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June 5, 2002 - [arn2-strategy] Letter re: Regents exams

To: "CARE all ", "ARN-state", "arn2-strategy"
From: Monty Neill
Re: [arn2-strategy] Fw: Letter re: Regents exams

We emailed the following letter to the NY Times late yesterday afternoon.

Monty

June 4, 2002

To the Editor:

Most of the uproar over the mangling of literature on the Regents exams ("Test Sanitizes Literacy Tests," June 2) misses the most important point: the consequences for school children.

The text removed from the stories was often vital to comprehending the passages' meaning. As a result, the questions made little sense and were harder to answer correctly.

Ironically, the state has defended this practice by claiming it wants to ensure students are "comfortable." How does making questions nonsensical improve comfort? How can the state seriously claim it cares about student "comfort" when it imposes tests that students must pass to obtain a diploma regardless of how well they do in school?

Destroying texts to fabricate tests reveals the bankruptcy of the entire Regents' machinery, from the pretense that the exams measure high standards, to the attacks on students through the high stakes attached to them, to the efforts to undermine schools by forcing them to become prep centers for dumbed-down exams.

Monty Neill, Ed.D.
Executive Director
FairTest
342 Broadway
Cambridge, MA 02139
617-864-4810; fax 617-497-2224
email monty@fairest.org
web: http://www.fairtest.org

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