This past summer the DOE announced with great fanfare that it was raising the cut scores for ASK 3 and ASK 4, the standardized tests in language arts and math taken by 3d and 4th graders. In a press release dated July 15th, Ed Commissioner Lucille Davy said, “Setting these new standards is one part of our initiative to raise expectations for student achievement at all grade levels.” As we prepare our students for the “21st century world, we must set about “challenging many of our old assumptions about student and school performance.” In numbers, explains Davy, this means that instead of defining “proficiency” as answering between 40% and 45% of questions correctly, now 3d and 4th graders will have to answer 50% correctly to achieve proficiency. She warns that we may see a drop in the number of higher percentage of students in the “partially proficient” category, the state euphemism for “failing,” but kids will adjust and scores will rise over time.

Apparently the DOE has had a change of heart because it’s just successfully petitioned the US DOE for permission to change our definition of “Adequate Yearly Progress” for 3d and 4th graders. On the original scale, 73% of these kids would need to achieve “proficiency” in language arts for the school to make AYP. Now it’s 59%. In math, AYP has been dropped from 69% to 66%. Here’s the pdf from the NJ DOE, which obliquely explains the change through a new AYP chart and a vague statement about how “the safe harbor calculation for elementary schools this year is not straightforward.”

Maybe it’s smart. NCLB/ESEA is up for reauthorization any time now, and it’s possible that a more enlightened administration may concede that 100% proficiency may not be realistic by 2014. If not, though, we’re stuck. It’s one thing to move from 73% to 100% by 2014. It’s another thing to move 59% to 100%.

Was the DOE too ambitious in raising cut scores from 40% to 50%? Was there evidence that an embarrassingly large number of elementary schools would fail to make AYP? If so, the back-tracking from the DOE should be accompanied by some discussion of the real reasons for the appeal to the Feds.