New York State lowered the bar for some students to pass 2025 reading, math exams

City officials are crowing over gains on the 2025 reading and math exams, but the state lowered the passing benchmarks for some students — raising questions about boasts of substantial academic progress, experts told The Post.

The tests, given statewide to NYC public school kids in grades 3 through 8, required third graders to get just 57% of questions correct on the English Language Arts exam to pass, down from 60% last year.

Fourth graders had to get 56% right, down from 65%, and 6th graders had to answer 57% correctly, down from 63%, according to a stunning analysis by the Times-Union.

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The test-tinkering resulted in big improvements in NYC. Third-graders showed an 8.4 point increase in reading, with a whopping 63.6 % of students showing proficiency on the exam compared to 52.5% last year.

On the math exam, the state lowered the proficiency bar — Level 3 — from 56% to 54% for 3rd-graders, and from 54% to 51% for 4th-graders, the Albany-based newspaper reported, based on available data.

The tweaking occurred after test analysts found some questions on the 2025 exams more difficult than those on the 2024 exam, state education department spokeswoman Rachel Connors explained.

“If there is a greater or lesser number of difficult questions one year, the number of questions that must be answered correctly is adjusted,” she told the outlet. “This helps ensure that all tests in a subject are equated — no test is harder or easier to pass from year to year.”

Both ex-mayors Mike Bloomberg and Bill de Blasio have trumpeted ballooning test-score gains that later deflated. In the most scandalous example, Bloomberg, who was seeking a third term and pushing state lawmakers to extend mayoral control of schools, hailed a huge rise in test scores from 2006 to 2009 as an “enormous victory.” 

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But investigators later found that Richard Mills, then-state education commissioner, had instructed the company administering the tests to gradually lower the “cut scores,” the minimum points kids needed to show proficiency.

The latest revelation casts a cloud over the NYC test results, which Mayor Adams hailed as “a testament to what’s possible when we invest in our young people and believe in their potential.” 

Citywide, 56.3% of students met the proficiency level in ELA, up 7.2-percentage points from the 49.1% who passed in 2024, officials reported.

In math, 56.9% of NYC students passed the math exam, up 3.5 percentage points from 53.4% in 2024, according to released data. Officials did not disclose any changes in the scoring.

The state uses “a really complicated statistical model” to determine whether some test questions are harder or easier for students than questions given the year before, said Aaron Pallas, a professor of education and sociology at Columbia University’s Teachers College.

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“What the state is saying happened is that this year’s test turned out to be slightly more difficult than expected, and that means that students didn’t have to score as highly,” Pallas told The Post.

Schools Chancellor Melissa Aviles-Ramos credited the city’s 2024math curriculums for the test-score increases.

“The gains we’re seeing are proof that initiatives like NYC Reads and NYC Solves are delivering for our children,” she said.

 Pallas isn’t sold.

“I understand that you’ve got a mayor who’s up for re-election and a chancellor who is tethered to him, so of course they want to claim that it’s stuff that they did that is largely responsible. But I think it’s a little too early to tell. I want to see next year’s data before claiming victory for the curriculum.”

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David Bloomfield, a Brooklyn College and CUNY Grad Center education professor, agreed.

“While there’s good news here, the city’s celebrations should be more muted,” he said. “Revelations that the state decreased some scores needed to show proficiency blurs the picture — especially for third and fourth graders who saw some of the greatest increases.”

The state did not change the passing levels in ELA for fifth, seventh and eighth graders, the Times-Union analysis found.

But in math, reaching proficiency was harder. Fifth-graders had to correctly answer 51% of the items, up from 48% in 2024. Seventh and 8th graders had to get 53% of the points, up from 50% and 49% respectively last year.

Because the state revamped the standardized tests in 2023 due to new learning standards, it’s impossible to gauge progress over prior years.

Connors refused The Post’s request for the 2025 cut scores, saying they will be released in a “technical report” several months from now.

“We need the raw scores,” said Danyela Souza Egorov, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, where she co-authored a recent report showing that NYC’s 4th and 8th graders have for years performed below the state in reading and math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), considered the “gold standard” and most reliable of standardized tests.

It’s unclear whether the scoring changes are the result of “poor test writing or intentional number fudging,” she said. “We just need more transparency so we can make sure that the public can trust the results being published.”