New York Principals are Speaking Out Against Standardized Tests

This week I'm proud to be a New York educator as I watch parents, teachers, and administrators stand up and speak out about the harms and horrors of standardized tests in the media as well as the active Opt Out of Standardized Tests - New York group.  Below is an open letter from New York principals who want their voices heard about the testing atrocities going on in our schools.  If you are in New York, show this letter to your principal and encourage her/him to advocate for children.

An Open Letter to the Board of Regents Regarding High-Stakes Testing and the School Reform Agenda of New York State

 

The past week has been a nightmare for New York students in Grades 3 through 8, their teachers and their principals. Not only were the New York State ELA exams too long and exhausting for young students, (three exams of 90 minutes each), they contained ambiguous questions that cannot be answered with assurance, problems with test booklet instructions, inadequate space for students to write essays, and reading comprehension passages that defy commonsense. In addition, the press reported a passage that relied on knowledge of sounds and music which hearing-impaired students could not answer and Newsday reported that students were mechanically ‘filling in bubbles’ due to exhaustion. Certainly the most egregious example of problems with the tests is the now infamous passage about the Hare and the Pineapple.

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