State Test Results A Mixed Bag

While Queens’ fourth graders racked up record high gains in the annual state English exams, its eighth graders’ test scores showed a decline in each of the borough’s seven school districts.
While the state report showed that Queens youngsters were generally averaging higher scores than their fellow students in the outlying boroughs, there was a downside. The report also revealed that nearly one-third of the borough’s fourth graders and 61 percent of eighth graders were not proficient in English.
State Senator Toby Stavisky, a member of the Senate Education and Higher Education Committees, said that while steps to maintain the upward trend shown by the fourth graders must be strongly continued, she expressed deep concern with the decline in Queens’ eighth grade scores.
Seventy percent of Queens’ 68,000 fourth graders passed their tests, besting a citywide 60 percent passing average. Helping to boost the borough’s scores was a strong ten percent passing rate hike among fourth grade students in its 184 elementary schools.
District 26 maintained its citywide primacy, with nearly half of fourth graders scoring between 90 and 100 percent.
Hailing these gains, Mayor Bloomberg said, “Through a strong core curriculum, focused intervention program, and our Summer Success Academy, we’ve helped students who were on course to fail and steered them on a path to success.”
But City Councilmember John Liu did not share his enthusiasm. “Statewide test results last week showed mixed results. They clearly show a great deal more work is needed to give our kids a good education.”
Liu charged that test results “lend credibility to the critics of the third grade retention policy, who predicted last year that holding back third graders would artificially inflate fourth grade test results the following year.”
Eighth graders fared far worse than their fourth grade counterparts. With each local school district showing a distinct drop in test scores, only 39 percent of the 18,700 Queens students tested received passing marks.
However, upper graders in District 26, with a 66 percent passing rate, ranked the highest in New York City.
Victor Ross is a freelance writer.