and the return on investment they offer to districts. The study would also need to look at what is necessary for the consultants to be successful, and the department of education would need to create a list of groups qualified to work as external managers.
Students who fall into subgroups such as students with disabilities, English learners, or those who qualify for free and reduced price lunch should be combined into one “super subgroup,” so schools are only evaluated for them once.
Requiring the department of education to look for early indicators of distress to provide support earlier to schools and districts before they have five years of low ratings.
Requiring that improvement plans toward the end of the clock include financial plans.
The State Board would have to adopt new requirements for what school districts must do to earn a distinction rating, the highest performance rating available, including that none of the disaggregated student groups can have the lowest “does not meet” result in any performance category.
Requiring that if a district earns an insufficient rating due to low participation for three years in a row, it must submit a corrective action plan to the state.
Requires various studies for future changes to the accountability system including adjusting weights of the different factors evaluated, changing the labels for each rating, and increasing equity.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Un año después del plan de mejoramiento de las escuelas públicas de Newark, ¿cómo ha progresado?

2025-02-12T21:34:42+00:00

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Después de que las escuelas públicas de Newark no alcanzaran el rendimiento de los estudiantes en las pruebas estandarizadas durante varios años consecutivos, el estado intervino y puso al distrito en un plan de mejoramiento que delineaba métricas claramente definidas necesarias para mostrar el progreso del estudiante.

Eso fue hace casi un año. Ahora, los resultados de la última ronda de la New Jersey Student Learning Assessment (Evaluación de Aprendizaje de Estudiantes de Nueva Jersey) mostraron pocos cambios, una vez más, con la gran mayoría de los estudiantes de Newark todavía por debajo del nivel de grado en lectura, matemáticas y ciencias.

Eso significa que el distrito permanecerá bajo la vigilancia del superintendente ejecutivo del condado de Essex, un representante del departamento estatal de educación, quien tiene el mandato de intervenir para evaluar el progreso del distrito cada seis meses. La supervisión tiene ecos de los 25 años del distrito bajo control estatal, que se suspendió hace cinco años en medio de la pandemia.

Los objetivos del plan de mejora de Newark aprobado por el estado son elevados en algunos aspectos y modestos en otros. Incluyen objetivos anuales para mejorar las tasas de competencia en lectura en 4 puntos porcentuales, matemáticas en 8 puntos porcentuales y ciencias en 3 puntos porcentuales, además de aumentar la tasa de graduación en 1.5 puntos porcentuales, y la disminución del ausentismo crónico en medio punto porcentual.

Según datos estatales y distritales disponibles públicamente, Newark logró solo uno de esos objetivos: reducir su tasa de ausentismo crónico del 12.7% en 2023 al 12.1% en 2024. El estado define el ausentismo crónico como falta del 10% del año escolar, o 18 días en un año escolar de 180 días.

Un portavoz de las escuelas públicas de Newark no respondió a una solicitud de comentarios sobre la situación actual del distrito en el marco del plan de mejora. Según la ley estatal, si el desempeño del distrito empeora drásticamente bajo el plan de mejoramiento, eso podría desencadenar una intervención estatal parcial o completa, aunque también se necesitarían subsanar las deficiencias en varias otras áreas.

Algunos críticos del sistema de evaluación estatal argumentan que medir el desempeño de un distrito en base a los resultados de los estudiantes en las pruebas estatales no representa con precisión lo bien que se está enseñando a los estudiantes.

“Estás juzgando la calidad del distrito escolar en base a métricas que no dependen enteramente sobre cómo le está yendo a la escuela”, dijo Mark Weber, analista de políticas educativas de New Jersey Policy Perspective y profesor de la Rutgers University. “Si tienes un distrito que tiene una alta tasa de pobreza, eso va a afectar las puntuaciones en los exámenes, y el distrito está siendo juzgado por eso”.

Una revisión intermedia en junio mostró que el distrito aún no cumplía con los estándares estatales, según documentos obtenidos por Chalkbeat Newark a través de una solicitud de registros públicos. Según la directriz de seis meses en el estatuto estatal, una revisión posterior estaba prevista para diciembre, pero aún no se había completado hasta esta semana, dijo el martes el portavoz del departamento de educación estatal, Michael Yaple.

El distrito seguirá bajo un plan de mejoramiento, agregó Yaple, hasta que cumpla con los objetivos en la próxima revisión intermedia o cumpla con las normas estatales en la revisión integral que se realizará en el año escolar 2025-26.

El panorama de los resultados de los estudiantes en Newark no ha cambiado significativamente en las últimas tres rondas de pruebas estatales desde que la pandemia de COVID interrumpió el aprendizaje.

Los resultados de las pruebas estatales publicadas en diciembre mostraron que una abrumadora mayoría de los estudiantes del distrito todavía tienen dificultades para rendir a nivel de grado en materias clave. Casi el 70% de los estudiantes de los grados 3 a 9 no alcanzan los niveles de alfabetización, alrededor del 82% no cumplen con los estándares de matemáticas y el 93% de los alumnos de quinto grado están por debajo del nivel de ciencia.

Los resultados mostraron aumentos limitados sobre el 2023, destacando la lenta recuperación de Newark de la convulsión del aprendizaje en la era de la pandemia. En los últimos años, con la ayuda de fondos federales para el alivio de la pandemia, el superintendente Roger León aumentó los esfuerzos de tutoría con programas de verano y sábados. El distrito asignó $6.8 millones para tutoría este año escolar, ofreciendo sesiones adicionales desde el comienzo del año escolar.

Pero algunas de esas actividades de tutoría corren el riesgo de ser reducidas el próximo año, debido a que el distrito ya no tiene acceso a esos fondos federales, que expiraron en septiembre.

La puntuación de evaluación desciende por debajo del nivel estándar, pero no a niveles históricamente bajos

El Departamento de Educación del estado revisa el desempeño general de un distrito cada tres años en base a cinco categorías clave de su sistema de evaluación —el Quality Single Accountability Continuum (Continuo Único de Rendición de Cuentas de Calidad)— que incluye instrucción, gestión fiscal, gobierno, operaciones y personal. En cada categoría, hay varias maneras en que los distritos son juzgados usando una escala de 100 puntos para determinar cómo cumplen con los estándares descritos. Cuando un distrito cae por debajo de la puntuación mínima de aprobación de 80 en cualquier categoría dada, se le ordena crear un plan de mejoramiento del distrito con aprobación y supervisión estatal.

Newark debía ser revisada por el estado en el año escolar 2022-2023 por primera vez desde que recuperó el control local completo en 2020. El distrito se dio altas calificaciones en todas las categorías, pero a fines de 2023, el estado le dio al distrito una puntuación de 79 en instrucción, en particular descontando puntos en lo que respecta al rendimiento de los estudiantes, las tasas de graduación y el ausentismo crónico.

Joseph Zarra, el superintendente ejecutivo interino del condado de Essex, realizó una revisión semestral en junio y redujo dos puntos adicionales de la puntuación de instrucción del distrito a 77 debido a su fracaso para cumplir con los objetivos del plan de mejora, según documentos estatales.

El portavoz de las escuelas públicas de Newark, Paul Brubaker, no respondió a preguntas sobre la lucha del distrito para cumplir con los objetivos de su plan de mejoramiento.

Aunque el distrito sigue teniendo un plan de mejora, las razones son muy diferentes a lo que llevó al control estatal en 1995 cuando los niveles de rendimiento de los estudiantes se contraponían a los gastos exorbitantes entre los líderes del distrito. Fue durante los 25 años de la toma del poder por el estado, cuando se creó el sistema de evaluación del departamento de educación y luego se utilizó para determinar la preparación del distrito en su transición de vuelta al control local.

Los críticos dicen que el sistema de evaluación favorece a los distritos más ricos

Una vez que el distrito recuperó el control local en 2020, se enfrentó a un obstáculo pronunciado ya que los estudiantes de toda la ciudad se vieron afectados de manera desproporcionada por el aprendizaje remoto durante los cierres por COVID-19 debido al acceso limitado a internet, la falta de computadoras portátiles o tabletas digitales en casa, y los obstáculos a los recursos para los estudiantes con discapacidades, entre otros temas.

La pandemia llegó poco después de que el distrito ya estaba viendo volver a caer el rendimiento de los estudiantes en las puntuaciones de los exámenes estatales después de años de avances.

Con la entrada de $287 millones en fondos federales de socorro, los líderes del distrito destinaron grandes sumas de esos fondos para reparar sus edificios escolares dilapidados, y una proporción menor se destinó a aumentar las actividades de tutoría. Newark no fue el único en tomar esas decisiones, ya que muchos distritos escolares de alta pobreza gastaron los fondos de manera similar.

Los críticos del sistema de evaluación estatal señalan las desigualdades subyacentes en el sistema, diciendo que las críticas a un distrito con altas necesidades como Newark basadas en los resultados de los estudiantes en las pruebas estatales no tienen en cuenta factores que contribuyen al bajo rendimiento de los estudiantes, como la pobreza.

“Para un distrito que comienza con puntuaciones más bajas en los exámenes, es más difícil mostrar crecimiento”, dijo Weber, el profesor de Rutgers, agregando que el distrito también ha visto una afluencia de estudiantes de inglés en los últimos años que requieren recursos adicionales.

“¿Es racional y razonable esperar que el distrito obtenga las mismas puntuaciones que otro distrito que no tiene, digamos, tantos estudiantes de inglés?” Weber dijo. “Debido a esta dependencia de los resultados de las pruebas para determinar si se necesita alguna corrección o no, hay un sesgo inherente en contra de un distrito como Newark, Paterson, Trenton y Camden. Eso es problemático”.

Otras categorías del sistema de evaluación, como la gestión y las operaciones, se basan exclusivamente en las políticas y prácticas vigentes.

“Esas son cosas que el distrito escolar podría controlar directamente. Los resultados de los estudiantes no lo son”, dijo Weber.

En los últimos meses, líderes escolares a nivel estatal han instado a la Junta de Educación del estado a cambiar el énfasis del sistema en los resultados estudiantiles, que dicen favorece a distritos más ricos. En octubre, el Comisionado de Educación interino Kevin Dehmer informó a la junta escolar estatal que de 56 exámenes de desempeño de distrito realizados durante ese período, 42 distritos no cumplieron con los estándares estatales, debido principalmente a deficiencias en el rendimiento académico.

Si Newark aún no cumple con los objetivos establecidos en su plan de mejoramiento durante los próximos seis meses, el estado hará una revisión integral en el año escolar 2025-26 y determinará en ese momento si se debe implementar un nuevo plan de mejoramiento, de acuerdo con la ley estatal.

El distrito podría enfrentar una intervención estatal parcial si su puntuación en cualquiera de las cinco categorías de evaluación cae por debajo de 50 puntos y no implementa el plan de mejoramiento, según la ley estatal. Si las circunstancias adicionales también impiden que el distrito proporcione una educación completa y eficiente, como lo exige la constitución del estado, entonces el comisionado de educación podría invocar la intervención total del estado, dice la ley.

Traducido por Bernardo de la Cruz

Esta traducción fue proporcionada por New Jersey Hispano, en asociación con el Centro de Medios Cooperativos de la Universidad Estatal de Montclair, y cuenta con el apoyo financiero del Consorcio de Información Cívica de NJ. La historia fue escrita originalmente en inglés por Chalkbeat Newark y se vuelve a publicar en virtud de un acuerdo especial para compartir contenido a través del Servicio de noticias de traducción al español de NJ News Commons.

Catherine Carrera es la corresponsal jefa de Chalkbeat Newark. Comunícate con ella por correo electrónico a ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

How summer learning, tutoring helped 9 New Jersey school districts overcome a pandemic slump

2025-02-12T15:47:18+00:00

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Nine low-income New Jersey school districts bucked national trends and are now performing above pre-pandemic achievement levels in reading, math, or both.

That’s shown in a new release of the Education Recovery Scorecard, which compares learning loss and recovery across thousands of school districts nationwide.

The districts include Union City, Woodlynne, Lakewood Township, Ventnor City, Commercial Township, Englewood, Garfield, Hillside, and Beverly City.

Superintendents in those districts and researchers attributed the success to academic catch-up efforts, such as high-impact tutoring and summer learning opportunities. Now, these districts are working to continue offering effective interventions as pandemic relief funds dry up and President Donald Trump warns of cuts to education funding at the federal level. Thomas Kane, a professor at Harvard University, suggested that all school districts should use other local, state or federal funds to continue offering these programs whenever possible.

“Unless state and local leaders step up now, the achievement losses will be the longest lasting — and most inequitable — legacy of the pandemic,” Kane said.

The average New Jersey student is two-thirds of a grade level below 2019 levels in math and almost half of a grade level below pre-pandemic levels in reading.

New Jersey had among the biggest drops in math performance for low-income students, according to the annual scorecard report from researchers at Harvard and Stanford universities. The average student in West Windsor-Plainsboro, Edison Township, Hamilton Township, Newark, Paterson, New Brunswick, and Trenton remains more than a full grade equivalent below their 2019 mean achievement in math.

Districts with the highest incomes were four times more likely to recover to pre-pandemic levels than the lowest-income districts, with federal relief dollars preventing those gaps from growing even wider, researchers said. Districts serving more Black and Hispanic students are falling further behind, and even within those districts, Black and Hispanic students are falling further behind their white district peers, said Sean Reardon, a professor at Stanford University.

The researchers highlighted Union City as a “district success story” for passing pre-pandemic achievement in math and reading. Montgomery Township, Princeton, Rutherford, Montclair, and Livingston are also considered “fully recovered” by the researchers.

Remote learning kept students ‘much more disengaged’

Low-income communities were generally less prepared for online learning than wealthier communities when the pandemic caused schools to close in March 2020. Even if a district had laptops for each child, access to Wi-Fi or quiet spaces sometimes posed problems.

Rutherford Public Schools Superintendent Jack Hurley said opening schools for in-person instruction during the 2020-2021 school year helped limit drops in academic recovery. Even when schools closed in March 2020, forcing districts to adopt online learning, the district was prepared since each student already had access to a Chromebook laptop. Rutherford is not classified as low-income and saw gains in both reading and math that surpassed pre-pandemic levels.

Every student in Beverly City School District, which is low-income, also had a laptop, which Superintendent Elizabeth Giacobbe said prevented students from losing too much ground. The district opened its doors for full-time, in-person instruction for the 2020-21 school year with a remote option available for families who wanted it.

“The students that came every day, Monday through Friday, from eight to three, benefited greatly from having the social interactions,” Giacobbe said. “Those that chose to stay at home were much more disengaged.”

On the other hand, the low-income Englewood Public School District was one of the last in the state to return to in-person instruction, which was not beneficial to students or teachers, Superintendent Marnie Hazelton said.

The district had laptops for each child, but there was a lack of Wi-Fi availability when students started attending school remotely. The district spent some of its federal relief money on creating Wi-Fi hot spots and improving internet connectivity. Englewood recently joined a Verizon program that provides the district with 1,400 LTE-enabled Chromebooks that allow students access to the internet from anywhere.

Promoting tutoring programs increased demand

Englewood used high-impact tutoring and free summer learning programs to curb learning loss, with a focus on the most vulnerable students.

“We have been very intentional about targeting or focusing on our most fragile students, looking at those students that are in that subgroup of free and reduced [lunch program],” Hazelton said. Students from low-income backgrounds exhibited more growth than students in the district who were not from low-income families, although their performance remains lower.

Englewood received the state’s high-impact tutoring grant, which was designed to help third and fourth graders recover from the pandemic. At first, Hazelton said the program did not reach capacity but after outreach to parents whose kids would benefit, there is now a waitlist.

Additional instructional time, including before and after school, on the weekends and over the summer, is common across the districts that made up ground lost during the pandemic.

Kane, the researcher from Harvard, said it’s important to keep parents informed about how their students are doing so they take advantage of such programs. He noted that more than 90% believe their kids are at grade level, which is not true.

“Parents aren’t going to sign up for summer learning or ask for a tutor in school or agree to an increase in the school year if they’re under the impression that everything’s fine,” Kane said.

Rutherford also offered summer enrichment and before and after school programs to help students catch up. Pandemic relief funding allowed the district to create a “zero period” at the start of the day when kids could receive extra help. That program is over now, but the summer academy is continuing to grow with funding from other sources.

Chronic absenteeism slows down academic recovery

New Jersey school districts also saw a rise in chronic absenteeism, which is when students miss more than 10% of a school year. In 2019, 11% of students were chronically absent, compared to 16% in 2023. This is slowing the recovery in many districts, the researchers said.

Beverly City School District in Burlington County saw a jump in absenteeism from 8.7% in 2019 to 43.2% in 2022. By the following year, absenteeism dropped to 24.2%.

Giacobbe said the district identifies chronically absent students and assigns them case managers who regularly check in with the students and their families or caretakers. Case managers try to work with the parents to come up with a solution, but if they are unsuccessful the district will file truancy charges, Giacobbe said.

The district also tries to get students to come to school by offering incentives, such as dress-down days and flexible seating at lunch.

Kerri Lawler, director of curriculum and instruction in the district, said the nurse plays a big role by offering flu clinics and washing clothes for students to eliminate barriers to attendance.

Kane suggested school districts get outside help from the community to reduce absenteeism. In districts where absenteeism grew substantially, it hurt academic recovery.

“We all know we need kids in school to learn,” said Alexandra Bellenger, director of curriculum and instruction for the Garfield School District, a low-income district that passed pre-pandemic achievement levels in reading. “If they’re not here, they’re not learning.”

Cuts to tutoring programs loom

Bellenger’s district offered after-school tutoring and enrichment, summer programs, and Saturday programming for students to help with recovery. Much of this was funded with federal relief dollars, but Bellenger said the district is working to continue initiatives by paying for them in other ways, such as through Title I dollars that support high-poverty schools. She said the district is taking a data-driven approach to decide which programs to continue funding and which students to target for extra support.

Kane of Harvard University said that due to the flexibility of how pandemic relief dollars could be spent, they had about the same impact as an increase in general revenue for a district. Dollars spent on academic catch-up, such as tutoring, summer learning, and after-school learning had larger effects, he noted.

“On average it looks like the dollars did have an effect and they particularly helped narrow the gaps or prevented the gaps from being even worse between high and low-income districts,” Kane said.

New Jersey received $4.3 billion in federal pandemic relief for K-12 schools, which is an average of $3,100 per student. This is below the national average of $3,700 per student, although federal dollars varied significantly even among low-income school districts. For example, Garfield received an average of $2,805 per student from the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief fund while Ventnor City received $9,038.

In Ventnor City Public School District, Superintendent Carmela Somershoe said the district used relief funds to offer a summer program with small classes that reached students based on need. Now that the money has dried up, the district is incorporating intervention into the regular school year instead of offering summer programs. This includes using Title I funds to pay for an academic after school-program and reading intervention.

Somershoe said the district is trying to budget carefully and intentionally due to the unpredictability that comes with each budget season and a new presidential administration.

Hazelton said Englewood is preparing for a flat budget for the next school year, noting the district may have to prepare for layoffs. She said programs like high-impact tutoring and summer learning have made a huge difference, and she plans to favor those in the budget even if it means higher class sizes during the school year.

The district is also working to improve its capacity for special education, to accommodate more students in district schools instead of having them attend approved private schools for students with disabilities, which cost districts a lot of money between tuition and transportation.

New Jersey school districts are set to find out how much money they will receive in state aid on Feb. 27, two days after the governor’s annual budget address. Districts must submit their budgets in March.

Hannah Gross covers education and child welfare for NJ Spotlight News via a partnership with Report for America. She covers the full spectrum of education and children’s services in New Jersey and looks especially through the lens of equity and opportunity. This story was first published on NJ Spotlight News, a content partner of Chalkbeat Newark.

Kids are still behind in reading and math. Here’s how these schools bucked the trend.

2025-02-11T05:01:00+00:00

Math is the subject sixth grader Harmoni Knight finds hardest, but that’s changing.

In-class tutors and “data chats” at her middle school in Compton, California, have made a dramatic difference, the 11-year-old said. She proudly pulled up a performance tracker at a tutoring session last week, displaying a column of perfect 100% scores on all her weekly quizzes from January.

Since the pandemic first shuttered American classrooms, schools have poured federal and local relief money into interventions like the ones in Harmoni’s classroom, hoping to help students catch up academically following COVID-19 disruptions.

But a new analysis of state and national test scores shows the average student remains half a grade level behind pre-pandemic achievement in both reading and math. In reading, students are even further behind than they were in 2022, the analysis shows.

A student works on math problems in a fourth grade classroom at William Jefferson Clinton Elementary in Compton, Calif., on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025.

Compton is an outlier, making some of the biggest two-year gains in both subjects among large districts. And there are other bright spots, along with evidence that interventions like tutoring and summer programs are working.

The Education Recovery Scorecard analysis by researchers at Harvard, Stanford and Dartmouth allows year-to-year comparisons across states and districts, providing the most comprehensive picture yet of how American students are performing since COVID-19 first disrupted learning.

The most recent data is based on tests taken by students in spring 2024. By then, the worst of the pandemic was long past, but schools were still dealing with a mental health crisis and high rates of absenteeism — not to mention students who’d had crucial learning disrupted.

“The losses are not just due to what happened during the 2020 to 2021 school year, but the aftershocks that have hit schools in the years since the pandemic,” said Tom Kane, a Harvard economist who worked on the scorecard.

Scores on key national test show disheartening trends for the lowest-performing students

In some cases, the analysis shows school districts are struggling when their students may have posted decent results on their state tests. That’s because each state adopts its own assessments, and those aren’t comparable to each other. Those differences can make it impossible to tell whether students are performing better because of their progress, or whether those shifts are because the tests themselves are changing, or the state has lowered its standards for proficiency.

The Scorecard accounts for differing state tests and provides one national standard.

Higher-income districts have made significantly more progress than lower-income districts, with the top 10% of high-income districts four times more likely to have recovered in both math and reading compared with the poorest 10%. And recovery within districts remains divided by race and class, especially in math scores. Test score gaps grew by both race and income.

“The pandemic has not only driven test scores down, but that decline masks a pernicious inequality that has grown during the pandemic,” said Sean Reardon, a Stanford sociologist who worked on the scorecard. “Not only are districts serving more Black and Hispanic students falling further behind, but even within those districts, Black and Hispanic students are falling further behind their white district mates.”

Tutors in class, after school, and on Saturdays

Still, many of the districts that outperformed the country serve predominantly students from low-income backgrounds or students of color, and their interventions offer best practices for other districts.

In Compton, the district responded to the pandemic by hiring over 250 tutors that specialize in math, reading and students learning English. Certain classes are staffed with multiple tutors to assist teachers. And schools offer tutoring before, during and after school, plus “Saturday School” and summer programs for the district’s 17,000 students, said Superintendent Darin Brawley.

To identify younger students needing targeted support, the district now conducts dyslexia screenings in all elementary schools.

The low-income school district near downtown Los Angeles, with a student body that is 84% Latino and 14% Black, now has a graduation rate of 93%, compared with 58% when Brawley took the job in 2012.

A tutor helps student Harmoni Knight in a classroom at Benjamin O. Davis Middle School in Compton, Calif., on Thursday, Feb. 6,, 2025.

Harmoni, the sixth grader, said that one-on-one tutoring has helped her grasp concepts and given her more confidence in math. She gets separate “data chats” with her math specialist that are part performance review, part pep talk.

“Looking at my data, it kind of disappoints me” when the numbers are low, said Harmoni. “But it makes me realize I can do better in the future, and also now.”

Brawley said he’s proud of the district’s latest test scores, but not content.

“Truth be told, I wasn’t happy,” he said. “Even though we gained, and we celebrate the gains, at the end of the day we all know that we can do better.”

As federal pandemic relief money for schools winds down, states and school districts will have limited resources and must prioritize interventions that worked. Districts that spent federal money on increased instructional time, either through tutoring or summer school, saw a return on that investment.

Reading levels have continued to decline, despite a movement in many states to emphasize phonics and the “science of reading.” So Reardon and Kane called for an evaluation of the mixed results for insights into the best ways to teach kids to read.

The researchers emphasized the need to extend state and local money to support pandemic recovery programs that showed strong academic results. Schools also must engage parents and tell them when their kids are behind, the researchers said.

And schools must continue to work with community groups to improve students’ attendance. The scorecard identified a relationship between high absenteeism and learning struggles.

Students interact in a fourth grade classroom at William Jefferson Clinton Elementary in Compton, Calif., on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2025.

Tutors also help with attendance

In the District of Columbia, an intensive tutoring program helped with both academics and attendance, D.C. Public Schools Chancellor Lewis Ferebee said. In the scorecard analysis, the District of Columbia ranked first among states for gains in both math and reading between 2022 and 2024, after its math recovery had fallen toward the bottom of the list.

Pandemic-relief money funded the tutoring, along with a system of identifying and targeting support at students in greatest need. The district also hired program managers who helped maximize time for tutoring within the school day, Ferebee said.

Students who received tutoring were more likely to be engaged with school, Ferebee said, both from increased confidence over the subject matter and because they had a relationship with another trusted adult.

Students expressed that “I’m more confident in math because I’m being validated by another adult,” Ferebee said. “That validation goes a long way, not only with attendance, but a student feeling like they are ready to learn and are capable, and as a result, they show up differently.”

Federal pandemic relief money has ended, but Ferebee said many of the investments the district made will have lasting impact, including the money spent on teacher training and curriculum development in literacy.

Christina Grant, who served as the District of Columbia’s state superintendent of education until 2024, said she’s hopeful to see the evidence emerging on what’s made a difference in student achievement.

“We cannot afford to not have hope. These are our students. They did not cause the pandemic,” Grant said. “The growing concern is ensuring that we can ... see ourselves to the other side.”

Annie Ma and Jocelyn Gecker cover education for The Associated Press.

Did Zearn boost Colorado math scores? A study says yes, but an expert says questions remain.

2025-02-11T00:48:32+00:00

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A digital math tool that Colorado Gov. Jared Polis made available for free to schools helped contribute to higher math scores statewide, according to a one-year study conducted by the company that makes the tool and released by Polis’ office last week.

But one local expert cautioned against attributing the math gains entirely to the digital tool, called Zearn Math.

University of Colorado Boulder math professor David Webb, who reviewed the study, said it confirms that Zearn contributed to a low to modest increase in student math knowledge. But Webb said that the return to in-person instruction after COVID school building shutdowns likely also had a positive effect on math achievement.

“The data they had available was something they could organize and produce for the community to say, ‘Well, you know, no harm has been done. And it’s heading in a positive trend,’” Webb said of the one-year study by the nonprofit Zearn.

Polis announced the contract with Zearn in 2023 without a competitive bidding process. The state used $9 million in federal pandemic relief funds to pay for Zearn licenses that allow schools to use the program for free in the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years.

The state’s contract with Zearn was part of a multi-pronged effort to boost math scores after state and national scores showed pandemic learning loss among students. Polis and state lawmakers passed a $25 million bipartisan law that expanded after-school math tutoring, offered more expanded teacher training, and encouraged districts to adopt high-quality curriculum. The bill also called for the state to set aside funds for a “digital math accelerator.”

“We are taking an all-hands-on-deck approach to boosting student math achievement to make sure Colorado kids have the support and practice they need to excel in math,” Polis said in a news release last week announcing the results of the Zearn study. “This past year, students across Colorado have benefited from access to high-quality digital platforms that have boosted math proficiency and helped Colorado students to learn and grow.”

This year, about 920 elementary and middle schools used the platform, up from 750 in 2023-24, according to a Polis spokeswoman. Although districts will no longer have free access to Zearn during next school year, district officials could choose to contract with the company.

The Zearn study says the nonprofit recommends students complete three or more lessons per week for the best results. That means students should spend about 90 minutes per week on the platform.

About 20,000 students used the program in 2023-24, and about 3,500 consistently used the program three days a week as intended, according to the study.

The study relies on data from a sample of 6,000 students in grades four through eight and represents several large and small districts across the state, according to a Polis spokeswoman. Researchers compared students who completed Zearn lessons to a group of students who didn’t use the digital tool.

Compared to students who didn’t use the program, students who used Zearn Math scored higher on state standardized math tests across all student subgroups, the study says. Students who consistently used the tool saw the most improvement.

“As a nonprofit built by teachers, we know how committed Colorado educators are to helping kids catch up and move forward in math. We have been privileged to be able to support them in this effort,” said Zearn CEO and co-founder Shalinee Sharma in a news release.

In 2024, Colorado elementary school students statewide scored higher on state standardized math tests than in 2019. Middle school students haven’t exceeded pre-pandemic scores but have shown improvement.

The 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card, showed in January that Colorado student math scores have started to rebound but aren’t at pre-pandemic levels. NAEP is given every two years in math and reading to a representative subset of U.S. students in grades four and eight.

There are many reasons why Colorado student math scores increased, Webb said.

Webb said digital learning tools can help, especially if teachers have been trained properly on how to use them. But they’re likely less of a factor in student achievement increases overall, he said. Webb said in-person instruction has likely had a highly positive impact on math instruction because students can more easily get peer and teacher feedback.

And the districts he’s worked with have focused on teaching skills that help educators better convey information to students, including how to create engaging lessons.

“Teachers matter,” Webb said. “Schools matter.”

A year into Newark Public Schools’ improvement plan, how has the district progressed?

2025-02-06T11:00:01+00:00

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After Newark Public Schools fell short on student achievement in standardized tests several years running, the state stepped in and put the district on an improvement plan that outlined clearly defined metrics needed to show student progress.

That was nearly a year ago. Now, the most recent round of New Jersey Student Learning Assessment results showed little change, once again, with the overwhelming majority of Newark students still performing below grade-level proficiency in reading, math, and science.

That means the district will remain under the watch of the Essex County executive superintendent, a proxy for the state education department, who is mandated to step in to evaluate the district’s progress every six months. The oversight carries echoes of the district’s 25 years under state control, which was lifted five years ago amid the pandemic.

Newark’s state-approved improvement plan goals are lofty by some measures and modest by others. They include year-over-year objectives to improve proficiency rates in reading by 4 percentage points, math by 8 percentage points, and science by 3 percentage points, in addition to increasing the graduation rate by 1.5 percentage points, and decreasing chronic absenteeism by half of a percentage point.

Based on publicly available state and district data, Newark succeeded in only one of those goals — decreasing its chronic absenteeism rate from 12.7% in 2023 to 12.1% in 2024. The state defines chronic absenteeism as missing 10% of the school year, or 18 days in a 180-day school year.

A Newark Public Schools spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on the district’s current standing under the improvement plan. According to state statute, if the district’s performance drastically worsens while under the improvement plan, that could trigger partial or full state intervention, though insufficiencies in several other areas would also need to be met.

Some critics of the state’s evaluation system argue that measuring a district’s performance on student outcomes in state tests doesn’t accurately represent how well it’s teaching students.

“You’re judging the quality of the school district based on metrics that are not entirely dependent on how the school is doing,” said Mark Weber, an education policy analyst at New Jersey Policy Perspective and lecturer at Rutgers University. “If you have a district that has a high poverty rate, that’s going to affect test scores, and the district is being judged on that.”

An interim review in June showed the district still wasn’t meeting state standards, according to documents Chalkbeat Newark obtained through a public records request. Based on the six-month guideline in the state statute, a subsequent review was due in December, but it had not been completed yet as of this week, state education department spokesman Michael Yaple said Tuesday.

The district will remain under an improvement plan status, Yaple added, until it either satisfies the goals in the next interim review or it meets state standards in the comprehensive review due in the 2025-26 school year.

The dire landscape of student achievement in Newark hasn’t significantly changed in the last three rounds of state testing since the COVID pandemic disrupted learning.

State test results released in December showed an overwhelming majority of students in the district are still struggling to perform on grade level in key subjects. Nearly 70% of students in grades 3-9 are falling short of meeting literacy benchmarks, around 82% aren’t meeting math standards, and 93% of fifth graders are below grade-level in science.

The results showed limited increases over 2023, highlighting Newark’s slow recovery from pandemic-era learning upheaval. Over the last few years with the help of federal pandemic relief funds, Superintendent Roger León ramped up tutoring efforts with summer and Saturday programs. The district allocated $6.8 million for tutoring this school year, offering extra tutoring sessions from the start of the school year.

But some of those tutoring efforts are at risk of being scaled back next year, as the district no longer has access to those federal dollars, which expired in September.

Evaluation score dips below standard, but not at historically low levels

The state Department of Education reviews a district’s overall performance every three years based on five key categories in its evaluation system — the Quality Single Accountability Continuum — which includes instruction, fiscal management, governance, operations, and personnel. Under each category, there are several ways districts get judged using a scale of 100 points to determine how well they’re meeting the standards outlined. When a district falls below the minimum passing score of 80 in any given category, it’s mandated to create a district improvement plan with state approval and oversight.

Newark was due for its state review in the 2022-23 school year for the first time since it regained full local control in 2020. The district gave itself high marks in all categories, but, in late 2023, the state gave the district a score of 79 for instruction, particularly docking points as it related to student achievement, graduation rates, and chronic absenteeism.

Joseph Zarra, the interim Essex County executive superintendent, conducted a six-month review in June and knocked two additional points from the district’s instruction score to a 77 due to its failure to meet goals in the improvement plan, state documents showed.

Newark Public Schools spokesman Paul Brubaker did not respond to questions about the district’s struggle to meet its improvement plan goals.

Though the district remains under an improvement plan, the reasons are starkly different from what led to state control in 1995 when staggeringly low student achievement levels contrasted exorbitantly high spending among district leaders. It was during the state’s 25-year takeover, that the education department’s evaluation system was created and then used to determine the district’s readiness in its transition back to local control.

Critics say evaluation system favors wealthier districts

Once the district regained local control in 2020, it faced a steep hurdle as students citywide were disproportionately affected by remote learning during COVID-19 shutdowns due to limited internet access, lack of laptops or digital tablets at home, and barriers to resources for students with disabilities, among other issues.

The pandemic came soon after the district was already seeing student performance on state test scores slide back after years of improvement.

With the influx of $287 million in federal relief funding, district leaders earmarked large sums of those funds to fix up its dilapidated school buildings, with a smaller proportion going toward increased tutoring efforts. Newark wasn’t alone in those decisions, as many high-poverty school districts spent the funds similarly.

Critics of the state’s evaluation system point to the underlying inequities in the system, saying that critiques of a high-needs district like Newark based on student outcomes in state tests don’t account for factors that contribute to low student achievement, such as poverty.

“For a district that starts with lower test scores, it’s harder to show growth,” said Weber, the Rutgers lecturer, adding that the district has also seen an influx of English language learners in recent years who require additional resources.

“Is it rational and reasonable to expect the district to get the same scores as another district that doesn’t have, let’s say, as many English language learners?” Weber said. “Because of this reliance on test score outcomes to determine whether you’re in need of correction or not, you’ve inherently got a bias against a district like Newark, Paterson, Trenton, and Camden. That’s problematic.”

Other categories in the evaluation system, such as governance and operations, are solely based on policies and practices in place.

“Those are things that the school district could directly control. Student outcomes are not,” Weber said.

In recent months, school leaders statewide have urged the state Board of Education to change the system’s emphasis on student outcomes, which they say favors wealthier districts. In October, Acting Education Commissioner Kevin Dehmer reported a notice to the state school board that of 56 total district performance reviews conducted during that period, 42 districts didn’t meet state standards, largely due to shortcomings in academic achievement.

If Newark still doesn’t meet the goals outlined in its improvement plan over the next six months, the state will do a comprehensive review in the 2025-26 school year, and determine at that point if a new improvement plan should be implemented, according to state statute.

The district could face partial state intervention if its score in any of the five evaluation categories falls below 50 points and it fails to implement the improvement plan, according to state statute. If additional circumstances are also preventing the district from providing a thorough and efficient education, as the state’s constitution mandates, then the education commissioner could invoke full state intervention, the statute says.

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark. Contact Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

Families left in dark about impact of alternate assessment track on students with disabilities

2025-02-05T20:34:18+00:00

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Before starting at his Harlem high school, Jeurry always assumed he was progressing appropriately in school, despite having significant learning challenges.

However, in his freshman year, he began to notice himself struggling to read longer words and more complex sentences.

As he grew increasingly overwhelmed, it became clear that the small classes exclusively for students with disabilities that he had been in since kindergarten had not adequately prepared him for high school.

Still, Jeurry managed to pass nearly all his classes. His final meeting with his Committee on Special Education — which consisted of Jeurry’s mom and several faculty members — took place in December 2016. By then, the senior had earned 45 credits — 44 were required to graduate — and a C+ average, records show.

But Jeurry was devastated to learn that he would not earn a diploma.

The reason was based on a decision the committee made when Jeurry was in sixth grade and, according to records, never revisited while he was in high school. At that time, the educators concluded that Jeurry could not learn grade-level curriculum. They decided he would be “alternately assessed,” or evaluated based on lower achievement standards. New York State students who take alternate assessments through high school cannot earn a diploma, a prerequisite for military service, many jobs, and most degree- or certificate-granting college and trade school programs.

Heartbroken, he begged the faculty to find a solution during the 2016 meeting. “They didn’t even care,” Jeurry said. “They just wanted me to ‘graduate’ and get out.”

Jeurry, who is now 26 and was diagnosed with a mild intellectual disability after graduating high school, requested that his last name be withheld over concerns about the stigma surrounding intellectual disabilities.

Special education advocates say the systemic failures that led to Jeurry’s situation eight years ago continue to jeopardize the futures of similar students. Last school year, 6,116 New York City students took the New York State Alternate Assessment, according to state data. Federal law requires that states offer such assessments for students with disabilities who are incapable of taking state tests. Importantly, it also states that only “students with the most significant cognitive disabilities” can take the alternate assessment, and that schools must fully inform parents of the potential ramifications. (State education departments are responsible for ensuring compliance with these mandates.)

Too often, however, those standards are neither maintained nor enforced, special education advocates, teachers, and families told Chalkbeat. Instead, factors like under-resourcing, nebulous procedures, and a failure to equip parents to make fully informed decisions have led schools to place some students without significant cognitive disabilities on a non-grade-level, non-diploma track. Students who take alternate assessments are typically placed in non-inclusive, low-rigor settings, which can deprive them of academic and socialization opportunities.

At the December 2016 meeting, the members of Jeurry’s special education committee said their hands were tied. According to documentation from the meeting, Jeurry’s mother said “she was not made aware of the long-term effects of alternate assessment when it was first initiated or during any supplemental [meetings].”

“They would always tell my mom, ‘His diploma is going to be real,’” Jeurry said. “She kept believing them.”

Throughout his time as a K-12 student in Harlem, Jeurry received inadequate academic support and struggled to advance past a first- or second-grade reading level.

In response to requests to interview state special education leadership, a New York State Education Department spokesperson said in an email: “NYSED is committed to working with schools and parents to determine the appropriate participation of students with disabilities in [the alternate assessment] and to fully understand the impact it has on these students.”

Since New York’s alternate assessment is used to meet federal special education law requirements, the spokesperson said, “there are very strict criteria for its development, administration, and applicability to students.”

Christina Foti, the city Education Department’s deputy chancellor for inclusive and accessible learning, acknowledged that there is room for more robust safeguards, and she said the Education Department recently recommended that the state consider several alternate assessment-related policy changes. They include clarifying definitions and participation criteria, requiring the use of a decision-making flowchart and checklist, and mandating that special education committees “conduct a complete and up-to-date battery of psychoeducational assessments” before making assessment decisions.

The Education Department is also pursuing local-level reforms, but officials are still in the early stages of developing a “definitive language and shift in practice [and] policy,” Foti said.

Inequitable outcomes for students on non-diploma track

In New York, special education committees determine annually how students will be assessed, usually starting around third grade. Although the state has established participation criteria for the alternate assessment, deciding whether students meet those criteria can be a relatively subjective process.

Data obtained through a public records request show that students placed on the non-diploma track are disproportionately Black or English language learners. Last school year, 29% of New York City students who took the alternate assessment were Black, while Black children represented only 20% of all students and 26% of those with disabilities. More than 29% of students who were alternatively assessed were English learners, while such students accounted for just 19% of the school system’s overall population and 14% of students with disabilities.

There have been some signs of progress toward ensuring that only students with the most significant cognitive disabilities are placed on the non-diploma track. Participation is declining in New York City and statewide, and racial disproportionalities among alternatively assessed students decreased between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years, according to the data.

The New York City Education Department has worked to minimize subjectivity in assessment decisions “over the past five or six years,” said Arwina Vallejo, the department’s executive director of school-based evaluations and family engagement.

To more holistically determine students’ aptitude for grade-level learning and test participation, schools now administer “specialized assessments in reading, in writing, in math, in executive functions, in neurological abilities,” Vallejo said.

The Education Department also trains school psychologists in “culturally responsive, non-discriminatory assessment practices” to mitigate the impact of bias, she said.

But special education advocates and families say more must be done. School officials sometimes change the graduation track of children with mild intellectual disabilities or disruptive behaviors when they don’t have the will or means to try other options, said Juliet Eisenstein, a special education attorney and former assistant director of the Postsecondary Readiness Project at Advocates for Children of New York.

“It’s just a box that’s checked and not really talked about, because it’s an easier solution than figuring out a program that fits this more complex student profile,” she said.

Resources that could help such students — like one-on-one tutors or specialized placements — are often limited or nonexistent. This is especially true in New York City, where around 300,000 students qualify for special education services, and government audits have found that the Education Department regularly fails to meet its obligations to them. An estimated 2,300 special-education staff vacancies exist citywide.

Trevlon, 18, has been both alternatively and regularly assessed. He has a history of behavioral problems, an attention deficit hyperactivity disorder diagnosis, and an intellectual disability classification from the Education Department. Trevlon struggled to keep up academically in elementary school and attended a middle school in District 75, a citywide district that caters to students with significant disabilities. There, he received intensive academic and behavioral support and made major strides, but he was not on a diploma track.

Trevlon, who requested that his last name be withheld because a complaint he filed against the Education Department has yet to be resolved, said he was unhappy in the highly restrictive environment. He committed himself to proving that he could be successful at a community high school. By the time Trevlon graduated middle school as valedictorian of his eighth grade class, his special education committee had agreed that he could transition back to the diploma track and into a community school.

However, Trevlon was placed in a school that did not offer the learning environment the Education Department had determined most appropriate for him: a self-contained special education classroom for 15 students. Instead, he attended large classes that integrated students with disabilities and their general education peers. He said he struggled to focus and keep up. As he fell behind academically, he became increasingly frustrated and started acting out.

After his tumultuous freshman year, Trevlon was moved back onto a non-diploma track in a District 75 school, where he felt out of place and insufficiently challenged. He begged for a different placement that might offer a path back to community school — or a diploma, at least — but nothing changed, he said.

Knowing he would never have a “real” high school experience, Trevlon grew disillusioned, started attending school infrequently, and finally dropped out last year.

“It’s not just, ‘Oh, I stopped going to school because I don’t like school,’” Trevlon said. “I feel like the system gave up on me to a certain extent, as a Black male. … All I ever really wanted to do was to work and sit down and be like everybody else.”

Parents often unaware of children’s placement on non-diploma track

Schools are legally mandated to inform a student’s parents about the long-term ramifications of the alternate track. However, special education advocates said they regularly work with parents who had no idea their children were on a non-diploma path — often until it was too late.

“Many parents do not even know to ask questions about alternate assessment, because they’re never informed,” said Young Seh Bae, executive director of the Queens-based Community Inclusion and Development Alliance and a parent of a student with disabilities. It’s only when graduation approaches that many parents say, “‘Oh, I didn’t realize my child wouldn’t receive a high school diploma … The school didn’t explain my child never will be able to go to college or get a license for certain things.’”

In New York, diploma-track students must pass a certain number of Regents exams, making it one of eight states that require high school seniors to pass standardized tests to earn a diploma. (New York State is planning to phase out Regents as a graduation requirement in fall 2027.)

When Jeurry was in middle school, the faculty members of his Committee on Special Education pointed to his lack of academic progress and recommended that he be "alternately assessed." Although his mother agreed to the change, she did not realize that the decision would take away her son's opportunity to earn a high school diploma.

Because Jeurry was on a non-diploma track and never took his Regents, he could only earn a Skills and Achievement Commencement Credential, which cannot be used to apply for college, trade school, the military, or many jobs.

Jeurry was reading and doing math on a first-grade level by the start of middle school and on second- to third-grade levels by the end of high school, records show. Over the years, the Education Department classified him with several different kinds of disabilities, including a learning disability at one point and an intellectual disability at another. While he was a student, he was not evaluated by an outside provider, which some families pay for if they think their children have been improperly classified by district professionals. Faculty members repeatedly told Jeurry’s mother he was incapable of progressing academically, his academic records show, and they eventually used his lack of progress to justify placing him on the non-diploma track.

From kindergarten through eighth grade, he remained in self-contained classes, receiving only speech language therapy as a supplementary service. In high school, Jeurry moved from a self-contained setting into integrated classrooms, which benefited him socially but only further highlighted how far his academics lagged behind his peers.

At no point did Jeurry’s special education committee suggest additional services or more intensive support, records show. Federal law mandates more intensive intervention if a special education student is not making progress toward his goals.

Kim Swanson, the principal of Jeurry’s high school who overlapped with him during his last year there, declined to comment on Jeurry’s situation. She said her school “always follows state guidance.”

The school’s special education committees have always informed parents of the ramifications of alternate assessment, but the school has implemented additional safeguards during Swanson’s 11-year tenure as principal, she said. These include sending home a form letter that was developed by the state with input from the city Education Department (a requirement of all New York schools since 2019), and ensuring that faculty members discuss students’ progress toward their goals before special education committee meetings.

Vallejo, who oversees school-based evaluations, said the Education Department worked with the state to develop the form letter because “there was a point where little information was available to students and families regarding alternate assessment and the impact of that designation.” Education Department faculty are committed to fully involving students’ parents in assessment decisions and revisiting them annually, Vallejo said.

Special education advocates have lobbied the state for specific alternate assessment reforms for years, with little success — including a 2022 push for policy changes that could have helped demystify the assessment decision-making process.

In August 2024, for the first time in at least five years, the state proposed policy tweaks of its own, including seeking feedback from special education advocates and families on how to clarify the existing eligibility criteria for alternate assessment and update existing decision-making tools and training materials.

In the future, Jeurry hopes to earn a four-year degree and go into marketing before someday opening his own restaurant.

After legal battle, NYC pays for more than 1,300 hours of services

Knowing that he wouldn’t receive a diploma, Jeurry skipped his June 2017 graduation.

He then languished in a city-funded GED program for more than a year. In fall 2018, on the recommendation of a teacher, Jeurry contacted Advocates for Children. Within months, a pro-bono legal team arranged by the organization filed an action against the city school system, accusing it of denying Jeurry a free, appropriate public education as required by law.

While the legal process unfolded, Jeurry’s advocates helped him apply for his diploma through a “superintendent determination,” a safety net for students with disabilities who are unable to earn the Regents scores needed for graduation but meet all other requirements. In June 2019, he received his high school diploma.

As part of the 10-month legal process, a neuropsychologist evaluated Jeurry and diagnosed him with a mild intellectual disability, concluding that he could have benefited from more rigorous support, such as one-on-one literacy tutoring.

The city ultimately agreed to compensate Jeurry for what he missed during his 14 years of school by paying for 1,308 hours of academic tutoring, life skills training, and transition services. For more than a year, he attended all-day tutoring sessions that started with phonics and built upward.

“At first, I was like, ‘It’s not helping,’” Jeurry said. But then, little by little, I started noticing my reading level going up … and I was like, ‘Oh, it is working!’”

Although it has required him to work through significant education-related trauma, Jeurry now attends community college online while working full time. He’s considering transferring to a four-year institution after he earns his associate degree in business administration.

“I didn’t want to go back, but I had to do it, you know?” Jeurry said. “I needed to get a better education.”

Sarah Komar is a New York City-based journalist. She reported this story while at the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

NAEP scores: How did Illinois students do on the ‘nation’s report card’ in 2024?

2025-02-03T15:15:40+00:00

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This story has been updated to include reactions to NAEP scores. It also clarifies what increases and decreases are considered statistically significant.

Illinois fourth grade students’ math and reading scores from spring 2024 stayed mostly stagnant on a test known as the “nation’s report card” compared to students who took the exam in previous years.

Now in fifth grade, these students would have been kindergarten age when the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools and sent classrooms online. For many, first grade was also online or a mix of in-person and virtual.

During the pandemic, some parents opted to pull their children from school worrying that there wasn’t a benefit to virtual learning at a young age.

The latest round of test scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as NAEP, released on Wednesday shows that Illinois students who missed school or went through the interruptions and struggles of remote learning, may still have gaps in their education from that time. However, Illinois eighth grade students — who would have been in fourth grade when the pandemic started — either held steady or outperformed their peers in 2022 in reading and math, but their scores lagged behind their peers who took the exam in 2019.

According to the new NAEP data, 38% of Illinois’ fourth graders were proficient in math and 30% were in reading, while 32% of the state’s eighth graders were proficient in math and 33% were in reading. Researchers said that the drops in proficiency for fourth graders in reading and math between 2024 and 2022 were not statistically significant.

When compared to other states, Illinois’ fourth grade proficiency rates were comparable to the national average in reading and math, but the state’s eighth graders surpassed the average in both subjects.

State Superintendent Tony Sanders said in a statement that NAEP’s latest results give families, students, and educators a “cause to celebrate.”

“This data is another example, like our state report card and national studies, that Illinois’ students are growing academically,” Sanders said in the statement.

NAEP scores for Chicago Public Schools, Illinois’ largest public school district, show that the district’s eighth graders had significantly higher scores in math and reading scores in 2024 when compared to their peers in 2022. Chicago’s fourth graders had slightly higher math scores than previous groups of students and slightly lower reading scores, but neither were statistically significant

In 2024, 21% of Chicago’s fourth grade students were proficient in math and 23% were in reading, but this was not a statistically significant difference from their 2022 proficiency rate. For the district’s eighth graders, 21% were proficient in math and 27% were proficient in reading, an increase from 2022.

According to a joint study from Stanford and Harvard universities, Chicago students’ reading scores on state exams rebounded faster than other districts across the country.

But in a statement, CPS officials focused on the strong performance of eighth grade students.

“This data is consistent with what we have previously seen - that students who remain in our system continue to make learning gains over time,” according to a statement from Chicago Public Schools. “The 8th grade reading score of CPS exceeded the average of large cities and narrowed the gap with the national public average to only 2 points. This marks the closest CPS has ever been to the national public average in 8th grade reading performance.”

The district statement also acknowledged that fourth graders were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic when compared to their older peers. The district said that they have added interventionist positions to support students, instructional coaches to assist educators, and organized tutoring programs.

CPS scores also show disparities between Black and Latino students when compared to their white and Asian American peers in reading and math in both grade levels. This has been a trend in NAEP scores over the past decade, predating the pandemic. However, Black and Latino students in eighth grade in 2024 reading and math were comparable to students who took the exam in eighth grade in 2022.

“COVID is exposing the historical and generational disparities that black children in this city have experienced for a very long time,” said Stacy Davis Gates, Chicago Teachers Union president when asked about the pandemic’s impact on students. “But I think COVID exposed all of the opportunity gaps, and we see them even in the recovery.”

The state’s Illinois Assessment of Readiness from spring 2024 paints a very different picture than NAEP’s 2024 scores. In fact, the IAR — which tests students between third and eighth grade in the spring — found that students’ reading scores were above 2019 scores.

But even on state standardized tests, Illinois and Chicago students’ performance on math tests lagged behind their counterparts’ math scores in pre-pandemic years.

In October, Sanders attributed the growth in IAR reading scores to the changes in how literacy is taught in Illinois schools. Since math scores have yet to grow in the same way as reading scores, Sanders said at the time the state’s report card was released that the board of education was looking into a statewide math and numeracy plan to increase proficiency.

Correction 2/3/2025: This story has been corrected to say that fourth graders who took the exam in spring 2024 are now in fifth grade during the 2024-25 school year.

Correction 1/29/2025: This story and its headlines have been corrected to clarify that the small declines in the NAEP scores of Illinois fourth graders in 2024 compared to those in 2022 and 2019 were not statistically significant and within the margin of error.

NAEP test results: Colorado’s scores are mostly stable, as gap between low and high performers widens

2025-01-29T22:57:52+00:00

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This story has been updated with comment from Colorado Gov. Jared Polis.

Colorado students continue to perform better than students in many other states and showed slight improvements on national math and reading tests, but they’re still scoring below pre-pandemic levels.

The national test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as NAEP, was given to fourth and eighth graders in the spring of 2024, and results were released Wednesday. The test is administered about every two years.

Test administrators determined that none of Colorado’s average score results represented a significant change from average scores in 2022. But a slightly higher percentage of Colorado students performed at basic and proficient levels in 2024 compared with 2022.

Part of the explanation for that is another trend NAEP identified this year nationwide: Students who are high performing continue to improve, while students who are typically low performing have continued to struggle. Average scores mask those widening gaps.

Compared with 2019, before the pandemic, Colorado students are making progress toward recovery in math at fourth and eighth grade, but in reading only at the eighth grade level.

Reading scores are a concern nationwide

In fourth grade reading scores, Colorado students have fallen further behind, following a national trend. In 2024, 36% of fourth graders tested proficient in reading, down from 38% in 2022.

Despite that drop, the state’s average reading score for fourth graders, 221, is still significantly higher than the national average of 214, and places Colorado near the top of all states.

The state’s performance on eighth grade reading scores held steady, breaking with the national trend of large declines. In 2024, 35% of Colorado students tested were proficient, up from 34% in 2022. The state change was not identified as statistically significant.

Nationally, reading scores had been declining since before the pandemic, so officials cautioned against blaming only the pandemic-era disruptions.

Colorado’s own data from CMAS tests also showed a drop in 2024 in fourth grade reading performance. The rate of students meeting expectations on those state tests dropped by 1.8 percentage points from the previous year, the largest drop of any grade level.

Colorado’s math test results were more encouraging

Colorado’s results for fourth graders taking NAEP math tests showed a significant increase in the percentage of students reaching proficiency. In 2024, 42% of those students reached proficiency, up from 36% in 2022.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis on Wednesday said during a virtual panel that the data “shows that it’s really all hands on deck.”

Polis, who is also the president of the National Governors Association, spoke about his initiative to get both Republican and Democrat governors working together to think about education solutions. He said governors are in a good position to deliver on education as it’s the largest chunk out of state budgets.

“This moment I hope is a catalyst for innovation, doing things differently, expanding or replicating what works and having the moral fortitude to change what isn’t working,” he said. “From quality early childhood education, evidence-based tutoring, and after-school opportunities, innovative school models, everything should be on the table to make sure that every student, and that means every student no matter where they live or who they are, can succeed.”

Colorado has invested in math recovery since the pandemic, including making online programs and tutoring available for students statewide.

Colorado’s CMAS test results in math for 2024 were also more encouraging than literacy results. Students in elementary grades in 2024 posted higher rates of meeting and exceeding expectations than students did in 2019, before the pandemic.

On NAEP, where proficiency has a different definition, Colorado students are still not doing better than in 2019, however.

NAEP releases data for large urban districts, including Denver

Denver students had some reading scores that were better than scores in other cities for which the program compiled data, but in most categories, their improvement over 2022 wasn’t statistically significant.

Denver Public Schools students ranked near the top of the 25 cities in average scores for eighth grade reading. Denver’s average of 258 was up from 255 in 2022 and 257 in 2019. In 2024, 31% of eighth graders in Denver were proficient in reading, up from 28% in 2022.

The only improvement that was identified as significant in DPS was the increase in the proficiency rate for fourth grade math. In 2024, 36% of students tested proficient on that test, compared with 28% in 2022.

The NAEP standard for proficiency represents “competency over challenging subject matter, a standard that exceeds most states’ standards for proficient,” according to the federal agency that compiles the data.

In fourth grade reading, for instance, the administration states that students who test at the basic level, but below proficiency, may still have some reading ability to “provide some support for ideas related to the plot or characters.” Testing in the proficient category, above basic, might require a student to be able to “make complex inferences about the characters’ actions, motivations, or feelings, using relevant evidence within or across literary texts.”

Officials from the board who oversee the testing say it’s students who score below basic who may be struggling to read and warrant concern.

Among Colorado fourth graders, 35% tested below basic in reading in 2024, a higher percentage than anytime in the last two decades. In Denver, 42% tested below basic.

Among Colorado eighth graders, 26% tested below basic in reading, off from 27% in 2022. In Denver, this group accounted for 35%.

Nationally, the trends show that in many cases, the percentage of students in below-basic levels grew as students who typically perform at high levels did well, and groups of students who usually struggle are doing worse.

Hispanic students and those learning English as a new language struggle

In both Colorado and in Denver, Hispanic students and those identified as English learners continued to struggle and have the widest gaps compared with their counterparts.

In Denver, the gap grew on the eighth grade math test to a 56-point difference in average scores, compared with a 42-point difference in 2017. In 2024, only 9% of Hispanic students in Denver schools were proficient in eighth grade math.

English language learners in Denver had more significant decreases in scores from 2019 than English learners statewide, or across the country.

For instance, in eighth grade math, students identified as English learners had an average score of 225 in DPS, compared with a statewide average of 226, and national average of 237. But the DPS average score was down 20 points from 2019.

For students who aren’t identified as English language learners, Colorado had an average score of 283 on eighth grade math tests, and Denver’s average was 278.

Colorado officials have already noted the concern that English learners seem to be struggling to recover academically compared with other students.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

NAEP results: Tennessee students buck grim national trends on nation’s report card

2025-01-29T05:09:00+00:00

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Tennessee students held their ground on a major national test in a year when average student test scores declined nationwide.

Results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, released Wednesday, show that average test scores in Tennessee increased slightly in fourth and eighth grade reading and math, compared with 2022, though the gains were not statistically significant.

Tennessee’s latest post-pandemic results stood in contrast to declines seen nationwide and in many other states. And Tennessee students scored three to four points higher than the national average in math and one to two points higher in reading.

“Tennessee students did well relative to other states, and we did better than some of our neighbors,” Education Commissioner Lizzette Reynolds said.

“We didn’t move backwards, we moved a little bit forward, and we expect to do better next year,” added state Rep. Mark White, of Memphis, who chairs a key House education committee and also serves on the NAEP governing board.

Math scores outpace reading scores

Tennessee has launched numerous initiatives aimed at bolstering early literacy, but the latest NAEP showed the state’s most dramatic improvements came in math.

In fourth grade math, 42% of students scored proficient or advanced, an increase of 6 percentage points from 2022. The state was one of 29 jurisdictions that posted scores similar to 2019, before the pandemic. Only Alabama had average scores higher than 2019. Nationwide, average scores are down three points, and 22 states had declines.

In eighth grade math, Tennessee’s proficiency rate also grew, while the national average declined. Tennessee was one of just two jurisdictions with similar scores to 2019. Average scores dropped 9 points.

In fourth grade reading, Tennessee was one of 47 states with no statistical change from 2022. Nonetheless, its scores were up slightly, whereas the nationwide average dropped by two points from 2022 and by five points from 2019.

The small increases in eighth grade reading scores were not statistically different from 2022 or 2019, but again, the small increase stood in contrast to nationwide averages that dropped 5 points since 2019. Tennessee also saw more notable increases in scores among higher-performing students in the 75th percentile.

The relatively strong showing in math, according to state officials, could be tied to the full return to in-person learning, which studies show is especially important for math instruction; Tennessee’s 2021 adoption of new math standards; and the subsequent rollout of math curriculum to align with those standards.

They expect that trend to continue with passage of a 2024 state law spotlighting more analysis of and support for math instruction.

Tennessee was an early adopter of pandemic-era interventions

Tennessee has been held up as a model both for how it managed federal pandemic relief spending — quickly steering money into tutoring, summer learning camps, and afterschool programs aimed at students who had fallen furthest behind — and for its intense focus on early literacy. State test results from 2024 show students there making steady progress since 2021.

The challenge now will be to maintain progress and deploy state funds to replace federal pandemic relief aid that expired last year.

“We still have that obligation at the state level to continue to support districts in as many ways as possible,” said Reynolds, the state’s education chief. She cited free professional development resources provided to school systems by her department as one example.

“Local school officials also knew that the money was ending, so they’ve been building in their own sustainability practices to keep the work going,” she said.

White, the state lawmaker and NAEP official, said the state’s controversial 2021 third-grade reading intervention and retention law was a key part of the mix. It pushed children whose families might have opted for summer breaks into summer learning programs and motivated schools to increase support for struggling readers.

“If a child is not reading proficiently in third grade, we want to really understand why and not just pass them on,” he said.

State officials already are digging into the latest NAEP data on how various student groups performed — to study how they can offer better support.

Tennessee’s growing population of English language learners saw across-the-board improvement, while students with disabilities showed slight decreases.

The national results track with test score trends from the Tennessee Comprehensive Assessment Program, which in 2024 showed that students continued to improve from post-pandemic lows.

The alignment of national and state data is important, said Amy Owen, the state’s senior education policy director, because “it shows that our students will be able to compete with students from across the country when they look at post-secondary and career opportunities.”

“We’re seeing steady increases, which is significant when you think about where our kids were during COVID,” added Reynolds. “Our fourth graders were kindergartners then, our eighth graders were fourth graders.”

Memphis district opts out of separate NAEP assessment

Since 2018, NAEP has also released results for Memphis Shelby County Schools, one of roughly two dozen large urban districts participating in national math and reading tests through the Trial Urban District Assessment program, which is designed to help those districts measure student performance against districts in other large cities.

But last year, leaders of the Memphis district chose not to participate in the program.

White, who represents part of Memphis, said the lack of participation represented a “leadership breakdown” as the district cycled through superintendents.

“That’s sad that we don’t have their scores,” he said. “We can’t continue that trend.”

What is NAEP?

Not every Tennessee fourth-grader or eighth-grader took the national test when the federal government administered the assessments in early 2024.

NAEP tests a nationally representative sample of students in every state. In Tennessee, each of the four assessments was taken by about 1,700-1,800 students in 80-90 schools.

The results, published as the nation’s report card, allow comparisons across states and are an important marker for showing how students are doing over time.

The last three testing cycles happened in 2019, 2022, and most recently in 2024, providing an especially helpful comparison of what students knew before the pandemic and how much they have rebounded from COVID-related learning disruptions.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

New Jersey NAEP scores show reading, math remain stagnant, but gaps widen

2025-01-29T05:08:00+00:00

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Average math and reading scores on the “nation’s report card” for New Jersey’s fourth and eighth graders have remained stable since 2022, but a closer examination shows the gap between the state’s lowest- and highest-performing students continues to widen, according to newly released data.

Although not yet bouncing back to pre-pandemic levels, the average scores for New Jersey remained above the national average in math and reading for fourth and eighth graders, results from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, also referred to as NAEP, showed.

The data, released Wednesday by the National Center for Education Statistics, are the latest evidence of how dire the effects of the pandemic and remote learning were for all students, especially those already falling behind their peers well before 2020.

“There’s a widening achievement gap in this country and it has worsened since the pandemic,” said Peggy Carr, the NCES commissioner, in a phone briefing with news outlets ahead of the release. “We all need to come together as partners to catch these students up and improve achievement.”

Nationally, student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic performance levels, though in some states, such as Louisiana, students in the lowest- and highest-performing percentiles showed improvement, according to NCES.

Though New Jersey’s averages remained above national levels, the results also showed that a significant proportion of students scored below NAEP proficiency levels. For example, 62% of fourth graders scored below proficient in reading — a smaller proportion compared to the 70% of fourth graders who scored below proficiency nationally.

Trends from the New Jersey results mirror those seen in the state’s standardized test results from 2024, which the state education department released in December.

In the 2024 New Jersey Student Learning Assessments, average statewide scores improved incrementally over the prior year. Despite the minor upticks in average scores, that data also demonstrated persistent disparities between subgroups, such as Black students and white or Asian American students.

“It’s extremely frustrating to know that after all the investments, the number of programs over the years, this achievement gap is persistent and still remains significant,” state school board member Arcelio Aponte said at the time.

A representative sample of fourth and eighth graders across New Jersey took the national assessment between January and March of last year. The results for reading and math are reported on a scale of 0-500 and grouped by proficiency levels of basic, proficient, and advanced. The NCES is adamant that these levels of achievement do not align with states’ grade-level proficiency standards.

The NAEP scores are also grouped under lowest-performing students, who fall in the bottom 25th percentile of scores; middle-performing students in the average 50th percentile; and highest-performing students in the above-average 75th percentile.

Lowest-performing students did worse in reading than in 2022

New Jersey’s lowest-performing fourth graders scored two points lower than they did in 2022 in the reading exam, going from a score of 198 to 196. This was the lowest score this group has had in the last 20 years. In 2003, the lowest-performing fourth graders scored a 201 on the reading exam.

Meanwhile, the state’s highest-performing fourth graders scored a 252 in the 2024 reading exam, a point higher than 2022. Although an incremental increase for that group of students, the score represents a 56-point difference, the widest gap between highest- and lowest-performing fourth graders in reading in the last decade for New Jersey.

The gap was similar for eighth grade reading scores between these two groups, with a 55-point difference between lowest- and highest-performing students. That gap exceeded by 12 points the 43-point gap between these groups in 2013.

“NAEP has reported declines in reading achievement consistently since 2019, and the continued declines since the pandemic suggest we’re facing complex challenges that cannot be fully explained by the impact of COVID-19,” said Daniel McGrath, associate commissioner for NCES, in a press release.

A similar trend also followed in eighth grade math, but fourth grade math showed a minor improvement. The lowest performing students in fourth grade math scored an average of 217, one point higher than they did in 2022. Even so, the 48-point gap between the lowest- and highest-performing students in math also reached the widest it’s been in 10 years.

Some researchers in New Jersey are currently looking into the role of schools in positively and drastically improving scores for the state’s lowest-achieving students. The state’s Department of Education last year launched the “Promising Practices Project,” which will task researchers with investigating the best practices used in 52 schools statewide that have proven to help improve student achievement and learning.

Family and community impact can have a very significant impact on closing gaps between the state’s highest- and lowest-performing students, said Charles Payne, director of the Joseph C. Cornwall Center for Metropolitan Studies, in an interview with Chalkbeat this week.

“But we have the most systematic evidence on schools,” Payne said. “When they’re operating at the highest levels, schools have enough power to overcome most of the disadvantages that are associated with race and class.”

Schools on the “highest levels” that positively impact student achievement have several key characteristics, Payne added. Those characteristics include a collaborative environment for teachers, the use of data to support instruction, setting high expectations for staff and students, and emphasizing social and emotional learning, Payne said.

Data from NAEP showed that some states have improved significantly already, even reaching 2019 scores, including Alabama in fourth-grade math and Louisiana in fourth-grade reading.

“These results, as sobering as they are, show that once you unpack them, there is hope,” said Carr, the NCES commissioner.

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark. Contact Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

Philadelphia NAEP scores rise in fourth grade math but stay flat in other subjects

2025-01-29T05:07:00+00:00

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Philadelphia students’ fourth grade math scores are on the rise, according to newly released test results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as NAEP.

However, city students’ scores in math and reading are still well below their peers’ scores in Pennsylvania, below the average for all large cities, and below national averages.

In the other subjects that NAEP tests — fourth grade reading and eighth grade math and reading — Philly students scored about the same as they did in 2022. Black and Hispanic students in Philly continue to score far below their white and Asian American peers, highlighting the persistent equity gaps that exist for these students.

According to a Chalkbeat analysis, Philly students’ NAEP scores — and scores nationwide — were rising in both math and reading from 2009 to 2013. But since then, students’ scores have dropped precipitously, especially in eighth grade math.

Superintendent Tony Watlington told Chalkbeat the new scores “absolutely validate” that “there is some real progress occurring in this school district.” He added he was not surprised to see fourth grade math performance improve because he’s seeing similar trends in the district’s internal and state test data for third and fourth grade. Watlington said it’s all “part of the strategy to concentrate resources in those early grades.”

Watlington says he is particularly proud of Philly students’ post-pandemic performance. He frequently cites a Stanford University “recovery scorecard” that showed Philly students demonstrated the fastest 2022-23 post-pandemic recovery in math for grades 3-8, and the second-fastest recovery for reading in grades 3-8, among large urban school districts. (The study is based on a weighted comparison of student performance on state tests.) The district has also invested millions in updated curriculum and resources which Watlington says will only compound Philly’s gains in the years to come.

“We’re seeing some immediate improvement” due to the new math curriculum, Watlington said, which he thinks will also be the case for English Language Arts as classrooms continue to adopt new resources for that subject. “I fully expect, in two years, when we give the NAEP assessment again, to begin to see some movement in fourth grade reading,” he said.

NAEP is administered to a representative sample of fourth and eighth graders in reading and math, unlike the state PSSA test, which is given to all students. City students also show low proficiency rates on the PSSA compared to the rest of Pennsylvania. Because only some students take the exams, NAEP results come with some uncertainty in the form of a margin of error.

“One of the reasons why our city has underperformed the Commonwealth average is because our kids have significantly lower attendance in school,” Watlington said. At the same time he pointed to district data showing student attendance has been increasing in Philly recently and the number of students dropping out has been decreasing.

NAEP scores show Philly students gained in math

In fourth grade math, Philadelphia saw a seven-point increase in the average scores from 209 in 2022 to 216 in 2024, which is a higher rate of improvement than Pennsylvania overall. Average scores statewide held steady at 238 — the same as in 2022. NAEP results are reported as average scores on a 0-500 scale.

The percentage of Philadelphia students at or above NAEP proficiency also increased to 19% from 13% in 2022. Philly still falls well below the state however: In Pennsylvania, 41% of students scored at or above proficiency, about the same as in 2022.

In eighth grade math, Philly performed about on par with 2022, with 15% of Philly students at or above NAEP proficiency, compared to 13% in 2022. The average score in eighth grade math was 252 — the same as in 2022. Philly is still below Pennsylvania’s overall average score of 276, which rose from 274 in 2022.

In fourth-grade reading, Philadelphia students scored 195 on average — the same as in 2022. Pennsylvania students overall scored 216, a slight decrease from an average score of 219 in 2022 but not a change NAEP officials deemed statistically significant. In relation to their peers from all large cities, Philly students came up short. In 2024, 17% of students in Philly scored proficient or better, while 26% of their peers in large cities as a whole scored proficient or above. Nationwide, 30% of students scored proficient or better — down from 32% in 2022.

In eighth grade reading, Philly and Pennsylvania students maintained their scores from 2022. Philly students scored on average 242, the same as in 2022. Statewide, students scored on average 259, the same as two years ago. Philly students remain well below their statewide and national peers in the percent of students who scored proficient or better: In Philly, 18% of students scored proficient or better, compared with 31% of students in Pennsylvania, 26% in large cities, and 29% nationally.

Philadelphia, which has the highest poverty rate among all big cities, outperformed just a handful of urban districts. For instance, in fourth grade math, Philadelphia scored lower than 21 districts and higher than four districts — Cleveland, Milwaukee, Detroit and Baltimore City — among the 26 that are included in the Trial Urban District Assessment. In eighth grade math, it did a little better, performing lower than 17 districts, on a par with six, and higher than two, Cleveland and Detroit.

The last time the federal government released NAEP scores over two years ago, they were used as a barometer for how well students had recovered from the pandemic, a period marked by school closures. Philadelphia’s schools closed for in-person learning in March 2020 and did not reopen until the beginning of the 2021-22 school year.

Philadelphia’s 2022 NAEP scores were well below the national and Pennsylvania averages, but scores for city students did not decline as much as they did for students in some other big cities. Fourth grade math scores dropped, but the other scores — in fourth grade reading and eighth grade reading and math — were statistically unchanged.

Even so, Watlington saw hope in the 2022 results. “Given the many challenges that all school districts have experienced these past three years is encouraging news that we intend to build on going forward,” he said at the time.

Carly Sitrin is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Philadelphia. Contact Carly at csitrin@chalkbeat.org.

Dale Mezzacappa is a senior writer for Chalkbeat Philadelphia, where she covers K-12 schools and early childhood education in Philadelphia. Contact Dale at dmezzacappa@chalkbeat.org.

NAEP scores: How did Indiana 4th and 8th graders do on ‘the nation’s report card’ in 2024?

2025-01-29T05:06:00+00:00

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Indiana students fared slightly better on “the nation’s report card” in 2024 compared to 2022 as the state continues to slowly recover from the effects of the pandemic.

But across the state and nation, scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress — or NAEP — remain below 2019 levels, raising alarm bells about students’ reading and math skills after the pandemic. Nationally, there is also a growing gap between the highest- and lowest-performing students on NAEP.

Scores released Wednesday show Indiana students’ performance in both math and reading ticked up by between 1 and 3 percentage points in 2024.

In reading, around 34% of fourth graders and 33% of eighth graders were proficient or better in reading in 2024, up from 33% and 31%, respectively, in 2022.

In math, around 43% of fourth graders and 31% of eighth graders scored proficient or better in 2024, compared with 40% and 30%, respectively, in 2022.

Indiana’s performance across both subjects is in line with most other states, which saw no statistically significant score improvements compared to 2022. Nationally, reading scores have continued to drop in a trend that began before the pandemic in 2019. In math, some states made notable improvements, but Indiana was not among them.

Still, Indiana’s average scores remain above national averages. And while national averages have declined in reading, Indiana students’ scores rose this year.

“Over the past three years, Indiana has taken an all-hands-on-deck approach to solving our literacy crisis, and today we see that without a doubt, this work is making a difference,” said Secretary of Education Katie Jenner in a statement Wednesday. “This new data is just one more piece of evidence that the time and resources invested in this effort are paying off for students. This should provide continued motivation for everyone to keep our foot on the gas pedal, whether that’s classroom teachers or parents reading to their child at home.”

Another difference between Indiana and national averages concerns the highest- and lowest-performing students. Indiana fourth graders in the bottom quartile of scores improved their performance over 2022. But nationally, fourth graders in the bottom quartile of reading scores declined the most from 2022.

However, the gap in eighth grade reading scores between Indiana’s lowest- and highest-performing students grew from 2022 to 2024.

Across demographic groups, one of the state’s most significant jumps in scores was for Black fourth grade students, whose reading scores rose from 194 in 2022 to 201 in 2024 — one point higher than their 2019 scores. Hispanic fourth grade students have also matched 2019 scores in reading for the demographic.

No other student group in Indiana matched its 2019 performance in either subject in 2024.

Nationwide, it was rare for any state to exceed its 2019 NAEP scores in either subject — just Alabama scored higher in fourth grade math, and only Louisiana scored higher in fourth grade reading.

“NAEP has reported declines in reading achievement consistently since 2019, and the continued declines since the pandemic suggest we’re facing complex challenges that cannot be fully explained by the impact of COVID-19,” said National Center for Education Statistics Associate Commissioner Daniel McGrath in a press release.

NAEP scores, learning affected by student absenteeism

NAEP scores don’t indicate the efficacy of any single policy or practice. But their release is likely to trigger debates about how states have responded to the academic effects of the pandemic.

Since 2022, Indiana has passed several laws aimed at aligning the state’s early literacy instruction with a set of practices known as the science of reading.

Schools and teacher training programs are now required to use material based on the science of reading. And beginning this year, students who don’t pass the the third grade reading test — the IREAD-3 — will be be required to repeat third grade, with only a few exceptions.

Now Indiana lawmakers may turn their attention to math. A bill under consideration in the 2025 legislative session would change teacher preparation programs in regards to math instruction, as well as require math proficiency screeners and interventions for younger students.

The state has also invested state and federal funds in tutoring and summer school programs, and will likely seek help from lawmakers writing the state budget to keep those initiatives funded after the expiration of federal aid.

Other initiatives from lawmakers include addressing student absenteeism, which has declined nationally since 2022 but remains higher than in 2019. In a media call Tuesday, Commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics Peggy Carr pointed to absenteeism as a factor in students’ scores.

“If students aren’t in school, they can’t learn,” Carr said.

This story has been updated with a comment from Secretary of Education Katie Jenner.

Aleksandra Appleton covers Indiana education policy and writes about K-12 schools across the state. Contact her at aappleton@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit NAEP scores show many learning challenges and some improvement

2025-01-29T05:05:00+00:00

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Detroit school district fourth graders saw improvement in their math scores on a rigorous national exam, but overall performance showed no significant gains in other categories and left the district where it has been since 2009: at the bottom of other large districts.

Scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, which was given to a representative sample of fourth and eighth grade students in each state in reading and math, were released on Wednesday.

The national picture was not good and showed student achievement “has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, and so the struggle continues,” Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, said during a media call Tuesday. The lowest performing students are struggling, particularly in reading, she said, and are reading at “historically low levels.”

Carr cited chronic absenteeism as a likely reason schools across the nation aren’t seeing significant improvement in reading and math.

In Detroit, the improvement in fourth grade math was tempered by the large number of students who performed poorly on the exam. Just 7% were considered proficient or above. In eighth grade reading and math and fourth grade reading, only between 4% and 6% of students were proficient or above.

There was a sliver of encouraging news: District students saw more overall improvement on the exam in some areas compared to Michigan, where the overall results showed no significant improvement.

Detroit Public Schools Community District Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said in a news release Wednesday that the eighth grade reading and fourth grade math results reflect the improvement the district has seen on all state assessment results over the last two years. But he noted that DPSCD still has work to do when it comes to improving its test scores.

“Clearly, the declines we saw in fourth grade reading were due to online pandemic literacy instruction, but at the same time, the improvement in eighth grade reading speaks to the district’s systemic improvement when considering that those same students overcame the pandemic through the exposure to literacy grade level content since third grade,” Vitti said.

Ray Hart, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, said the Detroit results should be looked at in context of how the state performed overall. He was encouraged by the district’s improvement and said the results show the district in most categories is closer to its pre-pandemic performance levels than the state is. Neither has surpassed performance prior to 2020, when the pandemic disrupted learning in schools nationwide and had a particularly harsher effect on students in urban areas.

Still, Detroit student performance is well below state and national averages. In order for the district to be on par with state performance overall, he said, “they’ve actually got to grow better or grow faster. He noted that it can do that by continuing the investments it has made..

The district has worked to improve its curriculum, eliminate teacher shortages, hire academic interventionists to provide help to struggling students, and get more students attending summer school, among other things.

“The district has shown that when those investments are made, and they invest so wisely, which they appear to have done,” they will pay off in improved achievement, he said.

Here’s a brief look at how DPSCD students performed on the NAEP:

The average score for fourth grade math was 200, up from 194 in 2022, an increase that was considered statistically significant. Of the students who took the exam, 7% were considered proficient or above compared to 37% in Michigan, 33% for large city districts, and 39% nationally.
The average score in eighth grade math was 237, down from 238 in 2022, a change that was not considered statistically significant. Of the students who took the exam, 4% were considered proficient or above, compared to 24% in Michigan, 23% for large city districts, and 27% nationally.
The average score for fourth grade reading was 174, down from 176 in 2022, a change that was not considered statistically significant. Of the students who took the exam, 5% were proficient or above compared to 25% statewide, 26% for large city districts, and 30% nationally.
The average score for eighth grade reading was up from 227 to 229, a change that was not considered statistically significant. Of the students who took the exam, 6% were proficient or above compared to 24% statewide, 26% for large city districts, and 29% nationally.

In 2009, the Detroit school district volunteered to become part of NAEP’s Trial Urban District Assessment, which analyzes results for more than 20 of the largest districts in the nation. Since then, the district’s performance has landed at the bottom, though it’s complicated to compare the results among the large districts because the demographics are different.

Vitti acknowledged DPSCD’s rank at the bottom of the TUDA districts in the news release, calling it “the elephant in the room.” But he said the gap between the district and the state narrowed in each tested area, with each district performing slightly above DPSCD in three of the four tested areas.

“We are undoubtedly improving. We are committed to accelerating and scaling that improvement by overcoming the challenges of chronic absenteeism,” he said. “It’s evident that students missing less than 18 days of school are three to five times more likely to be at and above grade level performers in our district.”

Carr’s mention of chronic absenteeism being a factor is particularly relevant in Detroit, where 66% of district students were chronically absent during the 2023-24 school year. A student is chronically absent if they miss 10% or more of a traditional 180-day school year. The Detroit district’s rate has improved in the last few years but remains high. Chronic absenteeism not only affects students but makes it difficult for schools to improve.

“We should care because the lower performing students are more likely to be absent,” and because students can’t learn if they’re not in school, Carr said of the national results.

Emma Howland-Bolton, a fourth grade teacher at Thirkell Elementary-Middle School, hadn’t seen this year’s results Tuesday, but said she is critical of standardized tests like the NAEP, saying there are other ways to track student performance such as through assignments and projects with their peers.

“The fact that districts are still reliant on standardized testing to tell us anything meaningful about student growth and learning is disappointing because we have so much research about why those metrics by themselves are not really a useful measure of anything,” she said. “Standardized testing serves people who make standardized tests. It serves people who make curriculums that teach standardized tests and it serves test prep, but it doesn’t serve students.”

Howland-Bolton would rather see DPSCD administrators focus on students’ social and emotional well-being, such as making sure kids have a nutritious lunch, time allocated during the school day for recess, and access to a school library.

She added that in countries like Canada and Finland where there’s less standardized testing or none at all, students perform better.

“Amazingly, when you focus on meeting student needs, they perform well on tests,” Howland-Bolton said. “If you focus on test taking as being this end-all, be-all thing and ignore student needs, they actually perform worse on their tests, and we see that in our test scores.”

Imani Foster of 482 Forward, a local nonprofit focused on educational equity, also said that the district shouldn’t use standardized tests as the only indicator of how students are performing in school. More needs to be done at the state level to improve literacy rates, she said, such as more funding and sharing resources across school districts.

Another factor that needs to be addressed in both the reading and math NAEP tests is ensuring that students can comprehend the questions and that the questions use vocabulary they understand.

“It’s not just reading, but being able to comprehend and being able to do deductive reasoning,” Foster said.

She added that DPSCD can improve test scores by reducing class sizes for students who need more support, having students attend summer school to combat learning loss, and by lowering the chronic absenteeism rate.

“If we have kids not coming to school for the majority of the year, of course they’re not prepared to pass the test. Of course they feel they’re left behind and anxious and don’t have everything they need.”

She agrees with Howland-Bolton that childrens’ physical, social and emotional needs have to be met, such as eating breakfast and lunch and making sure schools are a safe environment.

“We have to change the narrative around education and the value of it in our city and in our state,” Foster said. “We don’t make students feel like they are the most important part of our society, and they absolutely are.”

It’s also important for people to understand the challenges facing districts like Detroit, Hart said.

“Detroit is highest in the nation for families that are not just in poverty based on free and reduced price lunch, but in more abject poverty,” Hart said.

“They didn’t get there overnight as a city, and turning that around is going to take some time, but they’re clearly doing it. And so for the community, understanding that it took decades for us to get to this place, and it’s going to take time to pull our district and our citizens and our children out of it, but clearly they’re making progress.”

DPSCD Board President Corletta Vaughn also noted the district’s progress, especially compared to when it was under emergency management.

“No one thinks we have arrived, but we are closer than we were before this school board and superintendent assumed the responsibility to rebuild a school district that was devastated by emergency management and ineffective leadership,” she said in the news release. “Our updated strategic plan, coupled with strong leadership focused on continuous improvement and an improved climate and culture for our employees, parents and students will ensure the upward trajectory we continue to see.”

Lori Higgins is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at lhiggins@chalkbeat.org.

Micah Walker is a reporter for BridgeDetroit. You can reach her at mwalker@bridgedetroit.com.

NAEP: Michigan students showed no improvement in reading scores since before COVID

2025-01-29T05:05:00+00:00

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Two years ago, Michigan fourth and eighth graders recorded their worst reading scores in 30 years on a national exam known as the “nation’s report card.” In 2024, they did not improve.

The results of the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, also show Michigan fourth and eighth graders continue to fall slightly behind national averages in math. The difference between the state and national averages, though, was not statistically significant, according to the agency that compiled the data.

“We have work to do,” Michael Rice, Michigan’s state superintendent, told Chalkbeat Detroit in an email.

Michigan students’ average scores in fourth and eighth grade reading and math did not change in statistically significant ways compared to the last time the test was administered in 2022.

“At the highest level, we’re far from fully recovered from the impact of the pandemic,” said Dan Goldhaber, a researcher who studies student achievement and member of the National Center for Education Statistics standing committee.

“It looks like recovery — where it exists — is pretty uneven,” he added.

Michigan’s scores reflect what the NAEP results show on the national level: Students are not at or near where they were before the pandemic.

“We’re not seeing the progress we need to regain the ground students lost during the pandemic,” said Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Educational Statistics, on a phone call with reporters. “Where we are seeing signs of recovery, they’re mostly in math and largely driven by higher performing students.”

The gaps between the nation’s highest and lowest performing students continue to widen, Carr added.

Marguerite Roza, director of Georgetown University’s Edunomics Lab research center, said Michigan and the rest of the country shouldn’t wait for sobering wake up calls like NAEP results to make changes.

“I think a reset is needed,” she said. “This kind of urgency is needed much more frequently.”

Here are some of the takeaways from the results:

In reading, just 24% of Michigan fourth graders were proficient in 2024, which was not considered a statistically significant difference from 2022. Nationally, 30% were proficient last year.
In math, 37% of Michigan fourth graders were proficient last year, a result that did not change in a statistically significant way from 2022. Nationally, 40% of their peers were proficient in 2024.
Thirty-one states scored higher in fourth grade reading than Michigan, which was tied, statistically, with 18 states, according to the NAEP results.
In fourth grade math, Michigan’s average score was bested by 16 states, was statistically the same as 29 others, and better than six states.
It was a similar trend for eighth graders, 24% of whom were proficient in math — below the U.S. average of 27%. In reading, 24% of Michigan students were proficient, which was below the national average.
Twenty-five states had higher math scores, among eighth graders, 18 were the same and eight were lower. In reading, 18 states had higher average scores, 26 were statistically the same, and seven were lower.

NAEP results are reported by the percentages of students who performed at three achievement levels — basic, proficient, and advanced. On NAEP, a proficient score does not equate to grade-level proficiency.

The biennial test includes a representative subset of students from traditional public, charter, and private schools from across the country. Nationwide, 235,000 fourth grade students took the test from 6,100 schools. There were 230,000 eighth grade students who took the test from 5,400 schools.

Michigan’s scores have worsened since before the pandemic. They decreased in reading for both grades and in math for the eighth grade. There was no significant change in fourth grade math compared to before the pandemic.

“There are going to be a lot more kids than we would hope are going to struggle with later life schooling and labor market outcomes,” Goldhaber said, referring to national trends. “Because there is a pretty strong connection between how well kids do on tests and their later life outcomes.”

How do NAEP results compare to other assessment data?

The 2024 NAEP data mirrors other test results that found many students who entered kindergarten and first grade during the early days of the pandemic are still struggling to catch up in reading.

The Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, known as the M-STEP, showed reading and writing proficiency among Michigan third and fourth graders was at a 10-year low in spring 2024.

Additionally, benchmark assessments given to compare scores for individual Michigan K-8 students each spring and fall showed fewer third and fourth graders were proficient in reading in 2023-24 compared to previous years.

But students made significant progress in improving math achievement scores on the benchmark assessments since the 2020-21 school year.

One of the big differences between NAEP and other assessments is that it is lower stakes for students, said Tara Kilbride, assistant director for research at the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative. Assessments like M-STEP play a role in state accountability, and other exams can inform the direction teachers take in instruction for individual students.

NAEP can be helpful as a “pulse check” to see how Michigan students are progressing compared to the rest of the country, said Kilbride.

How is Michigan addressing its literacy woes?

Under Republican leadership, Michigan lawmakers created a law that outlined steps school districts had to take when students were significantly behind in reading on the M-STEP.

Starting with the 2019-2020 school year, schools were expected to hold some students back if they did not meet expectations. But the pandemic hit and schools held back very few students in the following year. Democrats ended the third-grade retention requirement in 2023.

After the 2024 M-STEP results were released, Michigan lawmakers passed legislation to include the “science of reading” in early literacy curriculum.

The “science of reading” refers to a body of knowledge that emphasizes phonics along with building vocabulary and background knowledge.

Districts will have to comply with many of the provisions in the bill package by 2027-28.

“If the legislation does result in more students being screened and receiving interventions, it could result in improved early literacy outcomes,” said Kilbride.

States such as Tennessee and Mississippi that have passed similar bills made big improvements in reading scores on state proficiency assessments.

Currently, Michigan schools do not have to follow a set reading curriculum, though the Michigan Department of Education gives guidance on using evidence-based programs.

Reading lessons may vary widely within districts and even within classrooms in the same school, according to a 2022 policy brief by EPIC. Many of the districts that responded to EPIC’s survey were using poorly rated or unrated lesson plans.

Venessa Keesler, president and CEO of Launch Michigan, a bipartisan nonprofit group working to reform Michigan education, said the state should be more focused on making sure every district has a research-based reading curriculum.

In the current state education budget, there is $87 million allocated for the MDE to create a “committee for literacy achievement” that will evaluate literacy materials, professional development and tools. The group will rank these items and then districts can apply for funding and receive more funds for highly ranked items.

Roza said while it’s a positive sign there was some action from Michigan lawmakers on reading instruction last year, committing to making changes in 2027 “isn’t the kind of action we need.”

Jennifer Mrozowski, senior director for external relations and strategic communications at the nonpartisan research and advocacy nonprofit Education Trust-Midwest, said Michigan needs to continue increasing its weighted funding for students considered to be at-risk.

“New investment should come with greater fiscal transparency and accountability, including systems to make sure that funding for students with the greatest needs reaches their schools,” she added.

Chronic absenteeism continues to impact achievement

Carr, the commissioner of the National Center for Educational Statistics, said chronic absenteeism likely impacted NAEP scores.

“We have seen an improvement in chronic absenteeism,” she said. “It’s not where it needs to be, but it’s particularly noteworthy among the lower performing students.”

Michigan has long had high rates of chronic absenteeism, which is defined as students missing 10% or more of the school year.

In the 2023-24 school year, 29.5% of Michigan students were chronically absent — a significantly higher percentage compared to the last pre-pandemic school year when it was 19.7% of students.

Clarification: Friday, Jan. 31: This story was updated to clarify that the differences between the national and state averages in math were not statistically significant.

Isabel Lohman reports on early childhood, K-12, and higher education for Bridge Michigan. You can reach her at ilohman@bridgemi.com.

Hannah Dellinger covers K-12 education and state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

Mike Wilkinson is a data reporter for Bridge Michigan. You can reach him at mwilkinson@bridgemi.com.

Nation’s report card: Math scores rebound for NYC fourth graders, but disparities remain

2025-01-29T05:02:00+00:00

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New York City’s fourth graders are showing signs of academic recovery in math, according to new data released Wednesday from a long-running exam known as the “nation’s report card.”

The latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, offer some relief after the city’s fourth graders experienced a crushing drop in math scores just two years prior — raising serious concerns about lingering effects from the pandemic.

Drilling down into the data of the 2024 scores, however, reveals that not all fourth graders in the five boroughs are recovering at the same rate and that little progress has been made to bridge stubborn performance gaps between student groups.

Overall, just 33% of the city’s fourth graders scored proficient in math last year, compared with 23% in 2022 and 32% in 2019. (NAEP exams do not always align with state learning standards, and the exam’s standard for proficiency exceeds most states’ expectations for grade-level achievement, according to researchers.)

As a whole, New York was one of 15 states to see their fourth grade math scores rise last year. One state saw scores fall and 37 saw no significant change, according to the NAEP data.

Still, New York City’s fourth graders scored below state and national averages. National proficiency rates hit 39% and the state’s rate was 37%.

Education observers have been eagerly anticipating results from last year’s test, hoping for some signs of how well academic recovery has been going since the city devoted hundreds of millions of dollars toward a slew of programs in recent years — an effort propped up by billions in federal aid that have since dried up.

The city’s scores on the other exams — fourth and eighth grade reading, and eighth grade math — remained fairly steady from 2022, which in turn did not change in statistically significant ways from 2019.

Of the city’s eighth graders, 23% scored proficient in math and 29% scored proficient in reading — compared to 25% and 27% in 2022, respectively. Meanwhile, 28% of the city’s fourth graders scored proficient in reading, up from 26% on the prior exam.

“It’s absolutely cause for encouragement,” said Ray Hart, executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of 78 of the nation’s largest urban public school systems. “When you compare New York City to not only the state, but to other districts around the country, the fact that they’ve been able to hold steady is quite remarkable, given the challenges that were faced during the pandemic.”

Chyann Tull, a spokesperson for the city’s Education Department, said the latest NAEP results showing a return to pre-pandemic levels “underscore the resilience of New York City’s students and educators.”

“This stability reflects the extraordinary efforts of our schools to support learning recovery,” she said in a statement. “While there is still so much to be done, we remain committed to building on this foundation and fostering continued growth citywide.”

Still, Aaron Pallas, a professor at Columbia University’s Teachers College and an expert in testing, cautioned against drawing immediate conclusions from the NAEP data. With years between exams and distinct cohorts of students, many factors can contribute to fluctuations in results, he said.

Pallas, who spoke to Chalkbeat generally about NAEP before results were released, noted that the exams offer one piece of evidence that can help illustrate a more holistic picture of student performance when combined with other metrics, like annual state reading and math assessments.

“NAEP is a broad, general purpose indicator,” he said. “Inevitably, I think, there’s a tendency to want to look at changes over time and use that as a referendum on policies and practices — but lots of things are changing at the same time.”

Fourth grade math breakdown: Top scorers made largest gains

Though on its surface the shift in fourth grade math scores signaled a return to pre-pandemic numbers, the score improvements varied among students. While top performers improved their scores by roughly 11 points on average since 2022, the lowest performers saw an improvement of just five points on the exam, indicating that academic recovery might be uneven.

The big jump for the top performers was a departure from what happened two years ago, when both the high- and low-performers saw their scores fall at about the same rate, roughly 10 points. Meanwhile, for low performers, the score improvement in 2024 was not statistically significant, according to researchers.

Experts noted that a widening gap between high- and low-performing students suggests a need for targeted support, aimed at providing resources to students who are struggling the most.

“It’s tricky in a city like New York City, when so many students are already classified as disadvantaged by conventional criteria,” Pallas added. “So many schools in the city have high concentrations of kids in poverty.”

Hart said some large school districts were able to make significant strides among both low- and high-performing students — like Los Angeles and Washington D.C. in fourth grade math.

“That is possible in New York City as well,” he said. “Targeting our resources to ensure that they are supporting our kids who are from our most traditionally marginalized communities will be critically important.”

Still, across the nation as a whole, Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, noted that the widening achievement gap between high- and low-performing students had existed before the pandemic — growing worse in recent years.

“The lowest performers are struggling,” she said. “This is not just a pandemic story.”

Significant disparities remain in latest NYC testing data

The 2024 testing data also revealed persistent score disparities between student groups in New York City.

In fourth grade math, for example, just 16% of the city’s Black and Hispanic students scored proficient last year. Meanwhile, 53% of white students and 58% of Asian American students scored proficient on the exam.

Since 2003, the gap in average exam score between Black and Hispanic students and their white peers has grown slightly — up to more than 30 points from about 25 at the time, though researchers noted this shift was not statistically significant. (NAEP exams are scored on a scale from 0 to 500).

Performance gaps also surfaced between economically disadvantaged students and their peers — with just 24% of the former scoring proficient in fourth grade math compared to 60% of those who were not economically disadvantaged.

Hart noted that significant gaps between student groups largely correspond with income. When comparing, for example, Black and white students of similar economic need, the disparities in academic performance were far less significant, he said.

“There are much greater challenges for educating those students than there are for the general population,” Hart said. “Making sure that we continue to bring to bear federal and state and local dollars to support our students who are in greatest need — that is what’s most important.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

NAEP scores show disheartening trends for the lowest-performing students

2025-01-29T05:01:00+00:00

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Most American students are still performing below their pre-pandemic counterparts in reading and math, while the yawning gap between high-achieving and low-performing students got even wider, data from “the nation’s report card” shows.

Results released Wednesday from the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, paint a sobering picture of academic haves and have-nots. Scores are increasing for many students who already do well, while struggling students stagnated or fell even further behind their peers. That’s making a trend that began about a decade ago even more pronounced.

In some cases that divide was historic: Lower-performing fourth and eighth graders posted the worst reading scores in over 30 years. In eighth grade math, the gap between the highest- and lowest-performing students was the widest in the test’s history.

“The news is not good,” Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, told reporters on Tuesday. “Student achievement has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, reading scores continue to decline, and our lowest performing students are reading at historically low levels.”

Scores saw a dramatic decline in 2022 after students endured two disrupted pandemic school years marked by closures, quarantines, and remote learning. But in 2024, reading scores declined even more for both fourth and eighth graders.

“This is a major concern — a concern that can’t be blamed solely on the pandemic,” Carr said. “Our nation is facing complex challenges in reading.”

Fourth grade math was the lone bright spot, with average student scores ticking up two points on the 500-point scale. But much of that increase was driven by improvement among top performers.

Eighth grade math scores held steady, with gains among higher-performing students canceling out declines among lower-performers.

All of the children who took the NAEP last year had at least some of their education affected by the pandemic. The fourth graders were in kindergarten when schools closed in March 2020, while eighth graders were in fourth grade.

The results are sure to fuel ongoing debate about whether schools are doing enough to help struggling students, especially those who are the farthest behind, the role that school closures played in exacerbating learning gaps, and whether schools effectively spent the nearly $190 billion they received in federal COVID relief dollars.

The new NAEP scores have landed as conservatives push to expand private school choice, public schools grapple with budget cuts, culture war skirmishes persist, and chronic absenteeism remains at historically high levels. Students who performed the worst on the NAEP test were more likely to be frequently absent from school, Carr noted.

“We have a larger-than-in-recent-memory share of American students who are failing to demonstrate even partial mastery of the types of skills educators have defined as important,” said Martin West, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the vice chair of the NAEP Governing Board, which decides the test’s content and approves questions. “That doesn’t bode well for their futures or for our collective futures.”

The new data come from tests taken in early 2024 by nearly half a million students across thousands of U.S. schools.

Worrying decline in NAEP reading scores continues

On average, fourth and eighth grade students scored two points lower in reading than their counterparts in 2022 and five points lower than students in 2019. Only in Louisiana, where the state superintendent has put a major focus on reading, did fourth grade reading scores rise above 2019 levels.

The share of fourth graders who scored at the very bottom of the NAEP scale was at its highest point in 20 years. The share of eighth graders scoring at the lowest level was the highest ever. And in both grades, students who did not reach the NAEP Basic level — relatively low performers at the 25th percentile and under — had lower scores than in 1992, when the first NAEP test was given.

When a fourth grader can’t meet the NAEP Basic level, it doesn’t mean they cannot read. But it likely means they would struggle with easier skills, such as sequencing events in a story or stating an opinion using supporting evidence from a text. Eighth graders who fall below NAEP Basic would have trouble identifying basic literary elements, such as character motivation and the main idea.

NAEP results show how many students score below, at, or above two thresholds: NAEP Basic and NAEP Proficient. Proficient is considered a high bar, above what most states set as grade level expectations. Reaching the NAEP Basic threshold indicates students have achieved partial mastery of fundamental skills and knowledge for that grade level.

The rise in students who don’t meet that mark is of particular concern.

The dips in reading come as dozens of states overhaul their reading instruction with materials that better align with the science of reading. And while federal education officials are usually reticent to explain what caused a particular increase or decrease in scores, Carr cautioned that the near-universal dips in reading should not be taken as evidence that reading reforms have not worked.

She pointed to the example of Louisiana, where fourth graders are scoring better in reading than they did in 2019, bucking the national trend. That state has focused heavily on the science of reading “but they didn’t start yesterday,” Carr said.

“They were able to pull this off, and not only improve to pre-pandemic levels, but exceed them, and bring their lower-performers along,” she said. “I would not say that hope is lost.”

Still, Lesley Muldoon, the executive director of the NAEP Governing Board, said the growing share of children who cannot read at the NAEP Basic level, which generally corresponds with state proficiency standards, is concerning.

If a fourth grader can’t meet that in reading, “we’re saying that they’re unlikely to determine the meaning of a familiar word using context from the text,” Muldoon said. “That is a crucial skill that students really need for entering middle school.”

NAEP math scores show recovery — but also stagnation

In fourth grade math, average scores increased two points from 2022 but were still three points lower than pre-pandemic levels. Only in Alabama did fourth graders have higher scores than their 2019 counterparts. The average score was lifted by high-performing students who saw greater gains, while lower-performing students did about the same as in 2022.

Fifteen states and 14 urban districts saw improvements compared with 2022. District of Columbia Public Schools posted 10-point gains, well above the national average. D.C. schools also showed improvements for both low- and high-performing students, as did schools in Atlanta, Baltimore, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami-Dade County, and Guilford County, North Carolina.

Eighth grade math was a different story. There was no change in average scores because while high performers did better than their counterparts in 2022, low performers did worse.

Middle school math has been a problem area in the pandemic’s wake. Some students struggled to learn key concepts virtually, such as how to divide fractions or graph a line. That lack of knowledge followed them. Others may have had content repeated often because their classmates were absent a lot, which put them behind in their lessons.

West, the NAEP Governing Board member, said it appeared the pandemic accelerated the decline among low-performing eighth graders in math, but it was even more striking that “the bottom continued to fall out” from 2022 to 2024.

“The main takeaway is that: What we’ve done as a nation, including the federal recovery dollars, has been insufficient,” he said.

Students who struggle in middle school often end up locked out of more advanced math in high school that can open doors to higher-paid careers in STEM fields.

Mark Miller, who teaches eighth grade math in Colorado’s Cheyenne Mountain School District, said declining student motivation and “stick-to-it-ness” might be contributing. In recent years, struggling students in his classroom have needed a bigger nudge to dig in on difficult problems than when he started teaching nearly two decades ago.

“The coach in me has had to reach into my coaching motivational speeches in my classroom just as much as I have had to on the court or on the field,” said Miller, who is also a former NAEP Governing Board member. Many students think: “If I want to know something, I can look it up in two seconds, why do I need to persevere through learning how to solve systems of equations or learning how to solve a word problem?”

One thing his school is trying: Keeping kids who did not meet certain math standards in the same classes as their peers while providing extra support, instead of moving them to remedial math. The hope is that teachers can fill in gaps with mini lessons along the way, and that struggling students will feel more confident in their math abilities if they’re learning alongside their peers.

NAEP score gaps have consequences for ‘equitable society’

While the pandemic surely has had a lasting impact on students, the gap between high- and low-performers appears to have started growing about a decade ago. Similar gaps have appeared on international tests and are more stark for American students than for those in other countries that also experienced pandemic disruptions.

Theories abound: The federal government eased up on school accountability measures, and school leaders took their eyes off the lowest performers. The Great Recession, with its economic traumas followed by deep spending cuts, left a lasting scar on American education. Phones are sapping our attention span and cognitive abilities.

Nat Malkus, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, highlighted the trend in an analysis posted last week in advance of the NAEP release. He noted that the growing divide between high and low performers even shows up on a recent skills test for adults who haven’t been in school in years, complicating the idea that something school-related is the main driver.

The trends defy easy explanations and likely have multiple causes, he said.

Tests such as NAEP can’t answer the why. But Malkus hopes that researchers with access to student-level data can start digging in more. Are low-performing students concentrated at certain schools? Do they share certain characteristics? Or are they enrolled in schools with both high and low test scores?

He also hopes that superintendents and principals seek out this data about their own schools and find ways to support low-performing students even when average test scores look good.

“What this means for the story for an equitable society is enormous,” he said.

Yet there doesn’t seem to be enough urgency to get to the bottom of the problem, said Dan Goldhaber, who directs the Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research at the American Institutes for Research.

While his research and others found that federal pandemic aid helped academic recovery, Goldhaber said it’s reasonable to ask if it could have done more. In the rush to get money out the door, a real opportunity was missed to collect data that would have shown which interventions really move the needle for struggling students, he said.

“I think we will look back in 25 years, and we will see all these kids have these outcomes in life that were predicted by this major decline,” he said. “The message is everywhere, but I don’t see much appetite to address it.”

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Kalyn Belsha is a senior national education reporter based in Chicago. Contact her at kbelsha@chalkbeat.org.

Should NYC’s specialized high school test come in other languages? Manhattan parent council says no.

2025-01-28T00:17:01+00:00

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A Manhattan parent council debated — and rejected — a resolution earlier this month urging New York City’s Education Department to translate the admissions test for the city’s eight coveted specialized high schools into languages other than English.

The resolution, which failed by a vote of 5-3 in the Community Education Council for Manhattan’s District 2, was only advisory and would not have shifted the city’s existing policy.

But it sparked a public discussion about an aspect of the exam that’s gotten comparatively little attention, and it raised broader questions about the dearth of English language learners in the specialized high schools, which include Stuyvesant and Bronx Science.

“There’s definitely underrepresentation of [English learners] in these schools,” said Gavin Healy, a council member who co-sponsored the resolution following a story from Chalkbeat highlighting the barriers for newly arrived immigrants seeking admission to specialized high schools. “This has been an ongoing problem.”

Last school year, just four of the nearly 16,000 students enrolled in the eight specialized high schools, or 0.03%, were classified as English learners, according to city data. That’s in a school system where roughly 148,000 students, or 16.3% of the population, are learning English — a share that’s been growing as the city absorbs tens of thousands of migrant families.

The exam, which is enshrined in state law as the sole entry criterion for the specialized high schools, is currently offered only in English, though students still learning the language can get glossaries with translations of key terms and extra time on the test.

The city Education Department didn’t respond to a question about the CEC 2 resolution, but previously told Chalkbeat they believe that translating the test into other languages would violate state law mandating the use of a single, standard exam for admissions to the specialized schools.

Translating the exam would “risk making test questions either easier or more difficult, which would compromise the validity of comparable scores across exams,” a department spokesperson said.

Last year, roughly 900 English learners took the specialized high school test, and fewer than six got in. (The Education Department suppresses data for groups that small, so the precise number isn’t shared.)

It wasn’t immediately clear how many current specialized high school students were considered English Learners at one point in their school career and have now tested out of that designation. About 47% of specialized high school students last year spoke English as a home language, compared to about 52% of all city public high school students, according to a Chalkbeat analysis of city data.

Healy pointed out that the test the city previously used for admissions to elementary gifted and talented programs was offered in multiple languages. Several of the Regents exams required for high school graduation, including Algebra I, Global History, and Living Environment, are offered in multiple languages, though the English Language Arts test is not.

But Leonard Silverman, the vice president of CEC 2, who voted against the resolution, argued that while students entering the gifted program have years to improve their English, students entering the specialized high schools need to have a strong command of the language right away.

“The schools we’re talking about … are some of the most rigorous in the city. And their curriculums are administered in English,” he said.

Manpreet Bopari, another council member who opposed the resolution, added that “if students take the SHSAT in their native languages, even if they pass they’re likely to struggle with the day-to-day realities of English-only curriculum, so this sets them up for frustration and failure rather than success.”

Bopari said she was an English learner in middle school and didn’t take the SHSAT in part because of language barriers but “succeeded in other ways.” She urged the city to focus “not on lowering barriers but in equipping our [English learner] students with the tools they need to overcome them.”

Schools are required under federal law to provide accommodations for students learning English, including by hiring specialized teachers. But the extra funding schools rely on to hire those additional teachers comes from enrolling English learners, making it difficult to build up support without first enrolling the students who need that support.

That dilemma is familiar to students with disabilities, who are also significantly underrepresented at the specialized high schools and have often struggled to access the services to which they’re entitled.

Healy countered that while it might be challenging at first for students still learning English, they should have the option to make that choice themselves.

“It felt to me there’s a lot of kids who are capable of doing this work,” he said, “who probably aren’t getting a chance to do it.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Michael at melsen-rooney@chalkbeat.org

Studying for the 2025 SHSAT? Here’s what to know about the new digital test.

2025-01-17T18:35:08+00:00

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Next year’s eighth graders will be the first to take the digital version of the Specialized High School Admission Test. Commonly known as the SHSAT, it is the sole basis of entry for eight of New York City’s most prestigious high schools, including Stuyvesant and Bronx Science.

Last school year, 25,678 students took the SHSAT, with 4,072 students — the top 16% — receiving offers based on their test scores, according to Education Department data.

Many students spend months studying for the exam, with some families shelling out thousands of dollars for tutors or classes to help them prepare. But the format change for the 2025 SHSAT might throw some students a curveball. Though the city’s school board in December approved the contract for the five-year $17 million proposal from testing company Pearson to digitize the SHSAT, it will still be months before a practice test of the new version will be available.

Before the Panel for Educational Policy’s vote on the controversial contract, members of the board invited the public to weigh in at a hearing. And though the majority of the people who testified urged officials to approve the contract, the proposal stirred up longstanding debates over the exam, seen by integration advocates as an exclusionary tool keeping Black and Latino students, students with disabilities, and English learners out of top schools. Some worried that the shift to a computerized SHSAT could worsen outcomes for these students, who are already admitted at staggeringly low rates.

Some studies have found students in general tend to perform worse when taking tests on computers or tablets. But experts have told Chalkbeat that research isn’t definitive.

Many exams are now computer-based, including the SAT and theMAP assessments administered several times a year for students in grades 2-8. Most Advanced Placement tests are also going digital this year or will be hybrid, with multiple choice questions online and handwritten free responses. A statewide effort is phasing in computer-based testing for New York’s 3-8 reading and math exams.

“Our students continue to live in a more digital world, both in and out of the classroom,” Education Department spokesperson Jenna Lyle wrote in an email. “The transition to computer-based SHSAT testing is an extension of this shift.”

For students planning to take the fall 2025 SHSAT, here’s what to know.

When will digital practice tests be available?

Two full-length digital practice tests will be available on the Education Department’s website by the end of March, officials said.

The contract calls for a computer-adaptive test. Will the fall 2025 SHSAT be computer-adaptive?

No, not yet.

Test takers in fall 2025 will indeed take a digital version of the SHSAT, but the test isn’t expected to transition to a computer-adaptive model until the fall of 2026, Education Department officials said.

For computer-adaptive tests, a student’s ongoing performance affects the difficulty level of subsequent questions, meaning that questions might get easier or harder depending on how the student is doing.

Generally speaking, will the content on the test remain the same?

Yes, the content is expected to remain consistent with the previous versions of the SHSAT, Education Department officials said.

It will continue to have a math section and an English Language Arts section with a revising and editing portion and a reading comprehension portion.

The digital version will allow for additional types of questions, officials added, but don’t expect a major content overhaul.

Will all middle schools still administer the exam as they do now on the same day?

Yes, no changes here. Middle schools will still administer the SHSAT during the school day, Education Department officials said. Students at 6-12 schools, charters, and private schools will continue to take the exam at a central location during the weekend.

This year, eighth graders at city-run public schools took the test on Oct. 30, while students not participating in school-day testing took it Nov. 16-17.

Some middle schools might have iPads, some Chromebooks or other devices. Will there be any effort to standardize the type of device kids will take the test on?

No, the test will be accessible on whatever device a school has, according to officials.

Prior to testing, the Education Department will install the testing platform application on all school-managed devices, and once installed, an app check will be run on each device to ensure it meets all system requirements and passes system checks, officials said.

Will the test take the same amount of time as before or will it be shorter, like the digital SAT?

The SHSAT will be the same length. Students will have three hours to complete the exam unless they have extended-time testing accommodation through 504 plans or individualized education programs, Education Department officials said.

Will calculators be allowed? They are allowed on the digital SAT.

Similar to previous versions of the SHSAT, calculators will not be allowed on the exam, Education Department officials said.

Who will still be allowed to take a pencil-and-paper version of the SHSAT?

If a student’s IEP or 504 plan has testing accommodations that require paper versions for them to access the exam, they will be able to take the test offline, according to Education Department officials.

Amy Zimmer is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat New York. Contact Amy at azimmer@chalkbeat.org.

Report: Michigan students improved math scores since COVID, but reading remains the same

2025-01-08T22:50:02+00:00

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Michigan students made significant progress in improving math achievement scores since the 2020-21 school year, but the same was not true in reading, data from a new report suggests.

Benchmark assessments for K-8 students last school year, which compare scores for individual students in the spring and fall, show fewer third and fourth graders were proficient in reading compared to previous years. The report provides another data point consistent with what the 2024 Michigan Student Test of Education Progress, or M-STEP, suggested — that many students who entered kindergarten and first grade when most schools were virtual are struggling to catch up.

Though the report shows some progress was made in the last school year, the gap between the state’s highest- and lowest-performing students remains wider than would be expected before the COVID pandemic, said Tara Kilbride, assistant director for research at the Education Policy Innovation Collaborative, the research group that did the analysis.

The findings of the report highlight the importance of individual support for students, she added.

“It’s important curricula meet students where they are now,” she said. “That’s likely different from where they were a few years ago.”

The report stipulates the data is “imperfect,” but provides important information for policymakers and educators.

The benchmark assessments began in the 2020-21 school year after the Michigan legislature mandated them to measure recovery from pandemic learning loss.

Because the assessments were not administered in the state before COVID school closures, it is not possible to make an apples-to-apples comparison to years prior to 2020-21.

Additionally, starting last school year, districts are no longer required to administer the assessments. As a result, 91 fewer school systems and 57,000 fewer students participated in 2023-24.

Still, Kilbride said the demographics of this year’s participating districts are very similar to that of the state overall.

Students who moved districts during the pandemic or missed testing dates due to illness or a lack of access to computers at home are also not included in the analysis. Those students may have been more impacted by the pandemic, the researcher said.

The report showed accelerated improvement in some areas for Michigan students in 2023-24, particularly in math.

The analysis estimates that during 2020-21, Michigan students fell from the 44th to the 41st percentile in national math norms based on district grade-average scores on NWEA’s MAP Growth or i-Ready diagnostic assessments. By the spring of 2024, Michigan students’ math performance reached the 49th percentile.

The data suggests Michigan students’ math achievement significantly surpassed levels in fall 2020.

In reading, the benchmark assessments show little change in 2023-24.

The report estimates Michigan students dropped from the 52nd percentile in national norms for reading to the 47th in 2020-21. It remained about the same for the next three school years.

But the gaps in reading achievement between the state’s highest- and lowest-performing students narrowed in spring of 2024.

“This suggests targeted recovery efforts concentrated on improvement among students with the lowest scores were working in many cases,” said Kilbride.

The data also suggests more individualized and prescriptive literacy instruction, such as the kind of instruction called for in the “science of reading” legislation the Michigan legislature passed in September, could be beneficial.

The analysis shows students in districts that were primarily remote in 2020-21 have shown some growth in the years since, but continue to struggle to catch up.

Districts in urban areas with higher concentrations of poverty that were more impacted by COVID offered fewer days of in-person instruction in 2020-21.

Hannah Dellinger covers K-12 education and state education policy for Chalkbeat Detroit. You can reach her at hdellinger@chalkbeat.org.

2023-24 letter grades are out for Tennessee schools. Here’s what they show.

2024-12-19T23:12:15+00:00

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About 3 out of every 4 Tennessee schools eligible to receive letter grades under a state system scored a C or better this year, about the same as last year, newly released data show.

The Tennessee Department of Education announced the letter grades for 2023-24 on Thursday while launching an updated Tennessee Report Card, an online data dashboard.

This is the second year the state’s schools have received letter grades under a revamped formula that emphasizes academic achievement, or proficiency, over academic growth — a change that spurred disagreement over how to best measure school performance.

The median grade-eligible school earned a 3.3 out of a possible 5 points, or on the high end of the C range, according to a Chalkbeat analysis. Last year, the median score was 3.2 points.

This year’s report card on the 1,693 Tennessee schools that met the criteria for getting graded read as follows: 290 A’s, 484 B’s, 508 C’s, 330 D’s, and 78 F’s.

Lizzette Reynolds, the state education commissioner, said in a statement that the report card “provides valuable insights into the performance of public schools and districts across Tennessee, giving families and communities the tools they need to advocate for their students.”

In a statement, Memphis-Shelby County Schools, the state’s largest school district, highlighted its improvements on the top scale of the grading system: The number of schools earning A’s increased from nine to 16 this year, while the number of schools earning A’s or B’s rose from 40 to 57.

While the number of MSCS schools receiving F’s decreased from 41 to 22, the number of schools that received D’s rose from 43 to 55. Eleven percent of eligible schools in MSCS earned failing grades, the largest proportion of F’s among districts with 50 or more schools.

Like last year, C is the most common grade for a school in the Memphis district.

“Our focus on improving outcomes for every student is unwavering,” Memphis-Shelby County Schools Superintendent Marie Feagins said in a statement. “These results are a step forward, and we will continue to push for even greater success in the years to come.”

The results come as Feagins is fighting an effort to terminate her contract for “professional misconduct,” as alleged in a school board resolution. A divided board this week pushed the resolution discussion to next month. Feagins has vehemently denied the accusations.

Cutting absenteeism, boosting 3rd grade reading among Colorado education department’s goals

2024-12-14T00:21:13+00:00

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Slashing chronic absenteeism rates, boosting third grade reading scores, and ensuring high school graduates earn college credit or work experience alongside their diplomas are among the Colorado Department of Education’s new strategic goals.

The department has set five “wildly important goals” it aims to achieve over the next several years. Other state agencies, including the Colorado Department of Early Childhood Education, are setting similar goals. Together, they represent some of the state’s biggest public policy priorities.

Education Commissioner Susana Córdova said her department’s goals are meant to address some of the 880,000-student system’s thorniest challenges.

“Schools continue to face pandemic-related challenges including poor attendance, teacher shortages, and learning loss,” she told the Colorado State Board of Education last month.

Here’s a look at three of the department’s goals and the state’s progress toward meeting them.

Reduce chronic absenteeism

Goal: Cut chronic absenteeism to 15% of K-12 students by the 2027-28 school year.

Progress: In the 2023-24 school year, 27.7% of students were chronically absent.

A student is considered chronically absent if they miss 10% or more of the school days in a school year, or approximately 18 days. Chronic absenteeism is a problem because students who miss a lot of school can fall behind academically and find it hard to catch up.

“If they’re not there, I don’t care how great your instruction is, how great your building is, how many programs you have,” State Board of Education member Lisa Escárcega said at a meeting this week while discussing the goals. “If they’re not there, they can’t learn.”

Chronic absenteeism has always been an issue, but it was made worse by the pandemic. Schools across the country have struggled to improve student attendance in the years since. While some are seeing success, absenteeism rates largely remain higher than they were before COVID.

Here’s how Colorado’s doing in bid to meet key early childhood goals

That’s true in Colorado. The state’s chronic absenteeism rate hit a high of 35.5% in the 2021-22 school year. It was a huge jump from before the pandemic, when the rate ranged from 18% to 24%.

Colorado is one of several states that have signed on to an ambitious pledge to cut chronic absenteeism by half over a five-year period. The department’s goal of a 15% chronic absenteeism rate would be a big improvement on the pre-pandemic rate.

The department has already launched a statewide campaign called “Every School Day Matters!” According to the website, more than 30 districts and schools have signed on. The department hopes 80% of Colorado’s 178 districts will agree to participate by next October.

The department also aims to increase training for educators and grow the number of visitors to a website with guidance and resources for school staff on how to foster a sense of student well-being and belonging in their schools — an element that students say is important.

Increase third grade reading scores

Goal: 60% of third graders will meet or exceed state expectations in literacy by 2028.

Progress: In 2024, 42% of third graders met that bar on the state literacy test.

Third grade is considered a key year for reading. Some studies have shown that students who can’t read proficiently by third grade are less likely to graduate from high school.

Colorado tests students in grades 3-11 in reading, writing, and math each spring. The tests for third graders are called Colorado Measures of Academic Success, or CMAS.

Student test scores plummeted during the pandemic and are now climbing back up. Colorado’s third grade reading scores were actually slightly higher in 2024 than they were in 2019 before the pandemic. But state officials say the state still has work to do.

State Board of Education members emphasized the importance of helping students early.

“I’ve heard teachers say, ‘Don’t worry about your kid. They’ll get it later on. It’ll come to them,’” said board member Angelika Schroeder. “Folks, it doesn’t come to a lot of kids.”

Colorado has never come close to 60% of third graders meeting or exceeding expectations in literacy since it rolled out the CMAS tests in 2015. Córdova called this goal “very ambitious.”

To get there, the department plans to offer more training to educators and ensure more school districts are using what it calls “high quality instructional materials.”

The department also plans to redesign its awards to “celebrate schools with strong results.”

Boost postsecondary readiness

Goal: 100% of the Class of 2029 will have earned 12 college credits, a non-degree credential, or participated in a work-based learning opportunity.

Progress: The state doesn’t currently track this metric in this way.

Colorado has for several years been focused on a concept called the “big blur,” which refers to blurring the line between high school and students’ next steps. At its simplest, it’s an attempt to better prepare high school graduates for college or the workforce.

Dual enrollment programs, which allow students to take college-level classes in high school, have become wildly popular. Dual-enrolled high school students now account for nearly half of the students at Colorado’s community colleges.

But most dual-enrolled students leave high school with only a few college credits. The department wants to drastically increase that number.

Officials also want to increase the number of students earning non-degree credentials that would allow them to work in high-demand fields, such as health care or early childhood education.

And they want to boost the number of students participating in apprenticeships, on-the-job training, internships, and other work-based learning experiences.

Colorado has a host of programs meant to accomplish these goals. But the system is fragmented and confusing, with different programs overseen by different departments. The programs also have differing amounts of funding from the state and buy-in from school districts.

A new report commissioned by state lawmakers includes recommendations for improvements, some of which may be taken up by policymakers in the upcoming legislative session.

The department also wants to increase the number of school districts participating in training sessions about postsecondary workforce readiness and the number that are including postsecondary workforce readiness strategies in their required improvement plans.

Melanie Asmar is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Colorado. Contact Melanie at masmar@chalkbeat.org.

Adams 14 successful in challenging some ratings, but not the overall low district rating

2024-12-12T00:55:41+00:00

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The Adams 14 school district will not have an improved performance rating this year, despite many district complaints about the state’s system.

On Wednesday, the Colorado State Board of Education voted to approve the final decisions on appeals from schools and districts that didn’t agree with their annual performance rating, first released in September.

The state this year received requests to reconsider 15 district ratings and 79 school ratings, compared to 10 district and 81 school ratings appeals last year. Of those requests, the state approved 85 ratings changes, including 22 requests for Denver schools. Among the appeals denied was Adams 14’s request to change its district rating.

Adams 14, the district with the longest number of low state ratings, is on year 11 of low ratings. The district’s rating for 2024 of priority improvement is the second-lowest rating for districts and is identified by orange. It’s the same rating the district received in 2023.

The state is required to step in and order intervention when a school, or district, has five years of low ratings.

Once under state-ordered plans, a school or district must have at least a rating of improvement, identified by yellow, one rung above priority improvement, for at least two years in a row, for the state intervention to stop.

Despite many improvement plans and state orders for Adams 14, the district has not managed to earn an improvement rating a single time in more than a decade.

Here’s how a task force suggests changing the way schools and districts are rated in Colorado

In the last few months, district leaders have asked the state to reconsider the district’s rating, and the state’s way of evaluating any school’s performance based on environmental factors and the impact pollution has on children. The district also wanted the state to reconsider using SAT and PSAT data in the ratings this year, given large performance gaps, and an acknowledgement that drops in high school scores were at least in part due to changes to the test format.

And in the official Request to Reconsider application the state looked at, the district wanted the state to exclude its alternative high school’s data from its district rating.

State officials explained that statute and predetermined rules dictate the conditions needed to change a district’s rating. In a case where an alternative school earns the highest rating possible – of performance – and when removing that data raises a district’s rating enough to move up a level, the state allows that exclusion. For Adams 14, neither of those conditions were met.

In a letter drafted by state lawyers to respond to Adams 14, officials denied that some of the racial and environmental challenges faced by the community factored into the district’s rating.

“The department recognizes and does not discount the challenges facing the Commerce City community – the impacts of pollution, poverty, food insecurity, and violence in a community with a very high percentage of multilingual learners and high rates of absenteeism. The department very much wants to continue to be a partner in addressing these issues for the benefit of the students of Adams 14,” the letter states. “At the same time, the accountability system is not currently designed to adjust final ratings based on such challenges.”

For its schools, however, Adams 14 was successful in appealing seven ratings.

Among those, the district’s two middle schools will now have a label of insufficient data for a rating, based on low test participation. The other five successful appeals were for elementary schools where the district submitted additional local test data.

With all the ratings finalized, Adams 14 this year had two schools with improved ratings and two others with lower ratings, compared to last year.

Alsup Elementary, despite its successful appeal from turnaround to priority improvement, will move forward, now on year three, on the state’s timeline toward intervention.

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

New Jersey 2024 state tests: Students show gradual gains in reading, math

2024-12-06T10:45:00+00:00

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Newark students made incremental progress on their spring 2024 mathematics and reading standardized state tests, but still lagged behind statewide proficiency averages and their own pre-pandemic scores, according to new data released by the state this week.

“The statewide assessment results serve as a rich source of data for determining areas of need,” Acting Education Commissioner Kevin Dehmer said at a state school board meeting on Wednesday during a presentation of the results. “We know these results do not fully describe the complexities of the depth and breadth of a child’s complete learning experience, but these data are important and help us understand overall performance trends.”

The New Jersey Student Learning Assessments, commonly referred to as NJSLA, are administered annually in the spring for grades 3-9 in English language arts and math. The tests were not given to students in the spring of 2020 or 2021 after the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted learning.

This year’s scores mark the third time state tests were administered for New Jersey since the pandemic and an overview of results show a continued gradual increase after scores plummeted in 2022. That drastic dip — which put student proficiency averages well behind 2019 rates — prompted education leaders and advocates to underscore the need for high-impact tutoring and more professional development to help teachers learn how they can improve students’ literacy skills.

More than half, or 52.2%, of New Jersey students met or exceeded proficiency standards in English language arts on the spring 2024 tests, an increase of nearly one percentage point from 2023 and 3.3 percentage points from 2022. This year’s rate is still behind the 2019 proficiency rate of 57.6% by 5.3 percentage points, according to the state’s analysis.

In math, about 39.6% of students statewide met or exceeded proficiency standards on the 2024 test, an increase of 2.2 percentage points from spring 2023 and 4.2 percentage points from 2022. That rate is also still behind the 2019 proficiency rate of 44.7% by 5.1 percentage points.

Meanwhile, across Newark traditional public and charter schools — which are publicly funded but privately managed — the proficiency rate was 39.3% for English language arts and 23.8% for math in 2024, according to a Chalkbeat analysis.

The story continues after the data graphic.

Between Newark’s literacy proficiency rate average and the state’s average, there’s a 12.9 percentage point gap, showing city schools are still lagging behind statewide averages. Similarly, there’s a 15.8 percentage point gap for math.

In an overview of Newark Public Schools’ test scores earlier this fall, Superintendent Roger León or other school leaders highlighted the district’s efforts in the last few years to increase tutoring during school, as well as summer and Saturday school efforts and a new English language arts curriculum.

Gaps persist among student groups

A look at subgroups at the state level showed students with disabilities and English language learners are about 20 percentage points or more behind the overall student averages in reading and math, a state analysis showed.

The gaps also persist among racial groups, according to the state. There was an approximate 45 percentage point gap in proficiency rates on the English language arts exams between Black students, who averaged a 35.6 proficiency rate, and Asian American students, who scored above the state average at 80.9%.

“It’s extremely frustrating to know that after all the investments, the number of programs over the years, this achievement gap is persistent and still remains significant,” state board member Arcelio Aponte said at the meeting. “What do we do moving forward? Is there anything that we have not tried as of yet?”

State administrative officials said the literacy bill package Gov. Phil Murphy signed over the summer will create an office within the education department dedicated to finding answers to those questions. The Office of Learning Equity and Academic Recovery is set to be active by early next year.

The story continues after the data table.

Some Newark schools exceed state reading proficiency rates

A Chalkbeat data analysis of Newark’s test scores showed some bright spots throughout city schools, where proficiency rates at certain schools are meeting or exceeding the state’s averages and pre-pandemic scores.

A look at third grade reading scores among district schools showed Park Elementary School reached a 58.7% proficiency rate, above the state and city averages for English language arts and surpassing its 2019 rate of 32.4%. About 45.5% of Ivy Hill Elementary third graders reached reading proficiency scores. The two district schools exceeded the state’s third grade average reading proficiency rate of 44%.

Four city charter schools’ third graders also exceeded the state’s reading proficiency average, including North Star Academy, Gray, Maria L. Varisco-Rogers, and Robert Treat charter schools.

The analysis also shows where proficiency rates lag even further behind. Less than 10% of third graders at eight district elementary schools met proficiency standards for reading on grade level. For example, 5% of third graders at Camden Street School are reading on grade level, meaning the vast majority of third graders at that school are not meeting proficiency standards in English language arts.

The other seven schools with similar rates included Thirteenth Avenue, Avon Avenue, Hawkins, George Washington Carver, Peshine, Sussex, and Quitman elementary schools.

Correction: Dec. 9, 2024: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated the percentage change in proficiency rates on the English language arts and math state tests comparing 2024 results to the last two years.

Catherine Carrera is the bureau chief for Chalkbeat Newark. Contact Catherine at ccarrera@chalkbeat.org.

U.S. math scores drop on major international test

2024-12-04T09:02:00+00:00

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U.S. fourth graders saw their math scores drop steeply between 2019 and 2023 on a key international test even as more than a dozen other countries saw their scores improve. Scores dropped even more steeply for American eighth graders, a grade where only three countries saw increases.

The declines in fourth grade mathematics in the U.S. were among the largest in the participating countries, though American students are still in the middle of the pack internationally. The extent of the decline seems to be driven by the lowest performing students losing more ground, a worrying trend that predates the pandemic.

The results released Wednesday from the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, or TIMSS, assessment come from more than 650,000 fourth and eighth graders in 64 countries who took the tests in 2023. The test has been administered every four years since 1995. The results are used to monitor how many students have foundational math and science skills.

Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Japan topped the rankings in most grades and subjects.

Among participating countries, the large majority of students met at least the low benchmark, which means students have basic math skills and know basic science facts. Roughly a third of students met the high benchmark, which means students can apply concepts in a variety of situations.

The 2023 tests saw a growing gender gap in favor of boys across many countries, especially in fourth grade math. Gender gaps that were prominent when TIMSS was first administered in 1995 had narrowed over time, but seem to have returned.

“The gender gap is a matter of concern,” said Dirk Hastedt, executive director of IEA, the agency that administers TIMSS. “It’s clearly something that needs to be considered and monitored very, very carefully.”

These are the first TIMSS results since the COVID response disrupted education around the world. TIMSS is the first international test to show improvements in some countries since the pandemic, with countries in Eastern Europe and the Middle East in particular showing gains.

School closures looked very different in different countries, with some emphasizing in-person learning for younger students and others giving preference to older students and a wide range of hybrid schooling practices. Test administrators said they didn’t collect enough information to tie those practices to test results, and more research is needed.

A number of countries that once scored below the U.S. on the TIMSS in math are now ahead. American students’ ranking in science is better, but average scores for fourth graders are now below 1995 scores.

In contrast, on the Program for International Student Assessment or PISA, another key international test given to eighth graders in 2022, U.S. math scores also fell steeply, but the U.S. ranking improved because other countries saw greater declines. On the PISA, U.S. reading and science scores held steady.

The TIMSS results echoed the 2022 findings of the National Assessment of Educational Progress or NAEP, which saw major declines in math scores among both fourth and eighth graders. American students’ scores actually started to decline before the pandemic for reasons that are not entirely clear.

Peggy Carr, commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, said the NAEP results two years ago were “devastating,” and the TIMSS results are “just as devastating.”

“I would call these declines sharp, steep declines,” she said.

While many other countries are also struggling, she said, declines were not inevitable, given that some countries saw their scores go up in some grades and subjects.

“We have countries leapfrogging over us,” Carr said.

Scores for the highest performing American fourth graders were about the same as in 2019, but the lowest performing students — those in the bottom 10% — saw their scores drop by 37 points in math and by 22 points in science compared with similar students in 2019. The lowest performing eighth graders saw their scores drop by 19 points in math. One in five U.S. eighth graders scored below the low benchmark, meaning they lacked even basic proficiency.

The steep decline among students who struggle the most in school drove much of the decrease in U.S. test scores, Carr said.

This gap between high- and low-performing students started to widen before the pandemic for reasons that are unclear. Since then, other research into post-pandemic academic performance has found widening gaps across race and income, even as many middle and higher income students are doing well.

The TIMSS assessment includes questions about student absences from school, the resources they have at home, quality of instruction, including how often students get to conduct science experiments, and whether students like math and science.

The surveys found that on average one in 10 students worldwide misses school at least once a week and one in five miss school at least once every two weeks. Absenteeism was even higher in some countries. Across subjects and grades, students who rarely missed school scored the highest and students who missed school often scored the lowest.

“We have a good percentage of students who seem to be disengaged in school at this early age,” Hastedt said. “That’s clearly a very disturbing finding and something that asks for policy reactions.”

There was also a strong correlation between socioeconomic status and test scores. Students from higher income households and those who attended schools with more affluent students had higher scores.

Schools where principals reported fewer discipline problems and more emphasis on academic success had higher average test scores.

Students who reported that they liked math and science did better on average than those who didn’t, but the relationship was not nearly as strong as that for socioeconomic status.

Senior reporter Kalyn Belsha contributed.

Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.

Few third- and fourth-graders are being retained under Tennessee reading law, data shows

2024-11-22T01:14:36+00:00

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Some 60% of Tennessee third-grade students scored below proficiency in English language arts on 2024 state tests. Fewer than than 1% of them were retained under the state’s reading and retention law, and about 2.5% are no longer enrolled in public schools, according to new data.

Among fourth graders who had been promoted by receiving tutoring during the 2023-24 academic year under the same law, just over 1% were held back this school year, while at least 4% have left their public school.

The findings, presented by Tennessee’s chief academic officer to the State Board of Education on Thursday, show some of the effects of Tennessee’s 2021 reading intervention and retention law aimed at accelerating learning after the pandemic.

The controversial statute was pushed by Gov. Bill Lee, who said he wanted to draw a hard line to “stop the cycle of passing without preparation.” The legislature has since approved several revisions to loosen the policies and provide more pathways to promotion for students who don’t test as proficient readers.

State leaders are ‘encouraged’ by tutoring and summer program data

The big question is whether students are becoming better readers with the state’s interventions.

That includes summer programming, which began in each school system in 2021 to mitigate the effects of disruptions to schooling during the pandemic. About 121,000 students went that first year, and participation has leveled off to about 90,000 in subsequent years.

Chief Academic Officer Kristy Brown, in her presentation to the board, said attendance rates improved for recent summer programs, indicating that parents are finding value in them.

As far as academics, she said: “What we’re really seeing is the effects of decreased summer slide, or the lack of it, for students who are participating, compared to those who are not.”

Summer slide, referring to when students’ academic proficiency regresses during summer break, is a common phenomenon, especially for historically disadvantaged populations.

As for required small group tutoring, which younger students receive weekly during the school year if they don’t meet expectations on state tests, Brown said students testing in the bottom level, called “below” proficiency, are moving in the right direction.

In addition, almost half of the 12,260 fourth graders who received required tutoring in 2023-24 showed improvement as the year progressed. Over 14% of them scored as proficient on their TCAPs last spring, and nearly 33% met the threshold for showing adequate growth based on a state formula.

The data is the first available for fourth-graders who started receiving additional support after scoring below proficiency in the third grade.

“To finally have the numbers — to see that the needle appears to have been moved in a positive way like that — I was glad to see,” said Ryan Holt, a member of the state board.

Several other board members also said they were “encouraged” by the data.

Brown, the state’s academic chief, cautioned that gains can’t be traced at this point to any single part of the state’s reading interventions.

“It’s a combination of the things that we’ve done,” she said, “with professional learning for teachers, and summer programming, and tutoring, and those things customized for those students to see the gains that I think we’ve seen in Tennessee.”

Many educators and parents have been less enthusiastic.

The high-stakes testing was well-intended, they say, but it’s taken an emotional toll on many of Tennessee’s youngest students, affecting their self-confidence and their feelings toward school.

The legislature’s most recent revisions to the law were intended to give parents and educators more input into retention decisions.

Many students facing retention used alternative pathways to promotion

After the 2023-24 school year, most of the nearly 44,000 third graders who were at risk of retention used other pathways to promotion.

Nearly 27% were exempted for various reasons, including having a disability or suspected disability that impacts their reading; being an English language learner with less than two years of ELA instruction; and having been previously retained.

Over 4% retook the test at the end of the academic year and scored as proficient.

Others were promoted through a combination of tutoring and summer program participation.

For the 12,260 fourth graders who participated in tutoring last school year, over 14% scored as proficient on the state’s assessment in the spring.

Over 32% met the state’s “adequate growth” measure that’s tailored to each student. It’s based on testing measurements that the state uses to predict the probability that a student can become proficient by the eighth grade, when they take their last TCAP tests.

And nearly 44% of at-risk fourth graders were promoted by a new “conference” pathway that lawmakers approved on the last day of the 2024 legislative session. It allows the student to be promoted if their parents, teacher, and principal decide collectively that it’s in the child’s best interest.

Any fourth grader promoted to the fifth grade via the conference pathway must receive tutoring in the fifth grade.

Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.

NYC ed panel delays SHSAT vote, teeing up public debate over admission to specialized high schools

2024-11-15T22:42:03+00:00

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New York City’s education panel is once again pumping the brakes on a roughly $17 million contract for a computer-based version of the admissions test for the city’s specialized high schools as its members seek additional input from the public on the proposal.

The proposed contract was initially slated for an October vote by the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, or PEP, which votes on major policy proposals and contracts. It was moved to the panel’s Nov. 20 meeting, before being pushed back again at least until December, PEP Chair Gregory Faulkner said this week.

The delay will enable the panel to hold a town hall and gauge public opinion, Faulkner said. The date for the town hall has not yet been set.

The Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT, stands as the sole metric of admission to the city’s eight specialized high schools, which include Stuyvesant and Bronx Science. Last year, roughly 26,000 eighth graders took the SHSAT, and 4,072 were offered a seat. Of those, just 4.5% of offers went to Black students and 7.6% to Latino students, fueling continued concerns over the schools’ deeply segregated student populations.

Holding a town hall to solicit feedback on the contract is likely to reignite longstanding debates over whether the test should determine entry to the city’s specialized high schools. For years, that question has pitted integration advocates against fervent supporters of the current system.

Under the proposed nearly six-year contract, the test-making company Pearson would be tasked with making a computerized version of the SHSAT, and administering it over five testing cycles beginning in the fall of 2025. The contract includes an optional two additional test cycles, which if enacted would bring the total cost to more than $23.5 million.

Reigniting a longstanding fight over the SHSAT

Some advocates worry that the move to a computerized model for the SHSAT could worsen inequities in an admissions process that already produces highly segregated outcomes. The specialized high schools, which are considered some of the most prestigious public high schools in the nation, have long faced criticism for admitting staggeringly low numbers of Black and Latino students.

Education Department officials previously noted that many exams are now offered on computers — pointing to MAP tests administered twice a year for students in grades 2-8, as well as ongoing efforts to transition to digital SAT and Advanced Placement tests for high school students. The proposed contract also follows a statewide effort to phase in computer-based testing for New York’s 3-8 reading and math exams.

And supporters of the current system are urging PEP members to approve the contract. Parent Leaders for Accelerated Curriculum and Education, or PLACE, a polarizing group that advocates for screened school admissions, has issued an open letter calling on the panel to approve the contract.

“Failure to approve the Pearson contract will leave no other means to administer the test,” the group wrote. “As such, eight NYC high schools will be without a freshman class starting in the fall of 2026.”

But critics have also questioned whether the city should award another contract to Pearson, which has developed the paper version of the exams for years. The national test-making company has faced controversy over high-profile missteps in New York and other states, and in 2015, the state’s Education Department stopped using Pearson for its standardized exams.

Pearson was one of just two vendors that submitted a proposal for the contract, and an evaluation and advisory committee made up of Education Department officials determined Pearson offered “the lowest price while proposing superior services,” according to city documents.

Though the current specialized high school admissions system has its share of critics across the five boroughs, efforts to overhaul it in past years have also faced fierce opposition and court challenges — signaling that the city’s families remain divided over the issue. The exam is mandated under state law, and though some, including former Mayor Bill de Blasio, have sought to overturn that law, such efforts have failed to gain traction in Albany.

Despite his own questions over whether the exam is a fair metric of admission, Faulkner acknowledged that the contract may still have to be approved, given the lack of clear alternatives.

“We have to really look at what it would mean if this were to be voted down,” he said.

Jessamyn Lee, a Brooklyn parent and PEP member who opposes the contract, expected it to be approved by PEP members when the vote is eventually held.

“There’s going to be some effort to listen to the public on this, but I don’t think that there’s really going to be any effort to modify state education law regarding the paths of entry to these schools,” she said.

Mayor Eric Adams has not expressed interest in trying to change the specialized high school admissions process and has instead focused on opening additional schools that screen students. Under the city’s mayoral control system, Adams appoints a majority of members to the panel. That system has faced criticism from some parents and educators, who argue the PEP functions as a “rubber stamp” for the mayor’s policies.

When the city’s Education Department met with PEP members earlier this week to discuss the SHSAT contract, not a single mayoral appointee attended, Lee said.

PEP to form legislative committee with eyes on state laws

With state law governing admissions to the city’s specialized high schools and other key education issues, Faulkner wants the PEP to play a more active role in advocating for legislative changes.

He plans to form a Committee on Legislation and Public Policy to engage with community members and advocates, the city’s Education Department, and lawmakers in Albany, as it monitors local, state, and federal education policies.

And regardless of whether panel members ultimately approve a new SHSAT contract, he hopes the PEP can spark discussions in Albany over potential reforms to the state law.

“We’re going to put together a legislative agenda, and this is going to be one of the items at the top of the agenda,” Faulkner said. “Ultimately, this has to go to Albany, and Albany has to give the city other options.”

Lee questioned whether the PEP might be able to exert more influence through direct action — pushing the city’s Education Department to further address concerns over inequities in the current system.

“If we were able to whip the votes and not approve this SHSAT contract whenever it’s going to happen, then we’ve created a problem for a $40 billion city agency,” she said. “To me, that seems like a potentially much more powerful tool.”

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Colorado high school test scores dropped across the board, but students learning English as a new language had bigger declines

2024-11-15T22:32:03+00:00

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English learners in Colorado saw the largest drops in PSAT and SAT scores this past spring, bigger even than the score declines experienced by all high school students in the state.

The overall declines have led to discussions among state officials about adjusting high school graduation requirements and whether last spring’s scores can be compared to scores from previous years. Now, one Colorado superintendent is raising concerns about whether the PSAT and SAT scores in school districts that serve large numbers of English learners should even be used to rate a district’s academic performance.

“The rate of lost points in the scores is not equitable and it is not comparable,” said Karla Loría, superintendent of Adams 14 schools. “It hurts multilingual students and students with disabilities at a greater rate than any other student groups.”

One of the largest gaps statewide, for instance: 10th graders who aren’t identified to receive English language services had an average 5-point drop in their PSAT scores, while 10th graders who are learning English as a new language had an average drop of 83 points, which is 11.6%, or more than 16 times that of their counterparts.

When looking at just math scores, 10th grade English learners had a 13.6% drop in scores compared to a 1.3% drop among 10th graders who aren’t English learners.

Students with disabilities also saw large drops, though not as large as English learners.

In previous discussions about the overall declines of 2024, state officials said it’s difficult to know how much they represent a drop in performance and how much is due to the changes in the test format.

The digital PSAT and SAT students took in the spring of 2024 was adaptive, meaning that the questions students saw were dependent on how they were answering questions.

State officials also told the State Board of Education that it’s possible these lower results are a more accurate representation of learning for students who already performed at the lower range of the possible points.

That’s because, they say, students used to get advice to guess at questions they didn’t know or when they ran out of time. And some of those guesses were bound to be correct, earning them some extra points. But the new digital PSAT and SAT test online is designed to know when students are likely to be guessing, and so even if the guess is correct, the test won’t give students those points.

“Students were earning credit for content they didn’t know,” said Christina Wirth-Hawkins, chief assessment officer for the Colorado Department of Education.

Still, she said, the department isn’t telling schools to change how they do test prep with students, but rather telling them that the important thing is to help students learn content.

Drops in scores for English learners follows concerns raised last year

In Colorado Springs District 11, where about 6% of the district’s 22,700 students are identified as having limited or no English proficiency, 10th graders who aren’t yet English proficient had a 127-point drop in their scores, compared to a 27-point drop for other students.

In Westminster, where more than 24% of the district’s 7,600 students are learning English as a new language, 10th graders learning English had their average score drop by 121 points, compared to a 28-point drop for those who aren’t receiving English support.

In both the Harrison and Fort Morgan school districts, 10th graders learning English experienced drops of 120 points in their average score.

Because of the large gaps, Loria asked the board last month to consider the PSAT and SAT tests students took in the spring as a new test and not to use them against districts or schools in evaluations for at least one year.

She worried that the ratings for the districts serving large numbers of students in those subgroups would be significantly lower than for other districts.

“The impact is too serious to take it lightly,” Loría said.

This fall, preliminary ratings have already been calculated for schools and districts. The state is reviewing appeals before the ratings are finalized. The state Department of Education had first run an analysis to ensure the scores were still comparable to the previous year and fair to use in the ratings. Based on the analysis, the state tweaked the cut scores for the PSAT and SAT math sections of the test, but said it was still appropriate to use them as a factor for evaluating school and district performance.

On Wednesday, having received some additional data, the State Board voted again to tweak the cut scores for ratings next year, in particular for districts that use a three-year average of the scores. But the State Board did not opt to follow Loria’s suggestion of taking the scores out of consideration.

A spokesperson for College Board, the makers of the PSAT and SAT tests, said they’ve found in general “SAT scores from spring and fall 2024 are generally comparable to previous years.” According to data reports from the College Board website, students whose first language was something other than English had large drops in 10th grade PSAT scores, but not in 11th grade SAT scores.

At that national level, according to College Board data, students whose language was something other than English had a 57-point drop in their average scores compared to last year, while 10th graders whose first language was English had a 44-point drop.

The State Board’s vote is meant to adjust the expectations so that Colorado schools aren’t penalized for some of the score drops, since some could be due to the change in the test format, but Loría didn’t think it went far enough to account for the subgroup disparities.

Other districts did not raise the same concerns.

Test scores say COVID was especially rough on English learners. Not all school districts agree.

A spokesperson for the District 11 schools said the district is “addressing complex and contributing factors at the heart of our scores. We do not share the same concerns as Adams 14 at this time.”

Last year, when state officials first raised an alarm that data showed English learners might have been more impacted by the pandemic losses and having a harder time recovering compared to other student groups, many district leaders in Colorado did not identify the issue, even when their data also matched state concerns. Some said they weren’t doing anything different to help these students.

Adams 14 may have a bigger motivation than other districts to ask the state to change its rating system for schools and districts. It has been the only district to continue to receive low ratings for more than 10 years and face state sanctions for it, including a loss of accreditation at one point. State Board members more recently have backed off and put more trust in the district’s own improvement efforts, but so far, they have not yet produced a higher rating for the district.

Adams 14 leaders earlier this fall also asked the state board to consider environmental polluiton’s impact on school performance when they rate schools and districts.

The 2024 drops mean some gaps have doubled

Gaps already existed among English learners and those who don’t need English services, but they’ve grown with the 2024 results released a few months ago. In some districts, including Adams 14, they’ve doubled.

In Adams 14, English learners in 10th grade had a drop of 108 points, compared to a drop of 30 points for other students. For Adams 14, compared to 2023, the gap in the performance of English learners and students who already speak English in 10th grade grew from 70 points to 148. That’s a 111% increase in the gap.

The gap between the average score for English learners and students not identified for English services in District 11 are some of the largest in the state – larger than statewide gaps and growing fast.

The largest gap in that district, for instance, is among 11th graders who took the SAT. English learners in 11th grade had an average score of 625, compared to an average score of 910 for students not learning English as a new language. That’s a 285-point gap, up from a gap of 225 last year.

Of 25 districts that had data that didn’t have to be suppressed for privacy in both 2023 and 2024, only the Boulder Valley school district had 10th graders who are not yet English proficient improve their average scores.

When looking at scores without disaggregating, many districts had other students do well enough to average out a more moderate drop for their total populations. On average, combining all students, 10th graders in District 11 only had an average score drop of 31. In Westminster, the overall drop for 10th grade was 49 points.

Jorge Garcia, an advocate for multilingual students through the Colorado Association of Bilingual Education, said that although he hasn’t looked at the 2024 data closely, the issues aren’t new.

And if the state is confident that this new test format is accurately testing all students’ learning, he said there should be a plan to help students who are not yet proficient in English.

“If the educational system and the state is doing worse than we thought, then what are they doing about it?” Garcia said. “It would not surprise me that perhaps we have some leaders in charge, some, who don’t know what to do. They should begin to take a long hard look at how they’re failing these students so they can start to turn that around. If they continue to ignore it, it’s not going to get better.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

Here’s how a task force suggests changing the way schools and districts are rated in Colorado

2024-11-14T00:58:21+00:00

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Colorado should start considering the career and college prep that students take, stop counting at-risk students more than once, and expand testing in other languages for annual school and district ratings.

Those are among the 30 recommendations made by the 1241 task force, a group created by lawmakers in 2023 to examine the state’s accountability system.

The recommendations were presented to the State Board of Education on Wednesday. Some of the recommendations will require a board vote to implement, while others would require legislative action.

State Board members Wednesday asked some questions about the recommendations, but were asked by the Education Commissioner, Susana Cordova, to hold most of their thoughts for a discussion at their December meeting. Most board members said the recommendations seemed like good changes, although at times, they wondered if some would require a lot more research to implement.

For example, one recommendation is that the state should work to expand testing options in other languages. State Board members questioned if testing students in their native language makes sense when they aren’t being taught in that language or if their year’s learning is better assessed in English, the language of their instruction.

The state’s school accountability system, in use since 2009, mostly uses standardized test scores to rate schools and districts. High schools are also rated on their graduation rates and on how many students move on to postsecondary options.

Schools can earn one of four ratings, while districts can earn one of five. State law dictates that schools or districts that earn one of the bottom two ratings for five years in a row must be placed on a plan for improvement under state orders. The state is also limited in what improvements it can order, but can escalate to closing a school, turning it into a charter school, or ordering a district to reorganize.

Last year, Adams 14, which has had the lowest ratings for more than 10 years, was ordered to reorganize. That could have meant dissolving or merging parts of the district with neighboring districts, but after strong pushback from the community, the state backed off its orders.

The majority of schools and districts first identified for support based on low ratings do manage to improve before needing state intervention.

An audit completed in December 2022 found that the state’s system is reasonable, but also that schools serving more students of color and students in poverty on average do worse on state tests.

Some questions critics of the system hoped to answer, such as whether the system itself is helping or harming student learning or is biased against more disadvantaged students, were not addressed.

School district leaders pushed legislators to create the 1241 task force to consider broader changes to the system.

The task force of 26 school and district leaders, parents, advocates, and other educators have met for more than a year to consider the recommendations.

The report, however, states that the group “strongly believes the accountability system alone cannot advance academic opportunities or prevent academic inequities.”

Still, some of the recommendations are designed to limit inequities around schools that serve more disadvantaged students or schools with such small numbers of students that their ratings can be volatile from year to year.

Report explains findings, recommendations, areas to study

In addition to recommendations, the group’s report also points to several areas of the system that require more study for possible changes.

For instance, the group suggests that the state’s review panel (a group that goes into schools and districts to make recommendations when the State Board must order an improvement plan) should perhaps be asked to evaluate factors beyond academics. That would include looking at a school or district’s budget, governance, and facilities and then recommending how the district might focus on improving those areas, including being able to recommend a change in leadership.

Here are some of the task force’s recommendations:

Students who fall into subgroups such as students with disabilities, English learners, or those who qualify for free and reduced price lunch should be combined into one “super subgroup,” so schools are only evaluated for them once.
The state should consider lowering the number of students needed in a group for the state to report data, as opposed to suppressing it for privacy purposes. Currently that number is 16. The recommendation doesn’t state a better lower number but asks the state to study what would be appropriate.
Students with disabilities should continue to be counted in that group for two years after no longer needing services, aligning with how students learning English are followed after services are no longer provided.
The state should revisit the weights it gives to each piece considered in these ratings every five years, with help of experts, to try to move away from having strong correlations to student demographics.
Individual student results should be made available to families as soon as possible, even before a public release of data. The state should also try to speed up the time it takes educators to get results.
The rating labels schools and districts earn should be changed to be easier for the public to understand, but that should be done after research and gathering public feedback.
Schools should have more state support when they reach two years of low ratings, or being “on the clock,” to provide more early interventions before they are subject to state mandates in year five.
The state should “design budgetary expectations” for school turnaround and plan to sustain bold plans for improvement once funding is exhausted.
Schools and districts that have low test participation and can’t be rated getting only “Insufficient data: Low Participation” labels, should create a corrective action plan submitted to the state.
The legislature should require schools and districts under state-ordered improvement plans to meet with, learn from, and share their progress with each other.
The State Board of Education should delegate authority to allow state officials to approve small changes to state ordered improvement plans allowing flexibility when conditions change.

Read the full report and all of the recommendations:

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.

New York to ditch Regents exam graduation requirement by fall 2027

2024-11-04T22:18:06+00:00

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New York students will no longer be required to pass Regents exams to earn a diploma beginning in the 2027-28 school year, according to a proposed timeline state officials unveiled Monday.

That means current ninth graders may not need to pass the exams to graduate — though students will continue to take them — a shift with significant implications for teaching and learning across New York.

State education officials have been rethinking what it should take to earn a high school diploma in recent years, sketching out a new “portrait of a graduate” that reflects seven areas over which students must show proficiency. Students are expected to have new ways to demonstrate command of those areas, including internships, capstone projects, and community service.

A major part of the overhaul is reducing the role of Regents exams — standardized tests in English, Math, science, and social studies — that high school students must typically pass to graduate. New York is one of a dwindling number of states that use such exams. Research suggests they do little to promote student achievement or raise their earning potential and can lead to higher dropout rates.

Many educators and advocates have cheered the state’s plans to reduce the influence of Regents exams, arguing that they do not adequately assess student’s skills or knowledge, force teachers to focus on memorization, and present unnecessary hurdles for students with disabilities and English learners.

Yet others worry making the exams optional raises the risk that some students, particularly those with greater needs, will be funneled into less rigorous pathways with lower expectations.

State Education Commissioner Betty Rosa acknowledged during Monday’s Board of Regents meeting that the shifts are likely to be contentious.

“We’re going to have some cases where we agree to disagree respectfully,” she said. Still, “we are so excited about the fact that we are moving forward to ensure that our schools really prepare our students for the very, very best.”

Officials sketched out a timeline on Monday for overhauling graduation standards, a process they indicated will take at least five more years. Though the plans are subject to approval from the Board of Regents, here are some of the key dates that students, educators, and parents should keep in mind.

Later this school year: The ‘portrait of a graduate’ emerges

To graduate from high school under the new standards, New York students will have to demonstrate proficiency in seven key areas: critical thinking, effective communication, cultural and social-emotional competences, innovative problem solving, literacy across content areas, and status as a “global citizen.”

Officials are still in the process of defining each of those areas and translating them into explicit credit requirements students must meet. Those definitions are expected to be released sometime this school year, though full details of the new credit requirements won’t be unveiled until the 2025-26 school year.

In one tweak for students taking Regents exams later this school year, state officials are proposing exemptions for students who experience “major life events,” a recommendation from a Blue Ribbon Commission that has helped shape the new graduation measures. (Details about how students qualify are still being worked out.)

Officials said the next year will mostly be about digesting and refining the new graduation standards.

“It’s a year of: Consume it, and then start to think about it,” Rosa said.

Fall 2026: New coursework in financial literacy and climate education

Schools across the state will face new mandates to teach students about financial literacy and the climate. However, that content will not be part of the new graduation requirements, according to Santosha Oliver, an assistant commissioner for the state Education Department’s office of standards and instruction.

“While additional information is forthcoming, we plan to articulate broad topics for required instruction with flexibility in implementation,” Oliver said.

Fall 2027: Regents exams no longer required — and big changes begin to roll out

Beginning in the 2027-28 school year, students will no longer be required to pass Regents exams to graduate high school. Due to federal rules, students will continue taking Regents exams in Math, English, and science, but they will not be required to earn passing scores to get a diploma. (Officials said they are still considering whether to require a social studies test, which is not required by federal law.)

Ninth graders who begin high school in the fall of 2027 will be the first cohort required to meet the state’s overhauled credit requirements, though officials have not yet outlined them. At the same time, the state will move toward a single diploma with opportunities to earn special seals and endorsements, such as for civics, biliteracy, or excelling on the Regents exams.

Schools should also begin to offer new graduation pathways during the 2027-28 school year, which can include capstone projects, community service, work-based learning experiences, and more, state officials said.

Fall 2029: All systems go

Officials expect that for students entering high school in the 2029-30 school year, the new graduation measures will be fully phased in — about a decade after the state began the latest process of overhauling graduation standards.

That means students will have to meet the state’s new credit requirements and demonstrate proficiency in the seven areas outlined in the “portrait of a graduate” with a range of new methods for demonstrating competence in those areas.

Still, state officials stressed that the timelines are subject to change, as the Education Department continues engaging communities and gathering feedback.

“None of this will happen in isolation with just the department behind closed doors,” Angelique Johnson-Dingle, deputy commissioner of P-12 instructional support, told Chalkbeat. “While we have painted some very clear dates … we know that life sometimes happens.”

Ongoing: Lots of questions remain

Several members of the Board of Regents raised questions about how the changes will reshape instruction, whether schools will have the resources they need to comply with new requirements, and if the changes could result in widely different types of education for different students — raising equity concerns.

Regent Patrick Mannion, of Onondaga and who represents several other upstate counties, noted that while career and technical education has grown in popularity, districts may not be able to quickly create enough internships or project-based learning opportunities for students who may want them, even as they may count toward the state’s revamped graduation requirements.

“I don’t think I’d be ready for doing that on a scale that is … frankly unimaginable to most of us,” Mannion said.

Even supporters of reducing the weight of Regents exams have cautioned that alternative models can be difficult to spin up. State officials have long granted exemptions to most of the Regents exams at 38 schools across the state, all but two of which are in New York City, with educators offering project-based assessments in their place. Some supporters caution that the model requires careful planning and buy-in from educators who believe in the approach.

Regent Roger Tilles, of Nassau county, wondered how teachers might adapt to a new slate of expectations about what students must learn. “It’s not going to be easy,” he said. “We’re not going to be able to do this without teaching civics education and information literacy at lower grades.”

Others raised questions about whether there is sufficient funding for the rollout.

The state Education Department plans to spend about $11.5 million for staff and other support within the department over the next five years to develop and roll out the new graduation measures. And officials acknowledged local districts and schools may need more funding in their budgets to adapt to the new requirements.

“There’s no way to do this kind of work without adding on additional funding that we do have to advocate for,” Rosa said.

Alex Zimmerman is a reporter for Chalkbeat New York, covering NYC public schools. Contact Alex at azimmerman@chalkbeat.org.

New York is redefining graduation requirements. Here’s what educators want to know.

2024-10-31T16:24:08+00:00

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New York City educators are eagerly awaiting new details on the state’s efforts to reimagine high school graduation requirements, which officials are expected to unveil on Monday.

Many have praised the proposed removal of Regents exams from diploma requirements, but questions remain over what a new system will look like in practice, sparking some fears over potential inequities across the state’s schools and uneven academic standards.

“Everybody has the question of, ‘What are these things going to look like?’” said Kiri Soares, principal of the Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women in Brooklyn. “The one thing I’ll say about the Regents standard is that there is an equity element to them, which is that there’s an expectation that all kids have to meet this bar. And so I get worried sometimes about, ‘What is the replacement of the bar?’”

New York is one of just a handful of states that requires exit exams, though research has found little evidence to show such exams improve student achievement. And the Regents exams, a more than a century-old rite of passage for New York’s high schoolers, have long faced criticism from students and educators who feel it is an insufficient measure of student learning.

Under a looming overhaul outlined in June, students would no longer be required to pass the state’s Regents exams to earn a high school diploma. Instead, the exams would be among a slew of options for demonstrating proficiency in key areas, including project-based assessments, work-based learning experiences, and more.

Though many support giving students more options, questions remain on what the overhaul could mean for individual schools.

“We have consistently said, from the beginning, that this endeavor is about raising the bar for all, not lowering rigor for some,” said JP O’Hare, a spokesperson for the state Education Department. “The plan we will set forth on Monday will be a thoughtful approach with a timeline that allows educators the opportunity to take stock of their programs in order to prepare our students for a lifetime of continuous learning, fulfilling careers, and informed civic engagement.”

Educators worry about unequal rigor and resources

The state’s full plan — which will include the regulatory and fiscal implications of the proposed changes — comes as the latest step in a multi-year process to overhaul graduation requirements.

Last year, a 64-member Blue Ribbon Commission put forward 12 recommendations for updating the state’s high school graduation requirements — including the adoption of a “portrait of a graduate,” comprised of seven key areas for students to demonstrate proficiency: critical thinking, effective communication, cultural and social-emotional competences, innovative problem solving, literacy across content areas, and status as a “global citizen.”

Those recommendations were later synthesized into four proposed actions by state education officials, one of which was to end the requirement that students pass Regents exams.

In many ways, Soares welcomes the state’s efforts to redefine graduation requirements.

“The Regents exams are over 100 years old, and they measure one kind of learning,” she said. “The idea of moving from testing to doing — like having an internship or these other experiences — is so much more powerful.”

Still, she worried that some students could be pushed into pathways perceived as less rigorous, a concern she said was particularly relevant for students who are already underserved. Soares wondered what measures will be put in place to ensure that all students are held to the same expectations and given the support to meet them.

Bobson Wong, a math teacher at Bayside High School who served on the Blue Ribbon Commission, said he’s been pleased to see the state officials be “genuinely receptive” to input from educators and students, noting they’ve spent months soliciting feedback in public forums. But it will be critical that the state develop policies that are “practical enough to work,” he added.

“One issue that has come up over and over in the discussions that we had on the commission, and also in the public forums, is who is going to pay for all of this?” Wong said. “Regents exams are easy to implement. That’s a big reason why we still have them.

“If you all of a sudden say, ‘Okay, we’ll do project-based learning assessments instead,’ then, who’s managing that, and who’s keeping track of all of that, and who’s going to make sure that all students have equitable access?” he asked.

The proposed changes could spark concerns “that schools and districts will be left to their own devices, and will open the floodgates without students having adequate preparation for postsecondary opportunities,” said David Bloomfield, a professor of education, law, and public policy at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center.

“I think the Regents long ago lost its value as a guarantor of graduate quality,” he said. “But the challenge all along really has been: How do you fill that vacuum?”

Some NYC schools already use alternative assessments

Some schools in New York already use alternative models for testing student proficiency. For more than two decades, a coalition known as the “performance standards consortium” has received waivers from the state to forgo Regents exams except for English.

The consortium model has attracted fierce support from educators and families. Proponents argue that performance-based assessments can be just as or even more rigorous than exams, while offering a deeper learning experience that better prepares students for higher education and employment.

But the model can take additional resources and buy-in from school communities to implement, requiring more staff and training than a traditional exam, Bloomfield said.

“The consortium model is a very exacting standard, and it’s not clear how districts across the state will be able to implement that particular pathway,” he said. “You have to have a lot of people involved in grading the PBAs [project-based assessments], as well as helping students develop their PBAs.”

Soares, who was excited by the prospect of bringing in aspects of the consortium to her school, said she hopes that the state will provide schools with resources based on existing models.

“I don’t want the onus to be only on the schools to figure out how to do this,” she said. “I would like to be provided with sources and models of things that they have already vetted and approved.”

Steve Lazar, a high school teacher who previously helped found a consortium school in Manhattan, said the added flexibility would allow for meaningful discussions about how to best assess students in school districts across the state. But he wondered whether the same would apply in New York City, worrying the nation’s largest public school system might opt for a top-down approach.

Lazar doesn’t share in concerns that the changes could result in uneven levels of rigor across the state’s schools. He argued that the focus on Regents exams sometimes pushes teachers to emphasize rote memorization instead of challenging students to grapple with evidence and reason through difficult questions.

“I would not consider current graduation requirements rigorous by any stretch of the imagination,” he said.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

NYC eyes $17 million contract to create computer-based Specialized High School Admissions Test

2024-10-17T22:03:45+00:00

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This year’s eighth graders could be the last class that takes the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test with paper and pencil. A New York City education panel is slated to vote on a roughly $17 million contract later this month that would transition the test to a computer-based model.

Under the nearly six-year contract, the test-making company Pearson would create a computerized model of the Specialized High School Admissions Test, known as the SHSAT. The exam is the sole metric of admission to the city’s eight specialized high schools, including Stuyvesant and Bronx Science.

Though these schools represent just a fraction of the city’s students, they garner outsized attention given their status as some of the most prestigious public high schools in the nation. Last year, roughly 26,000 eighth graders took the SHSAT, and 4,072 were offered a seat.

If the contract is approved by the city’s Panel for Educational Policy, or PEP, later this month, Pearson would be tasked with developing and administering exams for five test cycles, beginning with the fall of 2025, according to city documents. The contract includes an optional two additional test cycles, which if enacted would bring the total cost to more than $23.5 million. (Pearson has developed paper versions of the exam for years.)

Jenna Lyle, a spokesperson for the city’s Education Department, said the proposal comes amid a broader shift toward digital education.

“Our students continue to live in a more digital world, both in and out of the classroom,” she said in a statement. “The transition to computer-based SHSAT testing is an extension of this shift. Our priority is always to ensure students have the resources and support they need, and the computer-based SHSAT will be no exception.”

Education Department officials noted many exams are now offered on computers — pointing to MAP tests administered twice a year for students in grades 2-8, as well as ongoing efforts to transition to digital SAT and Advanced Placement tests for high school students. The proposed contract also follows a statewide effort to phase in computer-based testing for New York’s 3-8 reading and math exams.

If passed, the shift would allow the SHSAT to adopt a computer-adaptive model, a form of computer-based testing that adapts the questions based on a student’s responses, according to the proposal.

But some worry that the move to a computerized model for the SHSAT could worsen inequities in an admissions process that already produces highly segregated outcomes. New York City’s specialized high schools have long faced criticism for admitting staggeringly low numbers of Black and Latino students.

During the last high school admissions cycle, offers to Black and Latino students at specialized high schools ticked up slightly, with 4.5% of offers going to Black students and 7.6% to Latino students, according to city data. But those figures remain well below the 65% of public school students who are Black or Latino.

“While kids today are certainly 21st century citizens, we know that there are major gaps in digital literacy and tech accessibility that tend to fall along socioeconomic lines,” said Jessamyn Lee, a Brooklyn parent and member of the PEP. Some students, for example, might only have access to a phone at home, she said. “It’s a very different experience than kids living in a household where there are computers everywhere.”

Some studies have found students in general tend to do worse on exams taken on a computer or tablet, though experts previously told Chalkbeat that research isn’t definitive.

Lee also questioned whether a computer-based test could pose further challenges to some students with disabilities, including those with visual impairments. The city’s specialized high schools admit few students with disabilities, with just 2% of students at the schools mandated to receive special education support, according to city data. Citywide, about 20% of students have disabilities.

Education Department officials said paper exams will remain an option for students with disabilities who have approved testing accommodations requiring them.

Concerns over timeline for switch to computer-based SHSAT

Edward Antoine, who runs the Brooklyn-based test prep company Antoine Education that offers tutoring for the SHSAT, said he believes students are often comfortable with digital testing environments — pointing to how many high schoolers embraced the new version of the SAT, which shifted to a computer-based model earlier this year. But he wondered how the content of the SHSAT might change to better fit a computerized model, noting, for example, that the College Board shortened reading passages when transitioning the SAT to a digital exam.

“I’m very curious to see if there’s actual changes in the content of what’s being tested, and what the format is going to look like, and how the interface is going to work,” he said. “But I don’t expect it’ll be difficult for kids to get acclimated.”

Still, Antoine said it’s critical that the city offers students access to practice exams that mimic the digital interface of the test well in advance of the new exam rolling out. Students should be able to start practicing a year in advance, he said.

“I don’t know when they’re planning on making it available, but it’s already late,” Antoine said.

Lee also raised concerns over the city awarding another contract to Pearson, as the national test-making company has faced controversy over high-profile missteps in New York and other states. In 2015, the state’s Education Department moved away from using Pearson for its standardized exams.

Pearson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Though the city’s Education Department began seeking vendors last fall for the shift to a computerized SHSAT, it received proposals from only two assessment companies — Pearson, and Educational Testing Services. An evaluation and advisory committee made up of Education Department officials determined Pearson offered “the lowest price while proposing superior services,” according to city documents.

Education Department officials said the panel of reviewers evaluating the proposals held expertise in assessment, enrollment, operations, technology, and academic content.

Pearson contract expected to pass as debate over SHSAT continues

Though Lee opposes the contract, she expected it to be approved by PEP members at the Oct. 30 meeting. Under the city’s mayoral control system, Mayor Eric Adams appoints a majority of members to the panel.

Gregory Faulkner, a former Adams appointee to the panel who was tapped to serve as its independent chair earlier this year, said he’s leaning against supporting the proposed contract — though he said he’s holding off on forming a firm opinion until after he’s briefed by the Education Department next week. He added that if a vote took place today, he suspected a majority of the panel would approve it.

“This is going to put a spotlight on the issue of testing,” he said. “I don’t think this is only going to be about us computerizing and updating. This is going to quickly move into the idea of testing and diversity in these schools — and I think that’s a good conversation to have, because clearly, these schools are not diverse.”

For years, integration advocates have clashed with supporters of the SHSAT over whether the city’s specialized high schools should continue to admit students based solely on a standardized exam. The issue falls outside the purview of city officials, with the SHSAT mandated under state law.

Former Mayor Bill de Blasio frequently sought to overturn that law, but failed to garner support in Albany. Adams and former schools Chancellor David Banks, who retired on Wednesday, have not made integration in selective schools a focus of their education agenda.

“Some panel members will feel frustrated, but they’ll feel we’ve got to go with state law,” Faulkner said of the upcoming contract vote. “My feeling is, okay if we have to do that, let’s get the DOE to commit to doing some things that make this pill a little bit easier for us.”

He hopes to see the city’s Education Department commit to more aggressive, free test preparation for students who can’t afford to hire outside SHSAT tutoring. He also questioned whether the date could be moved to allow schools more time to offer test preparation in the fall.

“I know of schools that do test prep for their students for free, but they begin it in September,” he said. “Whereas kids who have money begin their test prep in March.”

This year’s SHSAT will be offered at school on Oct. 30 for students attending the city’s middle and K-8 schools.

Eighth grade students who attend charter or private schools, who are home-schooled, or who attend a city school with grades 6-12, can take the exam on Nov. 16 or Nov. 17, while all ninth grade students can take the test on Dec. 6 or Dec. 7. For both sets of students, the exams will be offered at a central location listed on their test ticket, according to the Education Department’s website.

Students who wish to take this year’s exam must register by Oct. 18.

Michael Elsen-Rooney contributed.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Detroit charter students make gains on M-STEP, but lag behind pre-pandemic results

2024-10-07T21:02:20+00:00

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Charter schools where Detroit children account for at least half the student body showed progress on Michigan’s standardized tests, though their results trail statewide numbers and are below pre-pandemic figures.

In English language arts, 20.6% of students tested proficient or better on the 2024 Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress, or M-STEP. That result was more than 2 percentage points higher than the 2021-22 school year, but nearly 4 percentage points lower than the 2018-19 school year.

Statewide, 44.5% were proficient or better, according to the Michigan Department of Education.

In math, 9.7% of students tested proficient or above, a 1.8 percentage point improvement in comparison to the 2021-22 school year. But that number is lower than the pre-pandemic figure for the 2018-19 school year, when 14% of students tested proficient or better. Statewide, 35.1% tested at this level.

Detroit has one of the highest percentages of students attending charter schools in the nation, with roughly half the city’s kids, or about 50,000 students, in charter classrooms.

Chalkbeat’s analysis of charter test results includes schools in Wayne, Oakland, and Macomb counties where Detroit students make up at least half the student body. The state categorizes a student’s performance on the Michigan standardized test as either advanced, proficient, partially proficient, or not proficient. For this analysis, Chalkbeat looked at the percentage of students whose test results were proficient or advanced.

Charters, which are independently managed public schools, often rely on management companies to oversee day-to-day operations, or to handle key functions such as balancing the books or hiring teachers.

In Michigan, most charters are managed by for-profit companies, which aren’t subject to public disclosures about how they spend money on behalf of schools or how much they profit. Entities like community colleges, universities, and school districts have the ability to authorize charters, meaning they approve charter applications and monitor the schools’ contract compliance.

Some education advocates have cited a lack of accountability and transparency among these authorizers as a persistent problem in the sector.

Earlier this year, the State Board of Education, passed a resolution urging state lawmakers to approve legislation that would strengthen oversight and accountability among the state’s charters.

Detroit’s charters tend to perform better academically than the city’s traditional public schools, though the gains are minimal, and one 2023 study found the Detroit Public Schools Community District enrolled a higher percentage of students from families living in deep poverty.

Michigan students in grades 3-7 take standardized tests in English and math. Fifth graders are also tested in science and social studies, and eighth grade students take the PSAT (the SAT pretest) for English and math. High school students take several different exams depending on their grade, including the PSAT and SAT.

Students in Detroit’s charter schools saw gains in science and social studies too.

In science, 15.4% of charter students tested in the subject were proficient or better, a nearly 4 percentage point increase from the 2021-22 school year. (Data is not available for the pre-pandemic 2018-19 school year when the Michigan Department of Education withheld science test results.)

In social studies, charter students saw small gains – and they slightly exceeded pre-pandemic results. However, the overall percentage of students who tested proficient or above remained low, at 4.3%.

Detroit students face a number of barriers to academic success, including housing insecurity, concentrated poverty, and structural racism. The majority of Detroit charter students come from low-income households, which plays a profound role in how they perform in school.

“Poverty has consistently had a substantial, adverse effect on student academic performance,” State Superintendent Michael Rice said in a recent press release about state test results.

Tara Kilbride, interim associate director of the Education Policy Initiative Collaborative at Michigan State University, said in a recent interview with Chalkbeat that even a one percentage point increase is notable when looking at the number of kids in Detroit who are still working toward proficiency.

“That one percentage point is bringing students to a point of being able to do more and have more of the fundamental skills, versus a one percentage point somewhere else where it means students are further ahead,” she said.

Broken down by grade, test results indicate younger students whose first years of school were affected by the COVID pandemic were a few percentage points below the overall average. In English language arts, for example, 16.8% of fourth graders tested proficient or better in comparison to 20.6% overall.

The challenges young students in Detroit charters face mirror some broader trends across Michigan. At the state level, 43.3% of fourth graders tested proficient or above in English.

Meanwhile, 38% of Detroit’s eighth grade charter students were proficient or better in English. Statewide, that number was 64.5%.

Chalkbeat contacted representatives from some of the largest authorizers of Detroit’s charters, including Central Michigan University and Grand Valley State, but both declined to comment. Daniel Quisenberry, president of the Michigan Association of Public School Academies, did not respond to a request for comment.

Taking ‘small bites out of the overall problem of accountability’ in Detroit’s charters

Tinu Usoro has three children attending Detroit charter schools, including a second grader with disabilities.

Last year, Usoro’s daughter received a certificate for increasing her standardized test results, but Usoro wondered if her daughter’s results really reflected learning.

“I don’t feel like she’s learning the things that she needs to learn,” Usoro said.

Students with disabilities scored low across the board in Detroit’s charters — following a trend in Michigan and nationwide. Just 4.8% of Detroit’s charter students with disabilities tested proficient or better in English language arts, compared to 15% statewide, according to the state education department.

Nationwide, students with disabilities and English language learners have had a hard time recovering from the cascading effects of the pandemic, according to a new report, The State of the American Student 2024, from Arizona State University.

“Many parents struggled to take on the role of educator during the pandemic, particularly for children with disabilities who missed essential services like speech therapy,” the report reads. “Schools were often insufficient in their outreach, and many families were unaware of their rights to compensation for missed support.”

Charter school parent Sade Williams said the only reason her kids have thrived in the wake of the pandemic is because she was able to stay home during school closures to help with their studies.

“I am a pretty hands-on parent. So if there’s a problem with anything, then I’m normally there to help,” she said.

Usoro said the ways schools can help students bounce back hinges on things like transparency and accountability — two things she is trying to strengthen within Detroit’s charters.

She heads a charter school committee through the local nonprofit 482Forward, made up of parents, educators, retired teachers, and community members who are taking “small bites out of the overall problem of accountability,” Usoro said.

They recently created an interactive tool listing charter schools and things like the schools’ authorizers and demographics. The committee proposed making a similar tool for the state Department of Education’s website that shows that information for all the charters throughout the state. They received $150,000 in state funding to launch the tool, which should be implemented this year.

In comparison to traditional public schools, “with charters, it’s so nuanced,” Usoro said of the quality of each school. That means the test results contain nuance, too.

Robyn Vincent is a reporter for Chalkbeat Detroit, covering Detroit schools and Michigan education policy. You can reach her at rvincent@chalkbeat.org

Middle and high school admissions season is here. What does your ‘lottery’ number mean?

2024-10-01T18:48:23+00:00

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Please note the 2025 deadlines are different from the ones stated in this article. For families applying to high school in 2025, the application deadline is Dec. 3. And middle school applications will be open from Oct. 15 to Dec. 12.

As New York City’s notoriously complex high school admissions process officially gets underway on Tuesday, many families are refreshing their MySchools accounts to find their kids’ randomly assigned number, often called a “lottery” number. Families applying to middle school will be in the same situation on Oct. 9.

Many hope that having a “good” number will improve their students’ odds of getting into sought-after schools, but what do these numbers really mean?

The string of 32 numbers and letters is one component of the admissions process, but it can be difficult for parents to decode and often causes a huge amount of stress for families. Applicants will be able to view their random numbers, which were expected to be available on Tuesday, in their MySchools account after starting their application.

High school applications are due by Dec. 4, while middle school applications are due Dec. 13.

For high school, the process of narrowing the city’s more than 700 programs across over 400 schools can be especially daunting for the tens of thousands of eighth grade students applying each year. Many families often rely on their child’s lottery number to help them focus their search, trying to use it to gauge their odds at different programs. This year, for the first time, families applying to high school will also have access to a new tool in MySchools that gauges an applicant’s chances of admission to a particular program based on a student’s random number as well as their home borough, their course grades, and more.

Also new this year: High school applicants can apply to more than 12 schools — a change aimed at adding extra flexibility to the process, though some parents worry that it could inject further stress into an already taxing experience.

And for the first time, middle school applicants can apply to schools across the city instead of largely being limited to their home district. Applicants will continue to have priority at middle schools within their local zone and district, according to city officials.

Elissa Stein, an admissions consultant who runs the service High School 411, praised the city for working to make the admissions process more transparent in recent years. But she wished the city’s Education Department would make information available even earlier to parents, noting that many begin touring and researching schools well before October.

“Seeing a school and saying, ‘Oh my gosh, I love this so much,’ and then finding out that you really don’t have a chance of getting in is an extra heartbreak that could have been prevented,” she said. “So I think that having grades available, the screen groups available, the random lottery numbers available early would be really beneficial to families.”

Here’s how the random number factors into admissions and how to understand what your number means.

How do I read my random number?

There are 32 numbers and letters in each random number, and the first digit or two can help you broadly interpret them. You can read your random number from left to right, with priority moving from 0-9 and then from A-F.

A random number beginning with 0 means an applicant will have a relatively high priority when decisions are made based on the number, while the opposite is true for an applicant whose random number starts with an F.

How does the random number impact admissions?

The random number is used as a tiebreaker when there are more applicants in a particular priority group than seats available at a school.

Schools across the city take different approaches to evaluating applicants. Selective schools sort applicants into four different priority groups based on their seventh grade GPAs in core subjects (with seats doled out separately for general education students and for students with disabilities), while other schools might primarily admit students based on their random number.

And eight of the city’s specialized high schools that require a test for admission, including Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, along with LaGuardia High School of Music & Art Performing Arts, are separate from the rest of the admissions process.

At schools with open or educational option admissions, which primarily consider an applicant’s random number for admissions, the numbers can play an especially large role in determining admissions. Educational option programs set aside seats for students at different academic levels to promote academic diversity.

At screened schools that consider grades, and at those that require admissions essays or auditions, the random number only impacts admissions decisions between students who otherwise have equal priority.

In other words, at selective schools, a student with a lower priority random number could still receive a seat before another applicant, provided the student was in a higher priority group based on their grades or other admissions criteria.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

State test scores highlight ongoing need to support Newark Public Schools student academic recovery

2024-09-30T10:00:00+00:00

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For a second year in a row, Newark Public Schools’ scores on statewide assessments given in May rose by roughly 2 percentage points in English language arts and math, but remain behind pre-pandemic levels, according to a district analysis presented on Thursday.

Among Newark students in grades 3-9, 31% passed their English language arts assessment while 17.7% passed the math test, according to spring 2024 New Jersey Student Learning Assessments scores, or NJSLA, which measure student proficiency across subjects and grade levels. In spring 2023, 29% of students passed the English assessment while 15% passed the math test.

Additionally, third grade English scores remain the lowest of any grade for a third year in a row, but higher than last year’s rate of 19%.

The new scores – the third round of tests since 2019 before the emergence of COVID – highlight Newark students’ slow recovery from pandemic-era learning disruptions. In recent years, Superintendent Roger León has scaled up tutoring, summer and Saturday school efforts, and implemented new curriculums to boost academic progress among students. The district allocated an additional $6.8 million for tutoring this school year and began offering sessions on the first day of classes.

The state’s Department of Education has not yet released statewide scores.

“Parents, we need you to ensure that your child participates in tutoring this year so that we can continue to raise achievement,” said Rochanda Jackson, executive director of the Office of Policy, Planning, Evaluation, and Testing, when she presented the scores at Thursday’s school board meeting.

Students across the country are still improving academically, but not at the same pace as before the pandemic, according to the Northwest Evaluation Association. According to NWEA, students who were in grades 5 and 6 during the pandemic may need up to five years to fully recover, and even longer for those entering eighth grade or high school.

The effects of the pandemic on marginalized students, such as those from low-income families and different ethnic and racial groups, are more pronounced since those groups were among the hardest hit and remain the furthest from recovery.

In Newark, more than 90% of students identify as Black or Latino, and this year, nearly 11,000 are English language learners and roughly 7,000 are students with disabilities. In 2022, the first set of state scores since the pandemic, 27% of Newark students passed the English assessment and 13% passed the math test.

Despite slow gains, some students exceeded district expectations.

Of the district’s nearly 40,000 students, 100 received a perfect score in English, nine received a perfect score in math, and four received a perfect score in both subjects. District leaders also said they saw an increase in proficiency levels among all grade levels despite small gains.

Students show gradual improvements after district efforts

Nearly all grades experienced an increase in English language arts proficiency levels compared to spring 2023, with the most dramatic increases in grades 3, 6, and 9, according to district leaders.

But middle and high schoolers scored higher than the district’s average in English language arts last spring. Specifically, grades 6, 7, 8, and 9 are consistent with national patterns of older students performing better than their younger counterparts, Jackson added.

In spring 2024, ninth grade English proficiency scores increased by six percentage points compared to the prior year, from 32.4% to 38.1%. Sixth graders also saw a five percentage point increase this spring, from 27% to 32.2%. In third grade, a crucial year when students learn to read, scores increased by four points, from 19% to 23.4%.

Among schools, First Avenue, Ivy Hill, Lafayette, Michelle Obama, Mount Vernon, Newton, Oliver Street, Park, Ridge Street, and Wilson elementary schools had higher scores than the district’s average in English language arts, Jackson said. Among schools where ninth graders took the state test, Arts, Bard, Data Science and Information Technology, Newark Vocational, Science Park, Technology, and University high schools scored higher than the district’s average in the same subject.

District leaders are attributing the gains to the implementation of a new ELA curriculum last school year for grades K-8 to help students struggling with writing and reading issues. The district adopted a structured approach to teaching phonics by implementing SIPPS, also known as Systematic Instruction in Phonological Awareness, Phonics, and Sight Words. The district also implemented Wilson Fundations, a curriculum rooted in the science of reading that builds the foundations for reading, spelling, and handwriting.

Despite the gains in spring 2024 scores, only 23% of third graders passed the English language arts assessment, the lowest of any grade for a third year, but higher than last year’s rate of 19%. Students in grades 3, 4, and 5 were among the lowest-scoring of all grades.

Public school leaders have attributed reading issues in early grades to the switch to remote learning during the pandemic, which they say hindered students’ reading progress. The district has also said students struggle with alphabetic knowledge, or the basic ability to recognize letters and their sounds.

Overall, 3,713 students of Newark’s nearly 18,000 students who took the English language arts test moved up in proficiency levels, according to the district’s data.

The ‘lift is far greater in math’

The district’s average passing rate in math increased by 2.6 percentage points this school year and lower than in pre-pandemic years, according to Jackson.

“The lift is far greater” in math but still an increase from state test scores in spring 2022 and 2023, León said during Thursday’s school board meeting.

Districtwide, 27% of students scored proficient in the geometry assessment, a relatively small group, Jackson said, but the highest scoring of all grades. Among third graders who took the math test, 24% reached proficiency levels, the second highest scoring grade level.

Students in grades 5, 6, and 8 were among the lowest scoring of all grades, a trend inconsistent with English language arts scores. But the highest percentage of students scoring a five, or students who exceeded expectations on the test, were in grades 3, 7, 8, and those who took geometry.

Among the elementary schools, Ann Street, Roberto Clemente, First Avenue, Franklin, Ivy Hill, Lafayette, Michelle Obama, Mt. Vernon, Nelson Mandela, Sir Issac Newton, Oliver Street, Park, Ridge Street, Salome Ureña, South 17th Street, and Wilson Avenue scored higher than the district’s proficiency rate. Among the high schools, Arts, Bard, Data Science and Information Technology, Newark Vocational, Science Park, Technology, and University high schools scored higher than the district’s rate in math.

But Jackson says tutoring can help bump students to higher proficiency levels.

“If we continue to be successful in pushing those level threes to level four or five with tutoring participation this year, the math passing rate could be as high as 67%,” Jackson said.

Overall, 2,891 students of the roughly 19,500 students who took the math test moved up in proficiency levels, according to the district’s data.

Jessie Gomez is a reporter for Chalkbeat Newark, covering public education in the city. Contact Jessie at jgomez@chalkbeat.org.

NYC middle and high school admissions are changing. Here’s what families should know.

2024-09-27T19:15:07+00:00

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As New York City’s parents of fifth and eighth graders gear up for middle and high school admissions season, they can expect a few tweaks to the process — though some wonder how much impact the changes will have.

Among the changes city officials announced on Friday, high school applicants will, for the first time, be able to list as many schools as they want for their rankings. These applicants will also have access to a new tool in MySchools that will gauge a high school applicant’s chances of admission to a particular program.

And middle school applicants will be able to apply to any school across the city for the first time.

For high school, the monthslong admissions process — which opens on Oct. 1 — can be taxing for the tens of thousands of eighth grade students considering more than 700 programs at over 400 schools. Schools across the city employ different methods to determine admissions, further complicating the process.

Middle school applications open Oct. 9, with some variations in the process across different programs and districts.

Applications for high school are due Dec. 4. For middle school, they’re due Dec. 13.

Here’s what you should know about this year’s changes:

Middle school applicants can apply to schools outside their district

Previously, fifth grade applicants were largely limited to middle schools within their district, with only a subset of schools accepting boroughwide or citywide applicants.

That said, applicants will continue to have priority at middle schools within their home zone and district, according to city officials.

Though the change is unlikely to affect high-demand middle schools, which will continue to fill up with local applicants, it could still cause meaningful shifts in enrollment, as some students could opt to leave their district for empty seats in schools elsewhere.

City officials noted that about half of the 1,120 respondents to a 2023 middle school admissions survey would have applied to schools outside their district if the option had been available.

Potential enrollment shifts could pose high stakes for districts that already suffer from low enrollment, like District 16 in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, which filled just 885 of its nearly 2,300 middle school seats last school year — leaving roughly 1,400 unfilled — according to district data.

There are also variations in how middle schools admit students across different programs and districts. Many middle schools admit students based on their randomly assigned number, or “lottery number” — using it as a tiebreaker for students within a similar priority group, like those who live in a specific zone or district.

Some middle schools rank students based on specific factors, like those that use auditions or academic screens. Academic screens were initially paused during the pandemic, then brought back in some districts at the discretion of each of the city’s 32 local school district superintendents.

High school applicants can apply to more than 12 schools

Allowing eighth graders to apply to more than 12 schools could introduce even further flexibility to families considering the city’s vast array of high school programs, though some worry it will serve to make an already stressful process even more daunting.

The removal of the 12-school cap is unlikely to cause a major shakeup in the admissions process. Many families already struggle to find 12 choices to list in their applications, and the vast majority of applicants are admitted to one of their top choices.

During the last high school admissions cycle, roughly 77% of applicants received one of their top three choices, according to city data. In total, about 96% were matched to one of the schools they listed — leaving just over 3,000 of the nearly 71,000 applicants without an offer to a school to which they applied.

In recent years, approximately 38% of high school applicants listed a full 12 programs on their high school applications, according to the city’s Education Department.

The change might help some families automatically get spots on more waitlists at high-demand schools, said Elissa Stein, who runs High School 411, an admissions consulting service. But she added it could spur further confusion and stress among families — and isn’t likely to make a significant impact on the admissions process itself.

“It almost opens up the floodgates to more confusion, because it can be challenging to find 12 schools to put on your application,” she said. “To say, ‘Well, now the sky’s the limit,’ can add a level of confusion and pressure to need to find more.”

Officials emphasized the change is intended to offer families more flexibility, and they aren’t required to take advantage of it.

Alexandra Lange, a Brooklyn mom whose eighth grade son will be applying for high schools this year, said she doesn’t expect the change to impact her son’s application.

“I already think that 12 is more than enough,” she said. “It’s really hard for me to imagine what parents are asking for this change, because it feels like more work and more pressure, rather than paring back the process.”

Researching potential high schools for the application can be a time-consuming process, Lange said. For her family, it meant reading up on programs, taking tours, testing commutes, speaking with other parents about their experiences at different schools, and more.

Lange added she’s been dreading this admissions cycle, as it overlaps with her 12th grade son applying to colleges.

“There’s all this talk in the news now about how stressed kids are and how stressed parents are, and I just don’t understand why the application processes for both high school and college — and in New York, we also have a middle school application process — are just making more and more work for all those stressed people?” she said. “I don’t understand what parent or kid wants this.”

High school applicants have a new tool indicating their odds at particular schools

A new tool in MySchools that accounts for variables like a student’s home district or borough, their grades, their priority group, and more, aims to help families better understand their chances at particular schools.

The tool — developed in partnership with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Blueprint Labs — will tell families whether they have a high, medium, or low chance of admission. A high chance means students have a 99% chance of receiving an offer, while a low chance corresponds to about a 1% chance, according to Education Department officials.

About 50% of students with a medium chance of admission are expected to receive an offer, officials added.

In general, the high school admissions process is not for the faint of heart. Evaluating the city’s many options can add significant stress to families, and the process has faced criticism for being inequitable — with families who have more time and resources to devote to the process having an upper hand.

There are selective schools that sort applicants into four different priority groups based on their seventh grade GPAs in core subjects, using a student’s randomly assigned number, or “lottery number,” as a tiebreaker. Other schools that use open or educational option admissions primarily consider an applicant’s random number for admissions, though some take into account additional criteria to create priority groups. (Educational option programs set aside seats for students at different academic levels to promote academic diversity.)

Some schools also require admissions essays or auditions, while others participate in a diversity initiative, setting aside a certain number of seats for students who are low-income, English language learners, or live in temporary housing. And eight of the city’s specialized high schools that require a test for admission, including Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, are separate from the rest of the admissions process.

Are you applying to high school this year? We want to hear from you.

If you are a NYC parent whose child is applying to high school this year, Chalkbeat wants to hear from you.

We’re interested in hearing about any concerns you may have as you embark on this process, and what kind of information would be helpful for your family in making decisions.

Please fill out the form below to let us know what’s on your mind as this year’s admissions season approaches.

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Michael Elsen-Rooney contributed.

Julian Shen-Berro is a reporter covering New York City. Contact him at jshen-berro@chalkbeat.org.

Four Colorado schools win national Blue Ribbon recognition

2024-09-23T22:24:11+00:00

Four Colorado schools are among more than 350 nationwide to be named 2024 National Blue Ribbon Schools for high achievement or progress in narrowing achievement gaps.

Zach Elementary in Fort Collins and DSST Cedar High School in Denver won the designation for achievement on state math and literacy tests. Mesa View Elementary in Grand Junction and Skyview Middle in Pueblo West won for shrinking test score gaps between student subgroups and the overall student body

The U.S. Department of Education announced the Blue Ribbon schools on Monday. Of the four Colorado winners, one is a charter school — DSST Cedar, which is a part of Denver’s largest charter school network. Private schools are eligible for Blue Ribbon designation, but none were among the Colorado recipients this year.

U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona talked about the significance of the Blue Ribbon Schools designation during a recorded speech on Monday.

“It means that your school is the pride of your community and the model for schools across the nation,” he said.

The first set of Blue Ribbon awards were given out in 1983, and four to six Colorado schools typically win the designations every year. Last year, two schools in the Denver metro area, a school on the Eastern Plains, and a school in Western Colorado earned the awards.

Ann Schimke is a senior reporter at Chalkbeat, covering early childhood issues and early literacy. Contact Ann at aschimke@chalkbeat.org.

Warren Township’s Pleasant Run Elementary takes a broad approach to improving reading

2024-09-23T11:00:00+00:00

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This article was originally published by Mirror Indy.

Every corner of the first grade wing at Pleasant Run Elementary comes alive during small-group reading time.

Teachers and instructional assistants steer colorful carts loaded with workbooks and binders up and down the hall as students break up into small groups for a half hour several times a day. Students are seated in semi-circles around their teachers or on colorful carpets at the front of a classroom or tucked to the side in the hallway.

Breaking up into small groups — into what looks like a sort of organized chaos — allows students to focus on learning reading and writing skills adjusted to their individual needs. For the Warren Township elementary school, the all-hands-on-deck approach to literacy has helped drive a turnaround on the state’s third grade reading exam, called IREAD, at a time when state officials are laser-focused on improving Hoosier students’ reading skills.

“Every kid is seen in a small group every day by an adult in this building,” Pleasant Run instructional coach Megan Reyes said. “That has made a huge impact on student growth.”

Last year, only about 60% of Pleasant Run students passed IREAD. But this year, the scores jumped 21.5 percentage points — one of the greatest improvements across the state, putting the school up to par with the rest of Indiana students who passed the test at a rate of just over 82% this year.

And, Pleasant Run students are defying the odds. About one in three students are English language learners and more than 80% identified as coming from low-income backgrounds last school year. National trends show students in these groups are statistically more likely to struggle with standardized exams. But, at Pleasant Run, all demographics showed growth this year.

“It was great to see that our efforts have paid off,” Principal Travis Koomler said, “and we were able to put the right things in place to better support our kids.”

Pleasant Run’s approaches are practiced in elementary schools across Warren Township. And those schools have seen success, too.

For the first time in the district’s history, students in Warren Township schools collectively surpassed 80% passing in the IREAD exam — making it the only school district in Marion County where test scores were higher than before the pandemic.

Improving student literacy requires comprehensive effort

Students at Pleasant Run participate in a 90-minute literacy block led daily by their classroom teacher plus 30 minutes of writing. Between those regular classroom lessons, students get an additional 30 minutes of small-group instruction tailored to their needs.

Educator teams at Pleasant Run use data collected through assessments and informal checks to pinpoint where students excel and where they need help. Maybe one student needs help with vowel sounds while another is ready to work on short passages.

During small-group instruction time, those students can be paired with peers in their grade to focus on accelerated lessons or to review concepts they need to spend a little more time with.

First grade teacher Ali Summers encourages students to sound out a word at Pleasant Run Elementary School.

On one Monday morning in September, first grade teacher Ali Summers used this time to go over letter sounds with four students — sounding out each consonant and vowel or a word before moving onto the next. Students followed along using a custom-made blending board, a tool that helps kids visualize each word as it’s spoken aloud.

Across the room, another five students worked with a bilingual instructional assistant on reading comprehension prompts. As a dual-language immersion school, Pleasant Run has several of these assistants who can help multilingual students build up background knowledge and oral language skills that may come easier to classmates whose first language is English.

A third group — still in the same classroom — studied separately with a different bilingual instructional assistant, and a handful of students scattered across remaining desks worked on vocabulary exercises on their digital tablets.

Pleasant Run administrators say keeping these groups small is key. The school has about a dozen instructional assistants total. And other teachers for related classes — such as gym, art, and STEM — have also been trained and work with students during small-group time to ensure student-to-instructor ratios stay low.

The district also partners with Circle City Readers, a program of the Mayor’s Office of Education Innovation that places paid and trained tutors in Indianapolis schools. For Pleasant Run, the program adds another seven adults to the building during reading intervention time.

All told, students can receive more than two hours of in-school reading and writing time. There’s also after-school tutoring opportunities with provided transportation and worksheets sent home with families.

It’s an all-hands-on-deck effort, administrators say. Ultimately, the goal is to both help kids learn and find joy in reading.

“We’ve seen students really embrace reading because they know how to decode and figure out how to read the words,” Reyes said. “That has increased their desire to read because they can.”

Reading support means involving families too

Pleasant Run first ramped up its support for reading during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

Teachers attended a series of virtual trainings as a part of a state program called the Indiana Literacy Cadre which helps teach educators about the science of reading — a method of language arts instruction that emphasizes phonics and reading comprehension.

The state now requires schools to use a science of reading-based curriculum. However, as a part of the state literacy cadre, Pleasant Run adopted the teaching style early.

It’s also just as important, Reyes said, to get families involved.

Last year, her team began sending packets home with students every week familiarizing the kids and their parents with the IREAD test. The school has also had parent meetings to answer questions about the state exam.

First grader Nelson Perla uses an iPad to work through a Lexia reading lesson at Pleasant Run Elementary School.

That communication has become especially important this year, administrators say, as Indiana rolls out a retention requirement for third graders who do not pass the test.

Pleasant Run administrators say they want parents to understand the importance of helping their students pass the exam on time. Koomler said the school has already identified about 65 students who are at risk of not passing. Those students have been invited to additional after-school tutoring to get ahead of the new requirement.

“Parents have been very supportive,” Koomler said. “They want the best for their child as well and I think they understand the importance of the IREAD test now, so I haven’t had any problems with getting parents on board.”

With this type of support for families in place, Pleasant Run administrators said they weren’t surprised by their school’s recent success on the IREAD exam.

The team is aiming even higher this year with a new goal: 90% passing. That would surpass the school’s 82% pass rate and set another district record.

“The growth that we saw last year has really motivated teachers to keep going,” Reyes said. “They did put in so much work, and because it paid off, I think that just really keeps the momentum going for us.”

Mirror Indy reporter Carley Lanich covers early childhood and K-12 education. Contact her at carley.lanich@mirrorindy.org or follow her on X @carleylanich.

School accountability should factor in environmental hazards like pollution, Adams 14 says

2024-09-20T01:12:30+00:00

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The Adams 14 school district in Commerce City faces some of the most serious environmental hazards of any in Colorado. It’s also one of the lowest performing.

But external factors such as local levels of poverty or pollution aren’t a part of Colorado’s school rating system that holds districts accountable for student test scores. Adams 14 officials have asked the State Board of Education to reconsider that. But it looks like they have an uphill battle.

After more than a year of work, a 26-member task force has almost finished a set of recommendations for changing the state’s accountability system. The group’s latest draft, published on Friday, doesn’t recommend considering factors such as the environmental pollution in a community, although it’s still taking feedback.

At a State Board of Education meeting last Wednesday, Adams 14 Superintendent Karla Loria highlighted pollution in Commerce City, and research showing that such conditions can contribute to higher rates of student illnesses, learning disabilities, and behavioral problems.

Community members say their higher than average rate of adverse health issues are directly tied to conditions created by industries like a Commerce City oil refinery run by Suncor Energy that has faced multiple investigations for exceeding the amount of pollution it is allowed to release into the air. Commerce City, a heavily industrialized community north of Denver, is considered a disproportionately impacted community, based on state data.

“Adams 14 students face, every day and night, detrimental environmental exposures that more than 90 percent of our students across the state do not face,” Loria said.

The Adams 14 school district currently serves about 5,400 students, of which more than half speak English as a new language and a majority come from low-income families. Those demographics, when combined with high pollution levels, create a challenging situation for Adams 14 students and educators, Loria said.

Wendy Birhanzel, the superintendent of the Harrison school district and the chair of the task force looking at the accountability system, said she’s well aware of how external forces impact students.

But she said the task force focused on inequities within the accountability system, and stuck to factors that are within a school district’s control. In the year the task force has been meeting, she said she didn’t hear concerns about environmental pollution.

“We know there’s a lot of factors that go into a student’s performance or a student’s success, and so with our charge it was really about what can schools and districts control and change within their own systems to change outputs,” Birhanzel said. “When you talk about those outside factors, that becomes a whole different conversation than really what our focus was.”

Accountability system’s handling of Adams 14 spurred criticism

For its accountability system, Colorado mostly looks at student performance on standardized state tests, and student growth on those tests. At the high school level, the rating system also considers graduation rates and how many students move on to postsecondary options.

Districts can earn one of five ratings. In the most recent results for the last school year, just 11 districts — including Adams 14 — received one of the lowest two ratings. Being in those two lowest ratings for five years or more then means the state must step in and order an improvement plan, or take steps like closing schools.

Adams 14 was the first district to reach so many years on the watchlist for low ratings. The fallout has put a strain on the accountability system, as well as the local community. The State Board stripped the district’s accreditation in 2022, and ordered a reorganization that could have resulted in school closures or even the dissolution of the district. But after community pushback, the state backed off the order.

Many community members pointed to factors outside of the school’s control — including poverty, bad water, and student health issues — as reasons why they said the state’s ratings system was unfair, punitive, or inaccurately capturing student learning.

For years, Adams 14 has been working with outside consultants trying to improve student achievement. But it has yet to show improvement on the state’s rating system.

A majority of schools and districts initially identified for low performance under the same system do manage to improve and get off the watchlist.

Still, Colorado lawmakers commissioned an audit to examine the state’s accountability system. In 2022, the audit concluded that the system was reasonable, although it did find that certain groups of students, such as Hispanic students, were more likely to struggle.

After that audit, the state convened a task force to determine whether there should be changes to the state’s accountability system.

That task force has been meeting since August of last year. Their latest draft includes more than 20 possible recommendations including creating a super subgroup to avoid over-counting students who fall into more than one subgroup, and translating more of the state tests into more languages.

Birhanzel said the recommendations will help the state “better measure where we’re succeeding and where we need to support schools, districts or students.”

The final report is due by mid-November. Some of the recommendations could be adopted by the State Board or the Colorado Department of Education, but some could require changes to the state law on accountability.

Adams 14 seeks help from new Colorado rules

This month, much of Commerce City is breathing a sigh of relief after an oil and gas company dropped plans to expand gas storage tanks across the street from an Adams 14 elementary school. But that reprieve for the district doesn’t address all its current concerns about environmental dangers.

Adams 14 officials implied in their public comments last week that due to new state rules about environmental justice, the State Board had a legal obligation to consider the district’s official status as a disproportionately impacted community when making any changes to the accountability system.

The new rules define a “disproportionately impacted community” and suggest that more state agencies factor the designation into their decisions. The Colorado Department of Education was not listed among the state agencies, although the rules note that its list of such agencies isn’t meant to be exhaustive.

The state education department disputed Adams 14′s interpretation of the rules, saying it’s not aware of such a requirement. But it did say it would review relevant materials from the district about that issue.

“We recognize that factors outside schools’ control impact the student learning environment,” the department said in a statement. “Our department and the state board can and do consider those factors when making decisions about how to support districts and schools.”

Yesenia Robles is a reporter for Chalkbeat Colorado covering K-12 school districts and multilingual education. Contact Yesenia at yrobles@chalkbeat.org.