As Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign for re-election approaches, parents and local education organizations are re-evaluating his administration and its presentation of increased test scores on state standardized exams as evidence of progress in the city’s public school system.
Beginning in 2002, Bloomberg took control of the city’s public school system, which had previously been run by school boards that were criticized for being ineffective.
Under the Bloomberg administration, the Department of Education—with schools chancellor Joel Klein at the helm—has a much tighter leash over the schools. The original law establishing mayoral control was up for renewal in June, and finally in August—after much political delay—the mayor’s role was fully renewed.
An area of major local contention in the debate over the merits and drawbacks of mayoral control of public schools centers on the emphasis the DOE has placed on standardized tests. Students’ English and math scores—from grades three through eight—determine government-assigned grades that schools, principals, and teachers receive in regular assessments.
The results of last spring’s tests, according to the DOE Web site, show an increase in English and math test scores citywide for all grade levels, with 84.9 percent of fourth-graders, for example, exceeding state standards in 2009, compared to 79.6 percent the previous year, and 52 percent in 2002.
In addition, test results presented by the DOE show that the achievement gap between white students and both black and hispanic students has narrowed, with a 10.8 percent reduction since 2002 in the test-score gaps between the white and black student populations.
But the emphasis placed on these standardized tests also raises questions about the type of education students are ultimately receiving.
“I think principals are put into a challenging place. They want to educate students, but their own rating is put on test scores,” said Pamela Koch, a co-president of the Parent-Teacher Association at
P.S. 75 Emily Dickinson on West End Avenue and an instructor at Columbia University’s Teachers College.
She said that the teachers at P.S. 75 have found ways to combine quality instruction with preparation for the tests, though the emphasis on testing makes this more challenging. In addition, academic diversity in the classroom is vastly underemphasized in a system so obsessed with scores, according to Koch.
“When you have smarter kids in the class they can help the other kids,” she said. “It’s so much better when kids are diverse in all senses of the word.”
At P.S. 163 Alfred E. Smith on West 97th Street, the School Leadership Team—comprised of half faculty and half parents—is engaged in an ongoing discussion about the limits of test scores, said Julia Heath, president of the school’s PTA.
“This is a double-edged sword because the schools want and need the kids to achieve good grades … on these tests and much of that is done through preparation before and during the school day,” Heath said in an e-mail. She said that it can frustrate teachers trying to prepare curricula, and at the same time, it leads to unnecessary stress on students.
As one solution, this elementary school offers third, fourth, and fifth graders preparing for the test an optional 30-minute class before the start of the regular school day.
For Leonie Haimson, executive director of New York City non-profit Class Size Matters, class size is directly tied to students’ test performance. She said that a reduced class size “leads to better student achievement, in terms of graduating on time, discipline, and more student engagement on every level.”
Opponents generally agree that money is wasted in this system on test preparation.
“There’s a whole superstructure built up over test prep to differentiate instruction,’” Haimson said, using what she said has become a buzzword. “But there’s no better way to do that than to reduce class size.”
Local politicians have also expressed mixed feelings on the complex issue. Sarah Morgridge, executive assistant to New York City Council member Robert Jackson (D—Morningside Heights), said that the councilman sees standardized tests as just one way to measure student achievement. As Chair of the Council’s Education committee, he believes that tests should be used diagnostically rather than as an absolute rubric.
“Most education advocates would prefer to see standardized tests used to identify weaknesses … as opposed to being a total comprehensive measure of achievement,” Morgridge said, adding that she feared the national trends of valuing scores and sacrificing the greater passion about education that school is ultimately supposed to engrain in students.
But she did point out that standardized tests have helped to focus the goals of teachers and administrators on schools ranking in the lower quartiles—which is important since test-taking is an essential skill for students.
Ultimately though, many locals feel that this tight grip on schools has been in some ways suffocating. “A lot of people go into teaching because they want to be creative, and all the standardization that’s come into schools makes it challenging,” Koch said. “You have to do it through the back door.”
The DOE and the mayor’s office could not be reached for comment.
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