State eyes higher college readiness scores

The State Education Department is set to discuss Monday whether to raise the college readiness standard for its Regents English and algebra exams to 75 percent and 80 percent, respectively. To be considered college-ready now, a student must earn a 65.

Meryl Tisch, chairwoman of the state Board of Regents, said it's a move toward stopping what she called the "over-identification" of schools as failing under the federal No Child Left Behind Act of 2001.

She said while schools are identified as failing for various reasons, some that are doing very well fall into that category because of stringent accountability requirements.

"What we're trying to do is design an accountability system that keeps moving the standards forward," she said. Regents want to avoid diluting available federal money from schools that really are in need.

The suggested change is part of an outline that, Tisch said, the board would like to include in a waiver request the state will submit to the federal government in February. The state will seek relief from some of the requirements of No Child Left Behind, such as a 2014 goal of reaching full student proficiency.

One way to opt out is by raising student proficiency standards.

But Bill Johnson, superintendent of the Rockville Centre School District, said the discussions are premature because of the lack of supporting data that an increased test score can properly measure college readiness, especially when it comes to math.

"Algebra, as far as I am concerned, is not a subject you want to use if you want to predict how kids are going to do in college," said Johnson, who is also a past president of the State Council of School Superintendents. "What you want to do is use algebra as one in a series of steps that get kids college-ready by ultimately exposing them to a pre-college level curriculum, like pre-calculus, college-level statistics."

Tisch said talks are in early stages.

"The issue of 75, 80 is an aspirational goal that we have just started to talk about as we move forward," she said.

The discussion is among several agenda items set for the P-12 education committee's meeting Monday in Albany.