The main reason end of the year standardized tests are given is to measure how well students have learned the skills that are expected to be
taught at a particular grade level.
«A teacher who had been teaching
at a particular grade level for more than 5 years was positively and significantly associated with increased student achievement (effect size =.27)... grade level experience was sizable compared to race (minority status effect size = -.33) and SES (economically disadvantaged effect size = -.08)....
Through this program, parents with students
at a particular grade level with class sizes that are at or approaching the district guideline will be notified about the option to voluntarily transfer their children to other specified schools that have space available at that grade level.
Instead of a concrete curriculum or a test that students must be able to pass, the science and engineering standards lay out benchmarks for what concepts students should
know at particular grade levels, each year building on those before it.
For instance, in addition to knowing how to compute, a teacher may need to know why and how specific mathematical procedures work, how best to define a term for
children at a particular grade level, or how to interpret, remediate, or prevent students» errors.
Under a position allotment, the state provides each school district a set number of teachers based on the number of students
at particular grade levels in each district.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which administers NAEP, the determination of proficiency in any given
subject at a particular grade level «was the result of a comprehensive national process [which took into account]... what hundreds of educators, curriculum experts, policymakers, and members of the general public thought the assessment should test.
Meanwhile, back in New York, Bloomberg failed to mention that nearly three dozen questions on the New York Standardized Tests had to be eliminated after they were deemed to be «confusing, poorly translated or unanswerable by
students at a particular grade level.»
But whatever you think about that issue, it is absolutely clear that states vary widely in the proficiency standards they set, i. e., the amount they expect a student to know before they deem the student proficient in that subject
at a particular grade level.