What will the future hold for some of the most controversial new developments in education policy? A number of issues are poised to shape K–12 education over the coming years from the Common Core to the equity gap.

Departments are tackling de facto tracking and equity gaps.

De facto tracking and its harmful effects are a reality—and they exist across all grade levels. Efforts to eliminate the inequalities of tracking are therefore being led at the district level. “Sometimes, what kids do all the way through high school is really set by what they take in sixth grade,” ICSD Chief Academic Officer Liddy Coyle said.

During the transition between fifth grade and sixth grade, teachers from both grade levels determine what level of classes the student takes in middle school, and by extension, throughout high school. “Who is getting put in what classes and for what reason? […] Do fifth-grade teachers really understand the sixth [and] seventh-grade tracks that really happen? We’re working on answering those questions and on making it clear how all students can access different courses.” Coyle said that the district is looking into what kinds of choices students can make after sixth grade and in the middle of each grade level. “Right now it’s really hard to shift once you’re not in that accelerated row of classes,” she said.

Stark differences in academic preparedness and achievement exist among racial and economic groups under the current system. “There’s disproportionality in achievement for black, Hispanic, and special-ed students across the board in both ELA and math in all grade levels,” district evaluation officer Lynn VanDeWeert said. “That is absolutely something that we’re looking at.”

Administrators and teachers agree that the gap exists between accelerated and non-accelerated students and that race and class imbalances are reinforced in the acceleration process. These gaps received closer attention in math classes because of the dynamic created by the existence of separate accelerated levels that are not present in other subjects. “Fewer students who are considered economically disadvantaged and African-American students are enrolled in Honors Algebra,” VanDeWeert said of the enrollment gap between accelerated and non-accelerated students in Algebra 1. Although the administration recognizes problems in the achievement gap, there will not be any changes in the math curriculum and course catalog for the next school year, Coyle said.

Analyses of state assessment data on racial and economic subgroups clearly show the enrollment gap. According to the New York State Education Department database, 13 percent of the 205 non-accelerated IHS students who took the Algebra 1 Common Core in 2015 as ninth graders were African Americans, while among the 124 accelerated eighth-grade students at DeWitt and Boynton, the number was 7 percent. About 44 percent of those who took Algebra 1 and didn’t accelerate in math were economically disadvantaged; among accelerated eighth-grade students, 10 percent were economically disadvantaged at both middle schools. The public data reports for individual schools, districts, counties, and the state are available at the State Education Department website (www.data.nysed.gov).

Non-accelerated eighth-graders have been shown to be underprepared for state math assessments. At Boynton and DeWitt, 25 percent of non-accelerated eighth graders passed the New York State math assessment last spring. While an improvement from 2014’s 14 percent, it is not clear whether the increase in score indicates an improvement of overall student achievement, as a far smaller number of students—166, compared to the preceding year’s 261—chose to take the exam.

To address the achievement gaps reinforced by de facto tracking, departments at IHS are leading the way with the push towards allowing students to move freely between different levels of instruction. These courses, called “heterogeneous” classes, help remove the rigidity of the divisions between Regents, Honors, and AP-level classes and reduce the risk and difficulty associated with moving between these levels.

“The high school is so divided academically,” English department chair Jean Amodeo said, referring to the divisions of the student body perpetuated by de facto tracking. “Much effort needs to be put into closing gaps, encouraging lower- or middle-level students to try out more difficult classes. Heterogeneous classes are extremely successful in addressing this.”

The English department is offering a new Honors English 11–AP Language and Composition course for juniors next year. In that class, students get 10 weeks to decide whether to take the class for honors or for AP credit. Either way, all students will prepare for and take the New York State English Regents Exams, and students who elect to take the course for AP credit will complete additional coursework and be required to take the AP exam. Citing that AP Language students at IHS scored an average of 4.5 last year, far higher than the global average of 3, Amodeo said that more medium-level students should be encouraged to take this class.

The English department is adding a new English 10 Humanities class to replace the multidisciplinary Combined curriculum, making it possible for students interested in the humanities to choose between Honors Global 10 and AP European History instead of forcing them to take the latter. These classes, Amodeo said, will encourage students who were previously unsure about taking the upper-level class just as other heterogeneous classes like AVID have in past years.

The science department has shrunk the number of classes offered to freshmen from five—Environmental Science, Earth Science, Living Environment Biology, Honors Molecular Biology, and Honors Ecological Biology—to Living Environment Biology and Honors Biology. Instead of effectively segregating students into five different tracks in science classes, the classes have become heterogeneous, science department chair Carlan Gray said. “The situation is infinitely better now,” Gray said.

Amodeo praised the “tremendous successes” of Living Environment Biology and Regents-Honors Global History—both heterogeneous classes—in increasing performance among both the lower- and upper-level students. However, she said that the perception of an achievement gap between tracks and a feeling of separation within the student body still exists.

ICSD is trying to make honors-credit requirements consistent between accelerated and non-accelerated classes.

There currently is not an honors-credit policy in place in the district. That means that each class and each department in ICSD has different standards on which to determine whether students are eligible to receive honors credit or take an honors class as opposed to a Regents class.

Recently, discrepancies in course expectations between Algebra 1 classes in the middle schools and the high school have stirred impassioned debate. For accelerated eighth graders enrolled in Honors Algebra 1, students qualify for honors credit if they maintain an average of 65 or above. In comparison, non-accelerated students face tougher standards—once they take RH Algebra 1 in ninth grade, they must get an 80 or above to receive honors credit.

These inconsistencies in honors-credit policies between non-accelerated and accelerated classes are tightly interwoven with concerns about achievement gaps and tracking. IHS math teacher Steve Weissburg said that of the 205 students who took RH Algebra 1 as ninth graders in 2015, 10 percent received honors credit. In comparison, 100 percent of the 124 accelerated eighth graders taking Honors Algebra 1 received honors credit, Weissburg said, adding that 74 percent of the ninth graders would have received honors credit under the middle school’s policy. “If you’re teaching an honors class, students should be excelling to that level,” said IHS math teacher Todd Noyes, who has taught Algebra for four years. “You shouldn’t give them credit just for maintaining.”

Discussions about how to achieve consistency between the three buildings started when IHS introduced the RH Algebra 1 course in 2012. The heterogeneous class warranted the creation of different course expectations for Regents and Honors students. Chief Academic Officer Liddy Coyle said that she began her involvement in the negotiations last summer. “I’m […] saying we need to be consistent,” Coyle said. But discussions with teachers from all three departments failed to yield any consistency that all parties at the middle schools and high school could agree upon, she said.

 

Common Core standards are great, but the implementation was coordinated awfully.

Chief Academic Officer Liddy Coyle said, “The Common Core standards are pretty strong.” A set of standards mandated by New York State, the Common Core tells teachers what the state demands they need to teach. Separate from the standards are the more problematic assessments that are made based on the standards (see next section).

After implementing these standards, the state put out a statewide survey and invited the public to respond to each standard, district evaluation officer Lynn VanDeWeert said. The responses to the survey are available to the public on www.engageny.org. “Overwhelmingly, the feedback was in support of those standards,” VanDeWeert said. Based on the feedback from the survey, the state is gathering educators, administrators, and parents in PTAs to look at the standards that were seen as needing some revision. “There might be some revision in New York for some of the Common Core standards, but that’s going to be over the next year,” VanDeWeert said.

In some subject areas, however, sets of more challenging standards that the Common Core introduced took a toll on assessment scores. Some teachers in the IHS math department said the use of “modules,” a set of optional lesson plans provided by the state, was part of the problem. “Modules were overwhelming to students,” IHS math teacher Todd Noyes said. “There are a lot of things in them that are unnecessary.” The Common Core’s sudden implementation also made it difficult for many teachers to learn those new standards in time for the assessments..

Meanwhile, in some departments, such as the English department, teachers had a chance to look over multiple versions of the test, prepare students for new standards, and carefully design curricula to fit the exam, IHS English department chair Jean Amodeo said. This year’s juniors were the first ones at IHS to take the new Common Core assessment. “We had excellent performance in English Common Core this year,” she said.

State testing will change, but won’t go away.

In the last several years, states tried to develop Common Core–aligned tests. They then took a popularity nosedive as a number of states and districts nationwide bailed on the assessments. With the Common Core examinations fading in 2016, Americans are moving towards a situation where states will struggle to develop the best test possible, because these tests are going to determine the quality of the schools whether they like the tests or not.

As in several other states, New York’s state tests are under public scrutiny for several reasons—state tests are tied to teacher evaluations, they were extremely long and poorly designed, and students did not do very well on them. And Chief Academic Officer Liddy Coyle is not a huge fan of them.

“We’ve been giving state tests since the early 2000s, but they’ve never been very helpful for instruction,” she said, citing that students and teachers get the results after the school year is over. For Coyle, the tests mainly serve a purpose for the state, except in the district, results from these tests are used, among multiple other measures, to determine whether certain students need special assistance. But other than that, the tests are just one piece of data for the district. “I personally don’t think they should be tied to teacher evaluations,” she said, saying student performance on state tests should have no bearing on whether teachers get tenure or not.

District Evaluation Officer Lynn VanDeWeert added that the difficulty of the Common Core exams have also led families to opt out from exams. Especially in the ELA exam administered to students in grades 3–8, there was a focus on close reading that required the tests to get longer, but not enough time was allotted for students to complete the task. “There was a perception that there were too many passages to read and too many questions associated with that,” she said. “Families just felt the tests weren’t appropriate for the students.”

VanDeWeert said that for the 2016 state assessments, the state included a reduced number of questions, eliminated the time limit, and gathered a team of 22 teachers to review all questions before they were placed in the test. She added that over the next three years, all of the assessment questions will be written by NYS educators rather than by Pearson or Questar. Nevertheless, VanDeWeert said, “these assessments aren’t going to go anywhere.”

Teacher evaluations are in limbo.

According to VanDeWeert, we are in the middle of a transition period as a result of the emergency action made by the New York State Board of Regents with regard to teacher evaluations and the APPR, or the Annual Professional Performance Review—the process by which teachers and principals are evaluated in New York State.

In response to public outcry over the state assessments, the Board of Regents temporarily eliminated some requirements of the APPR through the 2019 school year for those teaching ELA and math to students in grades 3–8. So during this transition period, any measures that are in any way tied to the ELA or math exams are to be excluded from the rating used in teacher employment decisions. Currently, part of those teachers’ ratings is based on student performance on state tests.

As far as high-school teachers go, for any teacher of a Regents class, their student performance metric includes the Regents exam as a summative measure of student performance. That metric remains untouched in this transition period, which only complicates the tangle of problems discussed throughout this article. As teachers, administrators, and representatives begin to remediate these complexities, take good notes. It will have great effect on students, the school, and the system as a whole.