| Releases & Statements
It’s ridiculous
for Mayor Bloomberg and Chancellor Klein to boast about a rise
in test scores when the students who need the most help didn’t
even take the test. A head-to-head comparison between this year’s
scores and last year’s is worthless because ESL students
were exempted for the first time this year. The number of City
students taking the test dropped in every school district but
one, nearly 6,000 fewer in all.
But that’s not stopping the
Mayor and Chancellor from patting themselves on the back while
they allow thousands of students to pass on to the next grade
untested, without the skills they need to succeed. If that’s
not social promotion, I don’t know what is.
An independent analysis
is needed to determine whether our schools are actually improving
or the Mayor is just taking political advantage of a watered-down
test and a new policy that lets many unprepared children slip
through the cracks.
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