Looks as if the bad old days of “social promotion” are returning to New York City public schools.
The de Blasio administration scrapped the results of standardized exams as the chief measure for determining promotions in grades 3 through 8, thanks to a change in state law that prohibits the practice.
“This is absolutely dumbing down the standards,” said Mona Davids, head of the NYC Parents Union.
Undoing one of the major policies of the Bloomberg administration, schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña said teachers and principals would now adopt a more “holistic” approach that relies on everything, including classroom attendance, to determine which students move ahead and which get left back.
Test scores would no longer be used as the “primary” or “major factor” in making those decisions, Fariña said.
“This new way forward maintains accountability, but mitigates the unintended consequences of relying solely on a single test,” Fariña said.
Education reformers immediately questioned if the city was returning to the days when kids were promoted as they aged, regardless of their ability to make the grade.
It also raised red flags because teachers have a stake in promoting students, since their evaluations are based, in part, on how well those students perform.
Campbell Brown, of the Parents Transparency Project, said promoting kids who aren’t prepared would be disastrous.
“No one benefits from the promotion of a student who is not ready for the next grade level — particularly the student himself or herself, who will be ill-prepared and at risk of never catching up with his or her peers,” Brown said.
“If there is a set of metrics other than exams to determine if a child is truly ready for the next step, we’re all ears, but not if that criteria in any way waters down the standards for promotion.”
Fariña insisted Wednesday that standards would be maintained.
“The test still counts because the test will give us some idea of what strategies the kids need,” she said.
“There will be a list of what needs to be in the portfolio [of students at risk], how it has to be graded, and there will be other measures. There’s a uniform standard. Take my word for it.”
The new policy is a stark break from the Bloomberg administration, which demanded that students score minimum grades on tests to get ahead and required 32,205 kids last year to attend summer school. Of those, 8,057 still ended up repeating a grade.
Under the Bloomberg administration, students who scored at the lowest level would advance only after being reassessed and scoring at the next highest level.
The latest rules for the city’s 425,000 elementary- and middle-school kids de-emphasize the Common Core exams and give more power to teachers and principals to determine students’ fates.
Albany this year blocked the use of Common Core results in student evaluations for at least two years, forcing schools to devise new methods for promotions.
In the revised system, teachers will assess students based on their overall work. Principals will make the final decision on promotions.
In an advisory on how the new system will work, the DOE said teachers and principals would use “multiple measures, including the holistic assessment of students’ work.”
The city also is scrapping a multiple-choice exam given at the end of summer school.
Legislators who opposed Common Core applauded the changes.
“We have long taken the position that using tests as the sole or primary factor in making decisions about a child’s future is both unwise and unreliable,” Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Assemblywoman Cathy Nolan said in a joint statement.
But reformers warned of the consequences.
“When the test scores of nearly half our city’s kids warranted possible grade retention, our focus should be on ensuring high-quality instruction on the front end, not on changing the bar for promotion,” StudentsFirstNY Executive Director Jenny Sedlis said.