“The world has changed, the economy has changed and what our students need to know has changed,” Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch said. “These scores reflect a new baseline and a new beginning. These proficiency scores do not reflect a drop in performance, but rather a raising of standards to reflect college and career readiness.”

Rose Linda Ricca, Malverne’s newly appointed assistant superintendent added, “The state refers to it as college- and career-ready, but it’s not really career-ready. The state raised the bar in one tremendous jump. We started the year with one set of rules, and teachers created curriculum and taught with one set of expectations. In the middle of the year, however, the state decided to change things and to test on the new curriculum. We’re hoping for a little bit of stability the coming year, and a chance to catch up with the new standards.”

In an op-ed piece in the Daily News, Diane Ravitch — educational historian at New York University and a member of the national educational testing assessment board from 1997 to 2004 — told a different story.

Ravitch, who was deeply involved in writing the No Child Left Behind law, wrote that she realized in 2004 that the reliance on high-stakes testing was bad for education, and she became an opponent of the law and the testing that was its most important component.