This story has been updated with clarification from the New York State Department of Education.
New York state is changing the minimum scores required to be considered proficient on state math and English language arts (ELA) tests after seeing lower scores last year.
The Times Union reports a scoring committee that reports to the Board of Regents said Monday that new performance standards will be set after last year’s tests for students in grades 3-8 failed to show improvement compared with pre-pandemic levels. In 2019, 45.4% of students statewide were proficient in ELA and 46.7% were proficient in math; in 2022, 46.6% showed proficiency in ELA, a slight uptick, while just 38.6% were proficient in math.
In Central New York, proficiency levels in math fell in 128 out of 162 schools, while ELA scores fell in more than half. Three schools saw proficiency levels drop 20% or more for ELA, and 11 saw levels down the same in math.
