Though the city released the results of the ELA and math state exams this spring, the debate over the value of these standardized tests reignited this month. The latest argument on the table? The Daily News reported yesterday that, even with Bloomberg 'raising the bar' with his proposed promotion policy, 6th-graders can score high enough on the state English test to move onto the next grade simply by guessing.

In fact, says the News, the number of 6th-graders who scored at the bottom, Level 1 dropped from 10% in 2006, when twice as many points were required to pass, to 0.2% this year. And, according to the News, it's not just lower standards on the reading test; a June article reported that Jennifer Jennings, a sociology doctoral student at Columbia University, found the state math exams are easier, too.<!--more-->

According to Jennings, since the state "revamped" the exam in 2006, only a small portion of what students learn each year is actually being tested, and much of what appears on the exam should have been learned in earlier grades. Additionally, she discovered that nearly identical questions appear each year. (GothamSchools provides a revealing look at specific questions Jennings examined.)

State Board of Regents Commissioner Meryl Tisch has called for New York's high stakes exams to be "more defensible," and according to GothamSchools, the state Department of Education is looking into using an “audit mechanism” to guard against score inflation, which happens when a rise in test scores do not reflect an increase in actual learning, but rather another factor, such as the predictability of questions on the exam.

What do you think? Do your child's test scores accurately reflect his knowledge of math and reading?