Dear Commons Community,
Earlier this week, the New York State Education Department released new data showing that high school graduates even from some of the better or “A” schools in New York City were not able to do college-level work. This is a follow-up to data released in February (see my posting on this blog). Colleagues, Greg Johnson and Frank Gardella, at Hunter College have exchanged posts on this on the Hunter Faculty LISTSERV. Professor Gardella specifically addresses the problem for mathematics.
“The numbers should not be surprising when one looks at the way the
statistics are handled for the Regents in Mathematics. The score that appears on a student’s transcript is a Regents Scale Score. This is not a raw score or a percent derived from a raw score. It is a number that is arrived at using a Conversion Chart determined by the New York State Department of Education.
For example, in order to obtain a passing Regents Scale Score of 65 on this year’s Integrated Algebra 1 Regents, students had to have a raw score of 31 out of a possible 87. This meant that a student obtaining a 36% correct on the test was considered proficient. (The conversion chart for the scoring can be found at: http://www.nysedregents.org/IntegratedAlgebra/
Similar charts are developed for Integrated Geometry and Integrated Algebra 2/Trigonometry Regents.)
To obtain Regents Scale Score of 75 means that a student must have a raw score of 45 out of 87 or 52% correct.
What has occurred is that the State Department of Education has made 36% the passing grade for Integrated Algebra 1. Similar Conversion Charts are used in grading the Integrated Geometry and Integrated Algebra 2/Trig Regents. You do not need 65% correct to get a Regents Scale Score of 65.
History: Before 1999, when a student (like many of us) took the regents, if the student did not get 65% correct, the student failed. There was no Regents scale score. It was a raw score that equated to a percent. If you got 78 out of 100, you got 78%.
With the changes in New York as well as across the nation under No Child Left Behind legislation, states had to show progress each year (what is known as Annual Yearly Progress or AYP.) Each state was left to its own devices to decide on the proficiency of the students and the AYP.
New York developed a Regents Scale Scoring system that has been in use since 1999. Since then the state has basically equated a passing Regents Scale Score of 65 to a percent correct somewhere in the range of 30 to 40 % for the Integrated Algebra 1 Regents. ..”
Thank you, Professor Gardella. In essence, we have established an accountability system that has been gamed by education policy makers at the state and local levels to give the illusion that students have been doing better than they actually were.
Tony
