I should have known better; when you're dealing with New Yorkers there's no such thing as a ?final word.? Here's a comment from Diane Ravitch about the Joel Klein editorial we ran in yesterday's Gadfly. (See Sol Stern's rebuttal here.)
If Chancellor Klein said only that New York City had improved in the past eight years, I would have no quarrel with him. But he and Mayor Bloomberg have claimed for years that New York City had made ?historic gains? under their programs and that the city was a national, even an international, model. It is not. Since the state scores?on which their claims were based?collapsed a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Klein have refused to accept any accountability for their inflated claims.
Two years ago, when the NAEP scores were released, Mr. Klein said that NAEP was of no importance, that it only provided a snapshot, that it didn't test all students; he even raised questions about the reliability of NAEP. This year, however, NYC students saw gains in fourth grade reading and eighth grade math, and now he says that NAEP is the gold standard. As he notes, I praised the gains that were made, as I want our city's students to succeed.
What we learned a few weeks ago was that New York state's scores have been increasingly inflated since 2003. Every year, the state scores soared while its NAEP scores remained flat. Every year, state and city officials announced huge increases that simply defied belief. The number of level 1 students?those that were referred to remedial services?dramatically declined because of the score inflation.
Commissioner David Steiner recalibrated the scores so that they indicate whether students are being prepared for college studies. An analysis by Daniel Koretz and Jennifer Jennings showed that a score of ?proficient? on the state's tests was no guarantee of college-readiness. At present, half of New York City's graduates require remediation when they go to City University of New York, as do 75% who enter a two-year community college. Students so ill-prepared are likely to drop out. An article last week in The New York Times quoted a writing professor who said that some of the city's graduates don't know that a sentence begins with a capital letter, and think that the word ?you? is spelled ?U.? The remediation rate may be lower than it was 10 years ago, but no one ten years ago claimed to have ended social promotion, nor were students told that they had passed five Regents exams.
Klein insists on overstating New York City's gains by including the big jump in fourth-grade reading scores that occurred from 2002-2003. He forgets that the city's students were taking the NAEP tests in early 2003 at the same time that Mayor Bloomberg was announcing his planned reforms, six months before they were implemented in the schools. I debated this issue in Gadfly with David Cantor, and debated it again with his assessment director on gothamschools.org, so the chancellor is no doubt aware that he cannot take credit for gains registered before his reforms were introduced.
NYC has not outperformed every other urban district on NAEP. Charlotte and Austin have higher scores. Between 2003 and 2009, bigger gains were registered in fourth grade reading by Atlanta, Boston, and DC; bigger gains were registered in fourth grade math by Atlanta, Boston, and DC; bigger gains were registered in eighth grade math by Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and San Diego. New York City students have made no gains in eighth grade reading since 2003, whereas significant gains were registered by Atlanta, Houston, and Los Angeles.
I am happy to acknowledge that progress has been made. If Chancellor Klein were to develop a substantive educational program to improve schools instead of closing them, I believe even more progress would be made. And I would be the first to congratulate him if that were to happen.
-Diane Ravitch
I find it hard to argue with that. But I'm sure that Joel Klein will find a way.
-Mike Petrilli
