New York State Education Department proudly claimed that the Common Core based, high stakes tests showed that the small improvements were proof that their policy is working. Of course, what NYSED failed to mention was that the State lowered the "cut scores" that accounted for most, if not all of the improvements. Furthermore, many more students decided to "opt out" this time. Finally, the NYSED Commissioner's conclusion that "poverty is not destiny"is not supported by the very information that he presented in the press conference.
Interestingly, is what NYSED Commissioner John King said in "putting the lipstick on the pig", by hailing the results as showing that the State's education policy is working. Moreover, he claimed that poverty is not destiny crowd has been proven wrong by the results. Really? He showed a scatter graph that indicated that some schools with high poverty levels did well. Of course he failed to mention that the schools were either screened academically or were the Charter schools that have exclusionary policies to eliminate many of the poor performing or disruptive students before they reach the third grade. The scatter graph does show that the deeper the poverty rate of a school, the lower the test scores. It seems that Mr. King should go back to school and understand what his own graph shows before he makes claims that are false. A column by "Ed the Apple"explains further about the State's flawed conclusion as Mr. Goodman shows that there were no high achieving schools in zip codes with deep poverty. Furthermore, based on the NYS data, many schools in the predominately White/Asian District 26 had a 70% passing rate while the heavily Black District 27 had many schools that had close to a 0% passing rate! No racial/income academic achievement gap there. It must all be about the teachers Mr. King.