Standardized tests in New York public schools have been an annual event for decades, and so too, at least more recently, are issues with standardized tests. The latest wrinkle involves contradictory — and late — data from the 2023 round of examinations.
New York State has been administering standardized tests in public schools since 1966, largely shifting to a focus on English/Language/Arts and mathematics in grades 3-8 in 2006 after the George W. Bush administration enacted the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.
The exams administered each spring occupy hours in a student’s day, but there is also considerable prep time, which critics believe forces educators to teach to the test when they could be just teaching. Teachers have also bristled at standardized test results factoring into their performance reviews, as was recommended by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration in 2015, but thanks to pushback by New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), was significantly minimized.
A few years later came the opt-out movement, which saw parents giving students in grades 3-8 permission to refuse to take state tests. Earlier that year, the New York State Education Department (NYSED) unveiled its plan to comply with federal testing regulations, which critics say would unfairly punish schools and students.
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), signed into law in December 2015 by President Barack Obama after receiving bipartisan support in both chambers of Congress, did not eliminate the provisions regarding standardized testing from its predecessor, NCLB, but it did give more power to states to determine how best to drive success.
ESSA requires that schools have a 95 percent participation rate in federally mandated math and English tests in grades 3-8. But with the opt-out movement in New York, that figure was closer to 80 percent, though much of that movement was in part due to Cuomo’s plan to use test scores to evaluate teachers. While the teacher evaluation link remains still on hold, schools in many districts were still coming in below the ESSA participation threshold.
As such, the New York State Education Department (NYSED) considered an escalating run of penalties for schools testing fewer than 95 percent in each student subgroup, including having schools immediately labeled as needing Comprehensive or Targeted Support, and requiring them to use Title I funding to lower the opt-out rates. Schools could have also been closed or converted to charter schools under the proposed changes.
Opt-out rates have dropped in the several years since their apex, but it still happens. And it still has an impact on local districts.
“Opt-outs remain an issue, not to the extent that they were maybe, what, five, six years ago,” said Kingston City School District Superintendent Paul Padalino. “But we still do have a percentage of our students who opt out of the testing. And generally speaking…it has an impact on our schools, bumping us up in some cases to levels of oversight by the state that I think really aren’t necessarily correct because opt-outs skew our data. We just keep trying to encourage our teachers to try to encourage parents to take the test.”
The same is true in the Saugerties Central School District (SCSD), where opt-outs still occur and the district still tries to increase participation.
“In the Spring of 2024 we had approximately 17 percent of families who refused their students’ participation in the 3-8 math assessment and approximately 14 percent refused participation in the 3-8 ELA assessment as well as the Grade 5 and Grade 8 science assessments,” said SCSD Superintendent Dan Erceg.
In the Onteora Central School District (OCSD), participation is higher.
“There will always be some families who choose not to have their child take these state tests, but the percentage of students who do not participate has declined in recent years,” said OCSD Superintendent Victor McLaren. “Our current participation is 90 percent or above in each subject area.”
The New Paltz Central School District (NPCSD) isn’t where they would like to be as far as opt-outs.
“I would say the opt-out rate in New Paltz is higher than we would like it to be,” said NPCSD Superintendent Stephen Gratto. “And to meet state guidelines, we need to improve our participation rate.”
Despite advancements in technology, results for exams taken in April and May don’t ordinarily arrive until early fall of the following academic year, by which time students have moved on to other grades with other teachers. Results of the 2023 tests were especially slow, arriving last December.
“Ideally, we would get these results prior to the end of the school year in which they were taken so that the data can be shared with our teacher prior to summer recess,” said Erceg.
But McLaren said the OCSD is generally satisfied with the timeliness of exam results.
“Test results have been provided to districts in a much more timely manner in recent years, especially this year, which allows instructional staff to review the achievements of our students and make shifts in curriculum, instruction, and local assessments to better support our students,” she said.
While inaccuracies in 2023 test results were reported in other parts of the state, no local districts had similar complaints.
And some changes in the standardized tests are receiving positive reviews.
“It is shorter,” Padalino said. “It’s not taking as much instructional time. I think the state has done a good job of making it less of an onerous task, giving us more flexibility, giving students more flexibility, and shortening the test.”
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