Teaching to the Exam?

The lead article in today’s New York Times is titled, “U.S. Math Tests Find Scant Gains Across New York.” It describes the results on math exams for fourth and eighth graders, administered at the federal level, and compares that to state exams. Apparently, the state tests showed record gains while the federal tests did not. Most educators believe the federal tests are more accurate.

The difference is so great that the New York City schools chancellor, Joel Klein, has been criticized, and the campaign of Mayor Bloomberg has been forced into a defensive position. While the state exams noted that 80 percent of the eighth graders were performing at an adequate level, only 34 percent were approved by the federal exams. Since the state releases previous years’ questions, the obvious conclusion is that the instructors are teaching to the test.

And black and Hispanic students continue to lag behind whites in the test taking results. In the federal exam, 50 percent of white fourth graders performed adequately compared to 25 percent for Hispanics and 19 percent for blacks.

The only silver lining in the cloud, and you have to strain to find one, is that the New York City statistics may prove to be better than the rest of the State.

Perhaps, the Democratic candidate for Mayor described it best when he called the Bloomberg school districts as the “Madoff of the American education system.”