Posted on 08/06/2009 3:12:37 PM PDT by neverdem
It’s time for my annual report on the pathetic condition of New York State’s once-vaunted Regents exams. Over the last few years, I’ve written several articles about the decline in quality of these tests. Whatever satisfaction I’ve derived from exposing how fraudulent they’ve become has been tempered by the fact that nothing has changed. The exams remain hopelessly manipulated, even as the New York Times touts the Board of Regents’ appointment of former Hunter College education dean David Steiner as its new education commissioner. The Times hopes that Steiner will lead “a review of teacher training and teacher certification across the state,” but makes no mention of the testing regime. If Steiner decided to take that on, he’ll face a task akin to cleaning up the Augean stables.
If the Regents exams were simply dumbed-down, we could attribute the erosion of standards to a general decline that seems to afflict many aspects of society. But that’s not the whole story. While sections of the three-part exam require no previous knowledge of the subject matter, the multiple-choice part of the exam does ask valid questions about subjects covered in the curriculum. The problem is that the substantive questions don’t carry the weight in the scoring that they should, while those that require no prior knowledge count disproportionately. Because of the way that the final grade for the test is determined, a student could get close to 30 out of 50 questions wrong on this year’s American History Regents and still have no trouble passing the exam!
The scoring for the exams involves a formula developed in Albany that varies from exam to exam and year to year, but with one constant: the most subjective parts of the exam receive the greatest weight in the scoring. These are the “document-based” questions and essays. This year, for example, a cartoon of John D. Rockefeller holding the White House in the palm of his hand prompts the question: “What is the cartoonist’s point of view concerning the relationship between government and industrialists such as Rockefeller?” Another question deals with a cartoon of Teddy Roosevelt hunting bears. He’s holding a submissive bear with the name “good trust” on a leash while stepping on the carcass of a dead bear with the name “bad trust.” The question: “What was President Roosevelt’s policy towards trusts?”
The Global History Regents isn’t much better. A reading excerpt about child-labor abuse in nineteenth-century England begins with a sentence that reads in part, “it has always been a general reflection, that the children were very great sufferers, and seemed sickly and unhealthy.” The question: “According to Dr. Agnew, what is one impact the Industrial Revolution had on children?” Any answer that contains “suffer,” “sick,” or “unhealthy” will earn points. Student answers to these questions are given higher point values than their multiple-choice answers in tabulating the final grade.
Regents questions are “field-tested” years in advance, in various school districts throughout the state. After these sample tests are graded, test developers know just what to expect, within a decimal point, from various student demographic samplings. If the multiple-choice part of the exam proves too difficult, based on the test samplings, then it’s easy to keep results up by giving more weight to the “holistically” scored essays and document-based questions. The Regents have gone beyond being simply curved; it would be more accurate to say that they are flat-out gamed.
Why are the Regents exams repeatedly constructed in this flawed manner? I’d suggest a motive: higher test scores and higher graduation rates. Testers may be more concerned with an end result—namely, passing rates on the exam—than with the quality of the exam itself. They may want diploma-bearing graduates, regardless of proficiency.
And remember that there is nothing wrong with “teaching to the test” when the examination reflects what should be taught in the curriculum. But when test-taking techniques become the emphasis of instruction in a rigged system, then education is meaningless.
Marc Epstein, a teacher at Jamaica High School, served as its dean of students for six years.
Once upon a time these were tough tests. Yes, the teacher taught the material to be covered in the tests. Review books were used. It as pretty intense. HS awards were given to the highest scorer.
not much better for the science and math regents. They are “normed”—the results massaged to fit the scores to a normal distribution. But there are really two maxima—kids who study and kids who don’t. And worse, kids who miss one question are penalized 4 points, while kids who miss that ten lose only 1 point for missing that same question. Smart kids are penalized to make dumb ones look good. Last of all is the appalling past rate—50% raw score. Of course, the 50% of the material the kids don’t know is the 50% they need to do higher math and science. But we can claim, like in lake wobegone, that all of our kids are above average.
STATE SENATE PASSES MAYORAL CONTROL OF NEW YORK CITY SCHOOLS
N.Y. wind energy corruption probe reaches Vermont
State Senate will ignore anti-gun bills for now
FReepmail me if you want on or off my New York ping list.
I was once proud of my Regents diploma.
The main Homeschool Ping List handles the homeschool-specific articles. I hold both the Homeschool Ping List and the Another Reason to Homeschool Ping list. Please freepmail me to let me know if you would like to be added to or removed from either list, or both.
There's nothing we NYers didn't know to begin with but for us, it's definitely another reason.
It once meant something.
Ah c'mon you still are, just like I am. You had to work for it. You did it the old fashioned way 'you earned it'.
Here’s an archive of Regents exams (going back to the ‘40s and ‘50s in some subjects) for comparison.
http://www.nysl.nysed.gov/regentsexams.htm
I graduated from a NY high school, however I was only there my senior year. Still, I did take 4 regents exams that year, and did quite well. I was very pleased at the time.
It sounds like it doesn't really matter any more. Of course it's not like graduating from the Kansas City, MO public school district, which lost its state accreditation about a decade ago, and still isn't fully accredited with the state of MO.
Mark
Now, this is an embarrassment.
Thanks for the link. I took them in the late 60s.
Thanks for the ping!
When I took the Regents exams (1975-78) they were still very good, well-designed tests. You could not pass them without knowing the subject “passably”, and, just as important, if you DID know the subject you would do well on the tests even if your teacher made no attempt at all to “teach to the test”. This was true for every subject, and had been since the 1800’s. This proved that good standardized subject tests were achievable, even though many people from both left and right deny that.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.