Getting worse instead of better
More than half of the students in New York's Otsego, Delaware, Schoharie and Chenango county school districts performed worse on eighth-grade standardized tests than they did on their fourth-grade tests. In other words, students seem to be losing ground as they advance in school. What does the school think is happening?
District officials looking for answers are offering several theories, including one that says middle school students are strapped with academic and adolescent issues they never experienced in elementary school....
The decline was most precipitous at Laurens Central School, where the district competency level dropped from 72 percent in 1999 to 36 percent this year. "Honestly, we're a little dumbfounded by the results," said Laurens Superintendent Romona Wenck, who said it can be hard to motivate eighth-graders to take any state-mandated test seriously.
But English scores may also have dropped, Wenck said, because the district has spent the last two years focusing on beefing up its math and science curriculum. She said realigning the English/language arts curriculum was put on the back burner because English scores in 1999 were high — higher, in fact, than any other district in Otsego County.
Sigh. Unfortunately, I think we're going to see more of this. I'm all for testing, which should surprise no one, but when testing is driving so much of the curriculum, you will see this sort of rapid-switching of focus. While the students were doing well in English, it sounds like the necessary steps to make sure they continued to do well were dropped so that math and science could take center stage. Acheiving a balance is difficult to do.