Independent voices of New York City public school parents
NYC Public School Parents: Bring Back the Traditional, One-Hundred-Point Exam?
Bring Back the Traditional, One-Hundred-Point Exam?
Much of the dismay over the recent downscaling of students' ostensible proficiency and academic readiness has come from parents, community leaders, and others who were not intimately familiar with the underlying metrics of the NYSED and Regents tests.What does a "Level 2" or "Level 3" really signify? What is a 618 ELA score, or a 650? If a child is a 578, what does it mean and what is a parent supposed to do, if anything? How can a child's one-day exam end up with a score of 780? What does a raw score of 28 mean? If a child brings home a 70 on his/her Algebra I Regents exam, isn't that a good thing?
For probably most if not all of the last century, most public school grades have been measured on a scale of 1 - 100, with 65 being the normal "cut score" for passing (i.e., content proficiency, albeit rather minimal at 65). This system has been the height of simplicity, easily understood by virtually one hundred percent of the public. If a son or daughter brought home a test score of 78, every parent know EXACTLY where the child stood on the