Statewide standardized tests can prove difficult when determining academic success. Such is the case in the New Paltz Central School District, where fewer than half of all students in grades 3-8 opted in to the 2022 statewide math test last spring.
During a meeting of the Board of Education held on Wednesday, November 16, Interim Superintendent Dr. Bernard Josefsberg prefaced a discussion about the exam results with a caveat that it’s unclear what, if anything can be gleaned from the results.
“This is not a conventional test presentation, this is not a presentation that offers any real insight into the quality of instruction or the degree of learning of this year as compared to last year or the year before,” Josefsberg said, adding that in addition to low participation numbers, the tests themselves have changed since 2019. And there was also the COVID-19 pandemic, which tilted the world on its axis in March 2020.
“The effects of the pandemic, I think, are deep,” Josefsberg said. “The effects are disruptive, and it would not be valid to take this year’s results and draw conclusions about what happened in the past three or four years in system instruction.”
It would also be unfair, Josefsberg said, to use the exam results to gauge the success of the Bridges in Mathematics program, a comprehensive pre-K-5 program designed to rigorously engage students using state standards.
“I have no quantitative information about the success of Bridges because it’s only been in place for a short period of time, which at that time was ‘pandemically’ affected,” Josefsberg said. “But the anecdotal reports that I heard the other day are very promising. And one hopes that in time we’ll have that quantitative informationto justify the choices that were made.”
With so many variables, what can be gleaned from the test results? For a start, the numbers are concrete, even if they don’t tell the whole story. Of the 823 students between grades 3-8 last year, just 405 — or 49 percent — voluntarily took the math exam. Even that doesn’t tell the whole story, Jofesberg said.
“Without digging deeper into individual names and then putting them back together again, I don’t know who the 50 percent are as far as their impact, or the impact of their absence on aggregate scores.” The interim superintendent’s presentation also broke down the percentages based on subgroups. For example, participation was high among Asian and Pacific Islander (68 percent), Black (63 percent) and female (52 percent) students, and lower among male (46 percent), Hispanic (41 percent), multiracial (39 percent) and special education (33 percent) students.
The results also showed that of the 49 percent of students who took the exam, 64 percent overall were below proficiency. None of the subgroups showed half of the students who took the exam scoring at or above proficiency. Multiracial (51 percent), male (57 percent), not economically disadvantaged (58 percent), and white (61 percent) had the lowest percentage of students below proficiency from the sample, with female (70 percent), black (73 percent), Asian and Pacific Islander (73 percent), economically disadvantaged (80 percent), Hispanic (80 percent) and special education (80 percent) showing less proficiency.
There was also a comparison chart, which included grade-specific proficiency scores in both ELA and math from the years 2018, 2019 and 2022.
Third graders showed marked improvement in both tests, with 37 percent proficient in ELA and math in 2018, and 52 percent proficient in ELA and 60 percent proficient in math in 2022. Other gains were seen in ELA scores for 4th graders, who went from 46 percent proficient in 2018 to 60 percent in 2022. There were other small gains seen elsewhere, but the chart also shows numerous drops — some significant — across grade levels. Even with math proficiency lower in grades 4-8 between 2018 and 2022, Josefsberg said he didn’t see cause for alarm.
“I don’t see much indication of pandemic dip here in math,” he said.“I didn’t say there’s not, I didn’t see much.”
Some of that was down to recent Regents Algebra I test scores, which saw 54 eighth graders in the district take the exam, all passing. Of those, 19 scored at Level 3, a passing grade scaled to the equivalent score of a 65-75 percent.
An additional 24 students scored at Level 4, which meets Common Core standards and is good enough to graduate with a Regents Diploma.
Finally, eleven eighth graders who took the exam scored at Level 5, which exceeds Common Core expectations, and according to the New York State School Boards Association, is considered “mastery level” of a particular subject.
Trustee Heather O’Donnell said that while the Regents scores were impressive, they don’t tell the whole story.
“I do think it’s really important to keep looking at the students who perhaps are not in that math class and making sure that they are still receiving the support that they also need,” O’Donnell said. “Because I feel like this is sort of a self-selected sample because they have to maintain a certain grade average throughout the year so you can stay in the class and take the test.”
Josefsberg agreed, adding that the conversation should always be about how to help every student succeed, even when the test scores only cover a specific percentage of students.
“That’s the value of data analysis, to get those conversations going,” he said.“And for those conversations, these are real numbers. They have real significance to the extent that you create that significance within the boundaries of what the numbers really mean. Those discussions can be tricky, but those discussions are necessary.”
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