Moving in the Right Direction
By Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
I’ve always believed that if we set high academic standards
for our city’s students, and surround them with the right
support and encouragement, they will achieve more than we can
ever imagine. This is the guiding philosophy behind our ambitious
efforts to reform our public school system. And recently, with
the release of the results from this year’s State English
Language Arts exam, we have even more proof that it’s
working.
The number of fourth
graders in the city who are reading and writing at grade
level has now reached a record high. Nearly 60 percent met
or exceeded the State’s standards—a
10 percentage point increase over last year when fewer than
50 percent did so. We won’t be satisfied `til we are
closer to 100 percent—but the fact that we had the biggest
one-year gain in reading scores ever is very heartening.
Perhaps most encouraging is the progress made by segments
of the student population that have struggled the most in the
past. For instance, the five regions that had the weakest performances
last year were the same five that made the biggest improvements
this year. And for the first time since the State began administering
the test in 1999, more than half of the fourth-grade Hispanic
and African-American students taking it met or exceeded standards.
There are a number
of factors behind our fourth graders’ stunning
improvement. One of the most significant is our decision, early
last spring, to finally end “social promotion” in
the third grade—the practice of automatically promoting
kids, regardless of whether they’re ready for a higher
level of work. For the remainder of that school year, we identified
the third graders who were in danger of being held back, and
provided them with the intervention programs they needed, such
as our Summer Success Academy. By the time the new school year
began last September, we had promoted roughly the same number
of kids to fourth grade as had been promoted the previous year.
The difference was that, for the first time, every one of those
students was ready to do fourth grade work. The fourth grade
State scores confirm this; nearly 90 percent of third graders
who attended the Summer Success Academy passed the test.
The scores in eighth
grade, however, also highlight how much more work still needs
to be done. Fewer than one-third of eighth-graders met or
exceeded the State literacy standards—down slightly
from the previous year. This is, in part, because eighth-graders
haven’t had the benefit of our new intervention efforts
which, by and large, we’ve concentrated on the lower
grades. But that’s about to change. We will soon invest
$40 million to improve performance in our middle schools through
a number of initiatives, including an expanded summer program.
Of course, when it
comes to state scores, let’s not
make the mistake of reducing their meaning to just a bunch
of numbers. Remember, they represent our children—and
the potential we believe they all can realize. All New Yorkers
should be happy—not because we can point to a positive
figure on a page—but because we are laying a solid foundation
for our kids to succeed later in life. Everyone is working
harder—principals, parents, students, and, above all,
our teachers.
When we ended social
promotion in the third grade last year, it was a drastic
but necessary change. It was imperative that we be honest
about who was learning and who wasn’t. These
latest test scores remind us that we need to confront our problems,
not cover them up. And when we do that, and focus our resources
and our energy on our kids, great things can happen.#
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