Problems With Math B Regents Exam Create Doubts at MHS

by Judy Silberstein

(June 30, 2005) Once again, a flawed Regents exam –this time for Math B - is causing educators in Mamaroneck and across the state to question the NY State Education Department’s (NYSED) testing program. The Math B exam, administered on Thursday, June 24, produced immediate statewide complaints about the content, scoring and failure rate. By Friday, NYSED had issued a revised scoring chart, which allowed more students to pass, but did not necessarily increase confidence in the exam.

According to Gerry Brause, head of the math department at Mamaroneck High School, this was the first year that all MHS students finishing third year math were required by the school to take the Regents Math B exam. A total of 252 students, mostly 10th and 11th graders in Course 3 and 3H (honors), took the exam, and with the revised scoring, 87% passed. All 32 of those who failed were in Course 3.

Passing Math A, which covers the first year and a half of the three year math sequence, is required for students graduating with a NY Regents diploma. Passing Math B, which covers the final year and a half, is optional and would help a student earn an advanced designation Regents diploma that was offered for the first time this year in some schools but not in Mamaroneck.

For the past two years, Mamaroneck has been gauging the efficacy of the test by administering it to students in Course 3H. “It seemed to be a reasonable test, though it has the flaws of the Math A exam,” said Ms. Brause. She and her colleagues are critical of the scoring system that penalizes simple errors in arithmetic as harshly as misunderstandings of concepts.

The MHS teachers are even more critical of this year’s test, and their displeasure goes beyond the scaling problem that NYSED could fix right away.

“As we were looking at the test, it was missing some of the big concepts, like standard deviation and the normal curve,” said Ms. Brause. “The proof was not a good proof to include, and then when we got the grading rubric, we weren’t happy with that,” she added.

Another complaint goes beyond this year. “Students have to be able to retain material from the second half of Course 2, plus the large amount of new material in Course 3. Course 3 has always been super-saturated with material and now they actually have more to learn,” said Ms. Brause.

This structural problems will continue at least until 2007, when NYSED will be returning to the previous system of offering tests each year for material learned in that year. The entire curriculum and the related exams are being restructured on advice of the panel of mathematicians and math teachers convened after 63% of NY students taking the Math A exam failed it in 2003, the first year it was administered statewide.

“A test at the end of one year’s work will better measure how people learn – both the specifics and hopefully the critical thinking,“ said Regent Harry Phillips III, the member of the NY Board of Regents from the district that includes Westchester. He was not dismayed by the idea that students have difficulty retaining information they’ve learned for tests. “Inevitably kids learn to the test. I’m sorry that this is true – but I believe it is true,” he said.

Mr. Phillips and his colleagues have not given up on the idea of getting students to take more math. Requiring all students to pass an exam that covered three rather than two semesters of content was aimed at “raising the bar” in math for every high school graduate. Under the next set of revisions, more of the content will be pushed back to 7th and 8th grade, so that “ at the end of 9th grade Algebra, students should know as much math as they do at the end of Math A,” explained a NYSED press release on March 15.

“The Regents and the distinguished panel of math experts are encouraging more students – not just the elite – to take more than one math exam,” said Mr. Phillips. “We are falling behind in graduating math majors – we can’t find math teachers,” he said as he expressed distress at the level of math education in the state and the country.

Meanwhile, they have to convince the students – and their teachers – that the tests are worth taking. In 2003, after two years of problems with the newly revised Regents physics exam, MHS science teachers decided to drop the state test. (See: Mamaroneck Dumps Physics Regents: Reaction From Students & Regents)l