State officials have been working to minimize concerns for years as they prepared to introduce a new Algebra Regents exam. “They’re not convinced that we can get to those higher learning standards.” “We’re in the midst of a phase-in process that people in the field are concerned is not achievable,” former deputy education commissioner Ken Wagner acknowledged in June, in an uncharacteristically grim assessment of a policy that he helped implement. If students are struggling to pass this year’s algebra exam, many are asking, what does that mean for future students after the state makes the test even harder to pass, something it plans to do in three years? The responses reflect an uneasiness that teachers, principals and district officials continue to have about the pace of New York’s adoption of the Common Core learning standards and the new tests meant to measure them, the state’s most ambitious changes to education policy in recent years. Last week, Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said she had heard the pass rates were “about the same” as last year. But state education officials say a review of the exam and its scoring is now underway - signaling that they are open to altering their course, or are preparing to respond to the concerns. Whether that holds true across the city and state is not yet clear, since data for this year is not yet available. One month after high school freshmen across the state took a new, harder Algebra Regents exam for the first time without an older version available as a fallback option, teachers say unexpected numbers of their students didn’t pass and some of their best-prepared fell short of the score needed to qualify for an advanced diploma. New York’s cautious transition to the Common Core standards in high school math is off to a rocky start.
0 kommentar(er)
