Looking at the data behind the good-news reporting of the DOE reveals less-substantial gains for many high-need students. Achievement gaps between the races, especially in reading, persist despite seven years of Bloomberg's "Children First" reforms. Yet public reports touting a "narrowed" achievement gap paint a glossy, positive image for the DOE's efforts. The data tell another story.
Knowledge or test prep?
On July 14, the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Education Sciences (EIS) released the most recent National Assessment for Education Progress (NAEP) report, based on standardized tests conducted across the United States in 2007. Despite seven years of test-driven accountability measures, as mandated in the No Child Left Behind Act (and echoed by Bloomberg-era accountability reforms), race-linked gaps persist, especially in English. Gains made in the early grades erode by middle school. White students still outpace their black counterparts in English and in math, and race-linked gaps, while narrowing slightly, haven't closed enough to be statistically significant, according to the NAEP report. (The IES plans to release a companion report comparing Hispanic-white test scores in September.)
The NAEP has been administered since the early 1990s, yet for 8th graders' English scores, no significant change was seen in any of the 50 states. "We must simultaneously raise the achievement of all students, while closing gaps in achievement between different groups of students," said U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. "The progress has been too slow. The achievement gaps are still too wide."
This stands in sharp counterpoint to the good-news message of the DOE, after the May 2009 release of the most recent state test results. According to Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, "We're continuing to narrow the shameful racial and ethnic achievement gap, especially in the eighth grade, where it has been most persistent." Yet black eighth-graders score, on average, 26 percent below white students. A similar gap is evident for Hispanic students, who earn, on average, 27 percent less than white students.
It's not untrue to report that the racial gap is narrowing – more than 30 percentage points separated black and Hispanic students from white students in 2002, when Bloomberg was first elected. But celebrating small gains obscures the significant challenges faced by the city's schools. The NAEP discounts similar changes as statistically insignificant, yet to the DOE, the changes represent substantive gains, proof that "our schools have made a remarkable turnaround since 2002," according to the Mayor.
New York's scores on the NAEP solidly reflect the national average – our students are doing neither much better nor far worse, on average, than other students in the rest of the country. (This has been true since the NAEP was first administered, starting in 1990.) City officials discount the NAEP as an accurate measure of student achievement: Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott dismissed the difference between flat NAEP scores and rising state scores, saying "Our students are not prepared for the NAEP, which is why they don't do as well as they do on state tests." Walcott's explanation – that students fare better on tests for which they are prepared, rather than instruments that assess general knowledge – unwittingly implicates the DOE's focus on preparing students for its own tests over national measures, which presume a "portability" of real knowledge: What a student truly knows and understands should be evident whether the student has been formally prepared for a test, or not.
English language learners languish
More than 40 percent of city students are current or former English language learners; serving these students well is an important mandate of the DOE, and one that's too often short-changed.
Even in its structure, the DOE groups programs and services for English language learners with those designed for students with special-education needs, inexplicably pairing the complex needs of able, non-native-speaking students with the highly specific requirements of students with intellectual, emotional, and physical challenges.
English language learners struggle in New York City's schools: Only about one in three graduate in four years. About one in seven earn a more rigorous Regents diploma. (The ELL grad rate reached a new low, 23 percent, in 2006.) Yet the DOE promotes gains posted by ELL students, while downplaying the context that illustrates the gravity of their challenges: "The 2008 graduation rate rose by more than 10 percent," for English language learners since 2007, according to DOE's press release to the media. A 10 percent gain nearly outstrips a similar rise in the graduation rate citywide – yet it masks a dramatic shortfall: Only 35 percent of ELL students earned a high-school diploma last year, compared with 25 percent, or one in four ELL students, in 2007. Again, positive gains are emphasized, while the enormity of the challenge – two of three ELL students do not graduate high school in four years – is consistently underplayed.
Drilling down into the graduation statistics, ELL students who do graduate do not earn the rigorous diplomas that many (but not all) native speakers merit.
Overall, 40 percent of general-education students earn Regents diplomas, which require higher scores on Regents exit exams than the Local diploma. Within that citywide average, about a third of black and Hispanic students earn a Regents credential. Proportionally twice as many, or nearly two-thirds, of white and Asian students get their Regents. Yet only 17 percent of ELL students who graduate in four years earn the more-demanding credential. All students who do not earn Regents credentials – about 6 in 10 high school graduates, and two thirds of graduates of color – graduate with Local Diplomas, which certify completion of New York state and city high-school requirements but do not universally confer college-readiness. Thus, a majority of students, predominantly students of color, meet basic minimums, but are not well-prepared for the challenges of college or other post-secondary education.
The difference is especially critical for high-school students enrolled since 2008 – current 9th and 10th graders – who are required by State and City regulations to earn Regents diplomas. (The less-rigorous Local Diploma is being phased out, but wide gaps between the races, as documented by 2008 graduation rates, is forcing New York State Regents to re-evaluate the more stringent academic requirement: "The Regents will ...consider whether to continue implementing the phase-out of the local diploma," according to representatives of the New York State Education Department.)
The DOE's consistent "good news" pales in a context of struggling English language learners, and in a landscape where just about half of New York's black and Hispanic students graduate high school with any diploma in four years. If the Local diploma phase-out continues as planned, without revision by the Regents, it's likely the recent rise in graduation rates will plummet to new lows – and that's a significant piece of "bad news" the DOE isn't eager to promote.
