Unmasking the Deception: The Truth Behind the State Education Department's Test Score Delays

In a shocking revelation, the State Education Department (SED) and its governing body, the Board of Regents, have been exposed for their deliberate attempts to obscure the dismal performance of public schools, particularly those serving minority students. The current practice of releasing 'preliminary' test results in late August and 'verified' results in November is a carefully crafted smokescreen that serves only to delay the release of crucial information. Children in grades 3-8 took statewide math and English Language Arts exams in the spring, and the machines used to score these multiple-choice tests can rapidly provide results. Yet, SED only released the preliminary data last week, and only to districts, not parents. This delay is purportedly to 'inform instructional decisions and individualized learning plans for students during the 2024-25 school year. ' However, with the new school term beginning in just under 10 days, this information is far too late to be of any use for student placements or assessing the current curricula. SED's actions raise serious questions about their intentions. If they truly wanted this information to be useful for the new school year, they would have never allowed the June release date to slip. Instead, they have focused on making the information less useful for anything except making schools appear less bad. Last year, SED crafted new 'learning standards' to hide the learning loss caused by prolonged COVID school closings and farcical remote-learning. This year, they continue to paper over the lack of achievement by allowing districts to release preliminary reading and math scores they can spin before the new school term begins. The preliminary results for Grades 3-8 show proficiency rates of 46% in English (a 2-percentage-point drop from last year) and 52% in math (no change from 2023). These initial releases, however, leave out any data for English Language Learners, making it impossible for the public to learn about the performance of the 36,000 'asylum seeker' kids in NYC's public schools. They also do not show charter-school results separately, presumably to avoid making regular public schools look bad. Despite the success of charter schools like the Success Academy network, which boasts proficiency rates of 82% in English and 95% in math, SED and the Regents continue to despise charters. They would rather let other kids struggle than admit charters are on to something. The testing smokescreens employed by SED and the Regents prove they do not have children's (or parents' or taxpayers') best interests in mind. If Gov. Hochul and the Legislature's leaders truly cared, they would require SED to release final state assessment data no later than June 1. Rein in the anti-kid educrats before they succeed in making standardized testing completely irrelevant - an endgame that is alarmingly close.