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Last year, Mayor Michael Bloomberg stood outside the White House and declared that test scores showed he was closing the so-called achievement gap in New York.

"We've improved the test scores for minorities, black and Latino kids compared to white and Asian kids who have always tested better. Seven years in a row of closing the outrageous ethnic gap in testing," the mayor said.

But now there may be a testing credibility gap as the difference in performance between black and Latino students and their white and Asian classmates actually widened this year -- and it's gone all the way back to where it was before 2003, when Mayor Bloomberg took control of the school system.

"We've never seen obvious parity across the board between our minority students and our majority students," said Schools Chancellor Joel Klein.

During the past few years, the number of students passing state tests went up, and Black and Hispanic students were catching up with white and Asian students. But state officials say that's only because the test got too easy, so they made it harder to pass this year. And while everyone's passing rate went down, black and Latino student scores went down much more.

"The failure to drill down and develop accurate assessments at the state level, creates a burden that falls disproportionately on English language learners, students with disabilities, African American and Hispanic young people who turn out to be much further behind than anyone has to date recognized," said State Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch.

"Almost all of the progress that has supposedly been made since 2003 in the achievement gap has been wiped out by this new re-scaling of the tests," said Megan Hester of the Annenberg Institute for School Reform.

Last year, black students were 22 points behind white students in passing the English exam. This year, they were 31 points behind.

And math is even worse.

Black students were just 17 points behind last year. But this year, they've fallen 35 points behind their white classmates.

Officials explain the disturbing results by saying in the past, many black students had just barely passed the test.

"As we moved the cut score required for proficiency to a higher number, you will see a disproportionate number of those students not able to make it," said State Commissioner of Education David Steiner.

For almost a decade, the Bloomberg administration, state officials and the federal government have all focused education policy on closing the achievement gap. But the latest data suggests those efforts may not have achieved any results.