This year, for the first time, high schools students must score at least 65 on the English exam, as well as on four other state tests — math, science, global history and United States history — to earn a diploma.There is no excuse for this. None.
The three-hour English test includes 25 multiple choice questions; one essay; and two short responses that are each supposed to be a paragraph long. A short response is scored 0 to 2 points. A student who gets 1’s on both responses has a pretty good shot at scoring 65 and passing the exam.
Here, from the state teachers’ scoring guide, is an excerpt from a short response written by an unnamed student. The guide says it deserves a score of 1:
These two Charater have very different mind Sets because they are creative in away that no one would imagen just put clay together and using leaves to create Art.
Theoretically, passing the English Regents would mean that a student could read and write.
Here is the topic sentence of another student’s short response that, according to the state guide, also deserves a 1:
In the poem, the poets use of language was very depth into it.
Despite Focus on Data, Standards for Diploma May Still Lack Rigor By MICHAEL WINERIP Published: February 5, 2012
Now that I'm teaching the most remedial college writing course at my local college, I see how quickly students can pick up grammatically correct and coherent writing, not to mention proper spelling, when you keep them on track and on task. Granted, it's not so easy keeping students on track and on task when you see them just twice a week for just 14 weeks, but NY public schools have these kids 40 weeks a year for 13 years.
A couple of months ago, Ed and I went to the funeral of our neighbor and close friend's father. He was a 6th grade teacher in the
Each of the papers was crystal clear, coherent, grammatically correct, and very dear. The children's prose was vivid and alive, and we saw our friend's father in their words. We remembered him.
In 6th grade, in the
The past is a foreign country.
ReplyDeleteThese children have been cheated, and so have we.
ReplyDeleteThe article says this year's Regents 'English exam appears to be the easiest in memory’. I've seen these problems in past tests, but it just continues to get worse.
ReplyDelete2012 New York Regents ‘English exam appears to be the easiest in memory’
Morning now - I just re-read the post because I wanted Ed to see it & I found a comma splice!
ReplyDeleteOne of the mysteries of teaching writing is that talking is easy, but writing is hard.
ReplyDeleteWhy is that?
The sentiment amongst linguists who think about K-12 education seems to be that you should demonstrate to your students the fact that they already know grammar: they are already experts in the grammar of their native language.
ReplyDeleteI did that in yesterday's class, and everyone looked pretty amazed.
We parsed this sentence: "The froobling greebies snarfed the granflons that boofed nargily with great libidity."
Anyway, back to my central point, which is that native speakers ALREADY KNOW GRAMMAR.
Teaching kids to write grammatical sentences isn't hard.
2nd language learners are a whole other story. Writing in a second language is fantastically challenging.
Didn't we have a thread about the Regents long ago that talked about how, taking into account the luck of guessing, you could pass with a really bad score?
ReplyDeleteI remember an open house our school had years ago where they talked about the scores on our state test; whether they were going up or down. Since math results were lumped into categories like number sense and problem solving, there was no longer any connection to specific skills. I was the only one looking at the actual test questions and raw percent correct scores. All they could determine was that they needed to work harder on problem solving. They really didn't have a low level understanding of what was wrong. How could they possibly fix the problem?
What do the better students think of the Regents? Do they just find it an annoying waste of time? Is it included on their college transcripts? I'll have to ask whether our state tests are included in what is sent to colleges. What, specifically, do colleges want to see from high schools when they send student records/transcripts?
"In the poem, the poets use of language was very depth into it."
ReplyDeleteMaybe they were looking for "voice". I was just reading ee cummings' l(a poem yesterday. Maybe we just can't "see" what's in the sentence above. Math people are just too concrete sequential. That must be it.
Has any state thought about using the SAT or ACT for their state test? Even though there are things I don't like about these tests, effort in that direction is more meaningful, especially when their goal is to get more kids ready for college. Heck, why not just use Accuplacer?
ReplyDelete>>What do the better students think of the Regents? Do they just find it an annoying waste of time? Is it included on their college transcripts?
ReplyDeleteCertain Regent's exams are very tricky...for ex. Alg1 has multipart ?s that throw a lot of students if the teachers did not prepare them to present the solution in a detailed, easily read format. Excellent students find them easy if the teacher has included all the units that were supposed to be included in the course and if the testmakers used the correct definitions.
Yes, the scores are included on the transcripts. Scoring above a certain point is a pre-req for certain freshman courses in SUNY colleges.
In my district, the Regent's exam counts for 20% of the course grade. It has a tendency to differentiate among students...many go in with a 100 average, but few come out keeping it.
The SAT math score used to be used in leiu of the Regent's Alg I exam; mainly for students who were taking R. Alg I before 8th grade.
I have a Regents Algebra 1 story.
ReplyDeleteLast summer I learned from a friend that her son had failed the test. He had been placed in the slower class, the class that has two years to take all of Algebra 1, and he failed the Regents exam.
I gather that for those two years he had the same teacher Chris had for two years of middle school.
I worked with her son for maybe 5 sessions, and he scored a 78 when he re-took the test in August. If I'd had another week, he would have passed with honors.
I didn't know the curriculum, I was having to Google stuff & get Barry to explain things to me (it's not just an algebra course; it's a mishmosh of different things); I had to refresh my memory while also trying to reteach everything to my friend's son.
Five study sessions with a teacher who doesn't know what she's doing, and he passes the exam.
So now he goes into the district's pass rates.
I just talked to my neighbor. Those papers were from 1955!
ReplyDeleteI loved her dad. We always went on long walks with the dogs, whenever he was in town.
He taught EVERYTHING. In the kids' papers they mention all the subjects he was teaching --- it was EVERYTHING, including P.E.
He became a high school principal later on.
(I think it was high school.)
This was in Los Angeles. The city school system.
I was telling my neighbor: what my students desperately need is practice. And it is very hard to give them enough practice now (or to know what kind of practice they need. I'm learning that by trial and error.)
ReplyDeleteMy neighbor said, "Practice has been villified."
She thinks the villification of practice may be the core reason why our schools are so bad.
I've thought that for a long time. If I had to choose one problem with our schools, it would be the obsession with "thinking" and "understanding" over practice.
re: The froobling greebies snarfed the granflons that boofed nargily with great libidity.
ReplyDeleteI was re-reading a passage from one of Barry's articles, which had to do with Authentic vs. Inauthentic assignments, and I thought: MAN. I better hope no one from the Education Police finds out I had my students find the dependent clause in The froobling greebies snarfed the granflons that boofed nargily with great libidity.
What you say applies to math teaching as well.
ReplyDeleteI was just villified by some commenters on a recent article (Being Outwitted by Stupidity) for stating that traditional math teaching has been mischaracterized.
credits: I found the froobling greebies sentence in an article by Kristin Denham.
ReplyDeleteoops - that link goes to the handout.
ReplyDeleteHere's the article:
Linguistics First, Then Grammar by Kristin Denham
Steve wrote: "Has any state thought about using the SAT or ACT for their state test?"
ReplyDeleteYes, there are several states, I think, that require all seniors to take the ACT.
(I don't know the details, so correct me if I'm wrong - )
Barry - I had a jolt re-reading your article about differentiated instruction & understanding by design!
ReplyDeleteI've been devising the most inauthentic exercises humanly possible ----- !
Two trains leave a station has got nothing on froobling greebies.
I don't think there's anything shocking about the froobling greebies. It's basically the same idea as "Jabberwocky", isn't it?
ReplyDeleteThe dependent clause is "that boofed nargily with great libidity." Do I get a gold star?
"Yes, there are several states, I think, that require all seniors to take the ACT."
ReplyDeleteI know that Michigan requires all to take the ACT (they pay for it), but do they use it for their state test in high school? It would be interesting to see what they consider to be a proficient ACT score. We need more than a focus on a proficiency cutoff.
"If I had to choose one problem with our schools, it would be the obsession with "thinking" and "understanding" over practice."
ReplyDeleteIf they can make learning seem like a complex process, then maybe people will overlook it when kids don't know 7*8. Rather than have a category on a state test called "Do they know the times table?", they have a category called "number sense". That way, when the results stink, nobody will really know what it means.
Our high school sent out an email today to all showing the latest state test results. The first number is for our high school in 2011, the second number is for 2012, and the third number is the state average.
Reading Proficient 87% 92% 75% Writing Proficient 56% 60% 52%
Math Proficient 48% 48% 30%
Percents look better when they refer to the number of students who don't flunk. For math, it looks bad either way.
**She thinks the villification of practice may be the core reason why our schools are so bad.
ReplyDeleteI've thought that for a long time. If I had to choose one problem with our schools, it would be the obsession with "thinking" and "understanding" over practice.**
And somehow this was all linked with the vilification of "content" as well -- the elevation of the idea that no one has to have any knowledge actually in their heads.
If you don't have to have anything in your head it turns out that thinking and understanding are impossible. However, that detail seems to have eluded many "reformers" who think it means you must just double down on teaching "strategies" for "problem-solving."
Too bad that the problem is lack of knowledge.
My mother's voice(in my head) has admonished me while rereading my posting and requires me to note that "no one has to have any knowledge in HIS or HER head(NOT PLURAL).
ReplyDeleteThat voice made no sense to me for years, positively years. And then, I got it. Well, most of the time.
Steve: The Prairie State Achievement Exam is part ACT, part state-developed (ISBE) test questions. (The Prairie State is Illinois.)
ReplyDeletehttp://www.isbe.net/assessment/psae.htm
Wow, that's really sad to see a high school senior writing so poorly. That sample looks like what my 6 y.o. might write in a first draft. Though he probably would write "deep" instead of "depth" in the second sample. I don't think a native English speaker would make that particular word choice mistake.
ReplyDelete