In the land of the 3’s

The test scores were unquestionably good news this week, but they had their light and dark sides.

The reduction in Level 1s to single digits in almost every grade in ELA and math was amazing. Not long ago, people called Level 1students “unteachable.” But teachers used every trick in the backpack–small-groups, one-on-one tutoring, differentiated instruction, grouping and pairing and dozens of others–and these students really moved.

The UFT, fortified with new data-analysis resources, looked at where all the new Level 3 kids came from this year.

What we found was that in math, Level 1s and Level 2s both moved up. So this year’s gains did not appear to reflect a “bubble kids” strategy of focusing only on the high Level 2s. Instead, students across the spectrum moved up. In addition, there were small but welcome gains in Level 4s (with the exception of grade 3, which went down). In the elementary grades for the most part a quarter of kids scored at Level 4. In the upper grades that falls off a little but not too much.

The math chart here [PDF] shows the increases and decreases at each level over the last two years.

ELA was a different story. Yes, the gains were good and occurred in every grade. Again, there were reductions in Level 1s and Level 2s. BUT there were also drops in Level 4s. Part of the increase in Level 3s recently has come from decreases in Level 4s, especially in the middle schools. In fact, as Eduwonkette showed in two different blog posts this week, 4th grade Level 4s have declined by 10 percentage points since 2003, and Level 4s decreased in all grades 5-7 this year.

One harrowing little anecdote from around the schools this week: the valedictorian of a large District 26 middle school this year is a Level 3. The staff there says this has never happened before.

Here is the chart for ELA [PDF], showing the good news and the bad.

Spend a few minutes with these charts and you can learn a lot about the scores.

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