Every summer, the prior spring’s state test scores are released, and it can seem like this one data point sums up everything about public school children in our city.
As a longtime educator and the leader of the nation’s largest school system, I want to be clear: state tests are important, and they are not, and should not be, the only data point that we use to measure student achievement.
This is a message our communities need to hear. Last week, school districts across New York State saw state test scores creep up for math and drop sharply in English Language Arts (ELA).
Without context, this would seem to indicate that, all of a sudden, literacy rates across the state plunged, in contrast to a dramatic upswing last year. Last year, scores rose seven percentage points. This year, they dropped by six. These fluctuations are considerable and unprecedented, and at odds with what teachers are seeing in their classrooms.
Meanwhile, our nationally-normed student growth screeners, one of multiple measures we use to monitor student progress, tell a very different story. On these screeners, New York City students have demonstrated consistent growth since 2024. This past year alone, for grades 3-8, the same grades that take the state tests, our students grew nearly 3 points in ELA and nearly 8 points in math.
There are two things New Yorkers need to understand about how we’re responding to these results:
First, we have to explore how these fluctuations and discrepancies occurred. We are working closely with the New York State Education Department (NYSED) to better understand the large swings over the past two years and ensure we’re accurately measuring what our students are learning.
Second, we must continue the nationally renowned work started in NYC Reads, grounded in the same evidence-based approach that drove the “Mississippi Miracle”, which dramatically improved student reading and math performance on national assessments. This shift to evidence-based reading instruction is transforming how our city teaches literacy, deepening how students engage with rich, challenging texts and build meaning across them. As part of this work, we’ve trained thousands of teachers, engaged families, and built a literacy ecosystem here in New York, and that work will continue to grow.
Starting this fall, we are zooming in even further on grades 3-5, which saw the largest swings, with a sharper focus on reading fluency and knowledge-building, helping students sustain meaning across increasingly complex texts. We will also continue to use multiple measures to monitor student growth, because we know our students, educators, and schools are more than a single number or score.
Ultimately, change at this scale takes the right tools paired with a commitment to meticulous analysis of all types of data. NYC Reads, like other large-scale literacy initiatives across the nation, will take time to turn the tide on proficiency rates. We will stay the course until we get there, because our students deserve nothing less.