Which side of her mouth?

NYS has a new Chancellor of the Regents: Betty A Rosa. She has the responsibility of leading the Board of Regents through the current testing crisis that it is facing – 240,000 opt outs form the mandated exams last year. (Hopefully it grows this year.)

Here's the problem for the Board of Regents: She would opt her own child out of the exams.

Or at least “seriously consider it.”

As a teacher and someone that is held accountable for student performance on these exams (that no one can tell me of any research that supports or proves that they have any value) – why would she do that?

They – the Board of Regents – have made the exams shorter. Not as many questions on the exams and they are hoping in the next year or so to get them sown to two daze rather than three daze of testing. (Look at the students' faces after the exams – that describes them perfectly.)

The time limit has been removed – students have unlimited time to sit and stare at the questions and answer them (or not). Not that I have ever had a student use the full time. (I think one special ed student used all the regular time and his full extended time, as per his IEP modifications. That is one out of who knows how many in the past five years that I have had to administer this mess of a test.)

And the company formerly known as Pearson that has changed its name since being purchased by another company in the UK is no longer responsible for administering the test. (I have yet to see a news source get this correct. If I can find the memo… You know how that goes.) They are still writing the exams – an American company is administering the exam and having it corrected. Of course the results will be returned over the summer without any information that will be useful to help teachers improve their instruction for students. And parents will get a score that means nothing to them.

The Regents now admit that the Common Core Learning Standards and testing were poorly rolled out. More like terribly. Teachers had very little training in the new standards and if the teachers are not comfortable with what they are teaching, it will reflect in student grades and achievement. Plain and simple.

And teachers are not going to have the exams be a part of their annual evaluation until 2019. I have a few teachers in my school that are looking at the “25 by 55” retirement rule and saying “Yes – we are going to retire before 2019.” This means that the tests will be administered by a crop of brand new teachers that will have little to no experience in the exams. Get ready for test score crash. Which is what the Regents want – poor test scores so that they can begin to force the wholesale privatization of public schools.

So what has changed?

Not much

And why should we trust these exams?

We shouldn't.

Parents need to opt their students out of the exams – the ELA and Math exams in April and the Science exam in June. If enough students are opted out, then the state can do nothing meaningful with the data collected and we can begin to force a real discussion on fixing education in NY and America,

So which side of her mouth is Regent Rosa going to speak out of?

I wish she'd clarify.