In the first sign of how New York City public schoolchildren fared during the pandemic, new test score data released Wednesday showed sharp declines in math but steady performance in reading for students in the nation’s largest school system.
The results of the state’s standardized exams highlighted the uneven effects of the past two and a half years on children’s learning. Fewer than 38 percent of third through eighth graders demonstrated proficiency in math, compared with about 46 percent of students before the pandemic, the last time the exams were given to most of the city’s schoolchildren.
The overall reading scores, however, stood apart from broader national trends that have shown significant setbacks in literacy for many students. But the results also showed that the youngest children lost ground compared to their peers. Fewer than half of third graders, many of whom learned remotely in earlier grades when many of the fundamentals of reading are taught, were proficient in reading, for example, down four percentage points compared to their peers in 2019.
The results, which come after years of steady gains in achievement in both subjects before the pandemic, also showed that students who had already long been behind, particularly Hispanic pupils, fared worse as education was disrupted.
The results add pressure to Mayor Eric Adams and the schools chancellor, David C. Banks, as they attempt to get students across the system back on track — and may prompt fresh questions about the administration’s cuts to the school budget as a battle continues to play out in court.
“My biggest concern is inequity in the effects of the pandemic,” said Daniel Koretz, a professor at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education who studies testing. “What are we actually going to do to make up for it? The data even before Covid were not very encouraging in terms of how we were dealing with equity problems. More of the same is not going to do it.”
When New York City students last took the tests in 2019, about 46 percent of them passed the math exam, and 47 percent passed in English language arts.
That progress clearly slowed for some students when classrooms were shuttered as the virus swept through New York and learning moved online. From stretches of remote learning to the chaos that erupted as new variants led to school and classroom closures, education was disrupted and often unsteady for many students while they navigated other challenges of the pandemic.
The results follow this month’s release of stark national test results that showed that 9-year-olds who sat for that test this year were far behind their peers who took it in early 2020, on average scoring five points lower in reading, the biggest decline in 30 years. For the lowest performing students, the drop was 10 points.
New York’s exams — which all third- through eighth-grade students are typically asked to take during the spring — represent a broad window into how city children in particular have fared since the disruption began, though testing experts have cautioned against drawing sweeping conclusions from the data.
“The big question for New York will be what kind of information can they provide to the public about differences in the tested population from one time period to the next?” said James Kemple, the executive director of New York University’s Research Alliance for New York City Schools. “Frankly, it’s probably more likely to be of use as a baseline going forward than a comparison with past history.”
The format and rigor of the state tests have undergone major changes over the past two decades, making longer-term comparisons next to impossible. This year’s results, for example, do not offer insight into how current students are doing compared with children in the late 2000s or even the mid-2010s.
But the relatively comparable 2018 and 2019 tests show gaps have remained similar between Black and Hispanic students and their peers. Three years ago, there was a roughly 38 percentage point gap between the pass rates of Black and white students on the math exam. The difference held steady this year.
Overall, about 21 percent of New York City’s Black students and 23 percent of Hispanic students passed this year’s math exam, compared with 59 percent of white students and 68 percent of Asian American students.
The pass rates for each group were more than six points lower than their peers in 2019, while Hispanic students scored nearly 10 points lower.
The scores on the English exam were largely unexpected as schools across the nation have reported that more students are missing reading benchmarks.
Still, the results Thursday showed major differences in how children fared through the pandemic by grade level. Students in fourth grade, for example, averaged about six points lower on the reading test than their counterparts in 2019; those in seventh grade scored nearly 10 points higher.
Students with disabilities also continued to struggle on both exams: Fewer than 1 in 5 students in special education passed either test.
Testing experts have warned that this year’s results hold limited value when taken alone, noting that the makeup of children reflected in the scores may differ from 2019, and that last year’s disruptions make the scores tough to weigh.
The tests were canceled in 2020, and last year, city officials allowed students across the state to opt in to the exams. About 1 in 5 city students did so, skewing the results and rendering them largely unusable.
City officials have declined to release data from diagnostic tests that schools were required to give students throughout last year to check their progress.
On Wednesday, before the test scores were released, Mr. Banks said at a news conference that he is less concerned with “what the results have told us” and “much more focused on what’s the path forward.”
Research suggests that intensive one-on-one or small group tutoring can be one of the best, but also most expensive, ways for schoolchildren to recover. The administration has required elementary schools to adopt curricula centered on phonics and the science of reading to improve literacy, and Mr. Banks said on Wednesday he was open to other strategies.
The state exams are required by the federal government as a form of accountability to ensure districts and schools are making progress in improving the achievement of groups who have traditionally performed below their peers, including Black and Hispanic students and those from low-income families. Underperforming schools can be required to form improvement plans, or receive additional oversight.
But parent groups, teachers unions and some education advocates argue the tests are flawed and only provide a limited look at student achievement.
About 10 percent of city students opted out of at least one of the exams this year — up from about 4 percent in 2019. The higher opt-out rate has added to the warnings from education experts against drawing too much from the year’s results.
The results released on Wednesday leave many questions unanswered, including where city students stand compared to the rest of the New York’s pupils.
Statewide data is typically released in late August or September. But the state said this year’s process was delayed because of changes in how the test data was prepared and reported.
The State Education Department last week permitted individual districts to release their own results, though several of New York’s largest districts, including Rochester, Syracuse and Buffalo, have not yet announced when they would share their data. Overall testing data for charter schools were also unavailable.
State officials said this week that complete results would be released this fall.
