3rd-Grade Reading Scores Indicate Number Held Back Will Double
By ELISSA GOOTMAN (NY TIMES, June 4, 2004)

Officials pointed to signs of progress, particularly in math, where the number of students passing rose 5.1 percentage points.

At a news conference yesterday, Mr. Klein noted that overall, third-grade scores had improved slightly, with the proportion of students passing the math test going up six percentage points and the proportion of third graders passing the English tests rising 2.3 points.

He spent little time talking about the number of children who are not likely to be promoted, saying the number "was smaller than we expected," adding that he looked "forward, obviously, to reducing that number further."

Carmen Fariña, deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, said the $8 million for third-grade preparation had been well spent but might take longer to produce results.

"You can't do this like a computer - input, output," she said. "Kids take time."

Other city officials felt that the money was poorly spent. Some said the relatively stable proportion of students in the lowest level proved that Mr. Bloomberg should have delayed his promotion policy a year, to give third graders more time to prepare.

Eva S. Moskowitz, chairwoman of the City Council Education Committee, said it seemed clear to her that the test preparations, "which were fairly costly, did not make a significant dent."

The City Council speaker, Gifford Miller, who is expected to challenge Mr. Bloomberg for the mayoralty, was harsher, saying in a statement, "Sadly, as predicted, the mayor's plans to spend millions of dollars on test preparation for third graders this year has failed."

Some critics said it was unfair to invest so much importance in the third-grade scores in a year when the school system had undergone so many major changes, from a new educational bureaucracy to a uniform reading and math curriculum in all but the best city schools.

Randi Weingarten, president of the United Federation of Teachers, said that if third-grade scores are to determine promotion, children and their teachers should have been alerted at the start of the school year, not halfway through.

"There was a lot of newness, there was a lot of confusion, and the school system made this a very high-stakes exam, not at the beginning of the year but only a month and a half before the exam," she said.

Norm Fruchter, director of the New York University Institute for Education and Social Policy, said he was surprised that city and state test scores did not plummet all around, given the magnitude of the transition.

"The structural changes that were introduced in the system were so comprehensive and sweeping that they introduced an enormous amount of instability," he said.

The state scores were announced in Albany by Richard P. Mills, the state education commissioner. Mr. Mills suggested that the statewide decline in fourth-grade results could be linked to tough economic times and said the decline in the city's fourth-grade English scores should not be interpreted as a black mark on the city's new literacy program.

The chancellor's critics said it was just that, and they wondered whether he had released the citywide scores on the same day as the state scores were announced in an effort to minimize the reaction to the drop in fourth-grade English scores.

Mr. Klein said he released the city's information in an effort to be helpful and open and noted that the state released its results later than usual. "The public should have all of the data that we have," he said.

The third-grade scores revived the debate over Mr. Bloomberg's promotion policy. It is intended to ensure that lagging children do not fall further behind later in school, when it is virtually impossible for nonreaders to keep up. Some educators and children's advocates have said that holding children back is not the answer.

The policy has been shrouded in controversy, from Mr. Bloomberg's decision to fire and replace two members of an educational oversight panel who had planned to vote against it, to revelations that some children had a peek at test questions when their teachers used last year's test for practice.