Education officials may scrap 13 state Regents exams

[Earth_First]

Source: New York Daily News


State education officials are considering scrapping 13 of the state's 16 high school Regents exams - which would lower the state's graduation requirements for millions of students.

The move - along with other cuts to the state's standardized tests - could save $13.7 million in the midst of the state's fiscal crisis and are on the agenda at Monday's monthly meeting of the state Regents, who oversee state education policy.

The controversial proposals include scrapping translations of the exams into languages other than Spanish, along with eliminating the January and August exam dates.


The cuts could leave in place just three Regents exams - one each in math, science and English. Graduation requirements call for students to pass five Regents exams.



Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/03/07/2010-03-07_13_state_regents_exams_may_be_scratched.html

---

The $13.7 (expected to increase to $21.3 the following year) million dollar savings is part of an estimated $41 million dollar program shortfall.

So yet again in order to close the budget gap, we are planning on shortchanging our children in the name of education and the arts...

[burrfoot]

1. Hey, this is what America does.

When we have a budget shortfall, we come awfully close to literally stealing candy from babies when we take it out of the educational system.

This is ridiculous, of course, but it's mostly just sad.

FWIW, I graduated with a Regents Diploma in 1997. It wasn't super hard to begin with. We certainly do not need to be making it even easier...feels like we're just continuing a culture of dumbing down our kids while filling their heads with how wonderful and successful they are.

If I take away dinner but serve a bowl of Doritos you're still going to be full; and eventually you won't even realize that it's not normal to eat Doritos for dinner. That people in other countries don't eat Doritos for dinner, they eat vegetables- sometimes all year 'round, and sometimes more times a day than you eat Doritos! That wealthy people don't eat doritos. You think, "wow, thank God I've got so many Doritos. Look at all the Doritos I get to eat, every single day! Golly gee I'm lucky....."

Yeah, this makes me sad.

p.s. I love Doritos. No Doritos were harmed in the writing of this post.

[alcibiades_mystery]

7. I believe I scored

high 90's on all my Regents exams. They weren't hard if you studied. I also knew a lot of people who failed them, though, which I always found strange.

[Javaman]

11. Read my post down thread #8. nt

[pnwmom]

25. There are lots of reasons capable people fail "easy" tests.

Sometimes the smartest people, in fact, have trouble with tests that should be easy, because they complicate simple questions.

And there are people with test anxiety who freeze when confronted with a high-stakes test.

There are people who learn facts as part of a system but have much more trouble memorizing isolated facts, such as you might need to do for certain exams.

There are people who read or process things more slowly than others and need more time than is allowed.

I'm sure there are other reasons, but those are the ones that first come to mind.

Lucky for you that your learning style fell in the optimal category for which these tests are designed.

[alcibiades_mystery]

27. Since

I've taught at the college level for ten years now, I'm well familiar with different learning styles and the problems of testing. I count myself fortunate that I've always found tests easy - even from a very young age.

[pnwmom]

35. Since you said, "They weren't hard if you studied,"

I assumed you weren't familiar with the problems of testing.

For many otherwise intelligent people, the testing situation IS hard even if they do study.

[alcibiades_mystery]

37. I was, of course,

referring to the vast majority of people for whom testing itself is not a problem (the research continues to show that a relatively small percentage of people encounter actual testing difficulties). I count myself fortunate to be in this group, given the way testing operates in our society. Similarly, I count myself fortunate to have been born sighted, though the vast majority of people are sighted at birth (though you could make a good argument on the spectrum of sightedness as an analogy to the spectrum of testing, where most people - even a majority - develop "sight disabilities" over the course of a life time).

Needless to say, many people who underperform on tests now believe themselves to have testing difficulties, but actual cases are rather easily verified. And, needless to say, anyone who themselves has testing difficulties or has a child with testing difficulties attributes it to extraordinary intelligence ("My child is too smart to do well on this test!").

Sometimes, people underperform because they simply don't study. Sometimes, they underperform because the test itself is flawed. Sometimes, they underperform because they process information differently. It's usually the first of these. There's a reason that doctors still take boards, attorneys still take the bar, and most certifications and degrees and professions still require a timed demonstration of knowledge at all levels: it's a pretty good way to judge whether somebody has acquired the requisite knowledge and is able to apply it in context.

Luckily, we have also made great strides in identifying the very many ways testing fails to help students learn. But this is really a baby and bathwater question.

[pnwmom]

38. And sometimes it's a flawed test that doesn't measure what it is meant to measure.

They published examples of math questions for 7th graders from our state test. I got all the questions right -- my husband, the Ph.D. engineer, and my daughter, the math whiz, didn't -- because they knew too much and the questions were badly worded. I, on the other hand, was a good guesser. That didn't make me better at math than either of them. Just better at test-taking.

[alcibiades_mystery]

39. I already included that option

Not quite sure why you're fighting with me here.

Weird.

[pnwmom]

40. I elaborated on my answer above.

What I'm objecting to is your perception that all but a tiny percent will do well on the tests if they know the material and study hard. There have been many instances over the years when high numbers of capable students failed various Regents exams. And often it turned out to be the result of poorly designed tests.

[alcibiades_mystery]

41. There are certainly cases of poorly designed tests that hit a broad number of students

This is a different issue from students who have verifiable testing difficulties, which is what I was talking about when I referred to small percentages. The research on that is pretty clear.

One could easily imagine an entire lecture class failing a poorly designed test (indeed, it happens all the time). That is a problem of a flawed test. It is not a problem of student information processing that would affect ALL test taking (of a particular kind) for that student. If the poorly designed test were improved and administered again, the vast majority of students would not fail for reasons having to do with the test. A student with actual testing difficulties, however, might fail the test again, because the issue is information processing.

As I said, there are three main reasons for poor performance:

1. Lack of preparation
2. Poorly designed test
3. Testing difficulties

Numbers 2 and 3 are distinct issues that require distinct approaches, but you seem to be conflating them throughout your discussion here. When I refer to a small percentage, I'm referring to Number 3 only. Both Numbers 1 and 2 could affect a majority at any given time. Number 3 cannot, at least according to the research I've read on this. Institutions have made great strides in recent years in addressing Numbers 2 and 3, but the approaches are different, and we still have a long way to go. :-)

[pnwmom]

42. I'm curious about what your reaction was to the problems with English tests

a few years ago. That's when the Regent's first became a joke to me. After that, there were the controversies involving the math and physics tests. There are always going to be both flaws in tests and students who don't do well in test situations -- which is why I think high stakes testing, which can negate the efforts of years of work, is a mistake.

http://performanceassessment.org/articles/pa_elderlyman.html

In a feat of literary sleuth work, Ms. Heifetz, the mother of a high school senior and a weaver from Brooklyn, inspected 10 high school English exams from the past three years and discovered that the vast majority of the passages - drawn from the works of Isaac Bashevis Singer, Anton Chekhov and William Maxwell, among others - had been sanitized of virtually any reference to race, religion, ethnicity, sex, nudity, alcohol, even the mildest profanity and just about anything that might offend someone for some reason. Students had to write essays and answer questions based on these doctored versions - versions that were clearly marked as the work of the widely known authors.

In an excerpt from the work of Mr. Singer, for instance, all mention of Judaism is eliminated, even though it is so much the essence of his writing. His reference to "Most Jewish women" becomes "Most women" on the Regents, and "even the Polish schools were closed" becomes "even the schools were closed." Out entirely goes the line "Jews are Jews and Gentiles are Gentiles." In a passage from Annie Dillard's memoir, "An American Childhood," racial references are edited out of a description of her childhood trips to a library in the black section of town where she is almost the only white visitor, even though the point of the passage is to emphasize race and the insights she learned about blacks.

SNIP

The modifications to the passages ranged widely. In the Chekhov story "The Upheaval," the exam takes out the portion in which a wealthy woman looking for a missing brooch strip-searches all of the house's staff members. Students are then asked to use the story to write an essay on the meaning of human dignity.

A paragraph in John Holt's "Learning All the Time" is truncated to eliminate some of the reasons Suzuki violin instruction differs in Japan and the United States, apparently not to offend anyone who might find the particulars somehow insulting. Students are nonetheless then asked to answer questions about those differences.

SNIP

[alcibiades_mystery]

43. On the surface

I would say that these omissions are ridiculous.

Oddly enough, the reason for this bowdlerization was to prevent students from feeling "ill at ease while taking the test." That is, anti-testing activism motivated the test makers in the first place (wrongly, in my view, I might add).

Again, baby and bathwater. Saying that there will always be flaws in tests is insufficient. We can get tests close to good, and in fact, many tests are close to good, and many are even good and very good (in your very argument, you rely on the fact that some student had "over a 700 on the SAT 2," apparently a high stakes test you find valid - despite all the problems with THAT test). It's also difficult to tell what a "high stakes" test may be. An organic chemistry midterm may be a low-stakes test for somebody just fulfilling a requirement, but a very, very high stakes test for a pre-med student. And, quite frankly, I don't want a doctor who can't pass boards (much less MCATs, or that organic chemistry midterm!), even if it "negates years of work." Similarly, I don't want to hire a recently minted PhD who was socially promoted through orals or comprehensive exams. There are legitimate reasons for gateway functions in education, and they usually present themselves at the business end of professional competence.

Can it get better? Yes. Should nonsense like this specific case you cite be reduced, if not eliminated? Of course. I'm not sold, however, that tests are a bad or inherently flawed way of evaluating knowledge acquisition and use, or successful attainment of curricular goals.

[pnwmom]

44. I didn't mean to imply that the Physics SAT II should be a high stakes test.

I was merely pointing out that another test and a year's worth of grades contradicted the results of the Physics Regent's exams.

I also don't think you should compare the requirements for getting a high school diploma and getting an M.D. High school graduates are rarely hired for jobs posing life and death issues, except for particular occupations, such as drivers, that have their own exams.

[alcibiades_mystery]

45. The point was not to compare the two

Rather, your claims seemed aimed at (high stakes) testing in general. Tests, and even high stakes tests, are appropriate for some purposes. That's the point. Now, we can quibble on purposes, but the general argument that testing is inappropriate would need to be modified.

Professional competence need not be a "life or death issue," as I sought to make clear in my second example.

[WriteDown]

28. There should be zero testing in schools. There are no wrong answers, only...

different questions.

[Javaman]

33. The regents are far from easy. very far.

perhaps they changed since the early 80's but they were never ever looked upon by anyone including the teachers as ever being easy.

[Jim__]

2. Kind of hard to graduate if you're required to pass 5 out of 3 exams. No? - n/t

[Jefferson23]

3. This is the fault of the teachers, damn it!!

:sarcasm:

[dballance]

4. Seems Like a Good Idea To Me

I'm not sure about these particular Regents exams but I do know that since the No Child Left Behind law standardized testing has been ruining education. When I was in school we got a report-card every six weeks. You either were passing or failing. We had mid-term and final exams each year. You pass and you move forward to the next grade or you graduate. You flunk math or English and you don't. Pretty simple and straight-forward. I bet it would still work today.

All this standardized testing has done is cause schools to teach kids how to take standardized tests so the school doesn't get a failing grade. Oh, and the testing companies happen to be big GOP supporters who are making out like bandits with the fees for the tests - go figure.

I would speculate that freeing teachers from the specter of these standardized tests might actually let them become educators again and not simply test prep robots.

[pnwmom]

5. Please explain to me, if someone meets all the course requirements

for graduation, and receives a passing or better grade in each class , why that alone shouldn't qualify a student for graduation? If your graduation requirements set a high enough standard, why should any additional testing be necessary?

The well respected International Baccalaureate program, for example, has a required set of courses and a final paper. If all the courses and the paper are completed to satisfaction, then the student graduates with an I.B. diploma. No further testing is necessary.

In other words, there would be no need for Regents exams if graduation requirements set a high enough standard.

[Javaman]

10. Exaclty!!! Read my post down thread. The regents are nothing more

than money generators for the state. Students who fail. have to pay for summer school. See how it works?

[Jim__]

13. I'm not defending it, but it sets a state wide standard.

Anyone who has a diploma from that state has successfully taken and passed classes that taught to a minimal standard.

[Javaman]

16. State wide standard...

I know, as you stated, you are not defending this, so don't take this as an attack.

Isn't it weird that they set a state standard, but then have a different standard for the regents?

[pnwmom]

24. In other states, anyone who has a diploma has successfully passed

a set of required courses at a required level. I don't understand why one "all or nothing" exam in a subject should be able to negate 4 years of work.

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. Dang

I took Regents Exams in

Math 1 (Red Book/Algebra-8th Grade)
Math 2 (Blue Book/Algebra-Logic-Geometry-9th Grade)
Math 3 (Green Book/Trig-Pre-Calc-10th Grade)
Earth Science (8th Grade)
Biology (9th Grade)
Chemistry* (10th Grade)
Physics (11th Grade)
English (11th Grade?)
German (11th Grade)
Global History (9th Grade)
American History (10th Grade)

* Actually, I didn't take the Regents in Chemistry, because that was the year that somebody stole the chemistry Regents answers and they were printed on the front page of the NY Post (or the Daily News, I don't remember); must have been 1989 or 1990. Everyone sogned up to take the test that year was awarded the grade he or she earned in the class as the Regents test score.

[Javaman]

14. If they award a score when the test was stolen...

doesn't that just point out how completely useless the tests are in the first place?

Technically speaking, a stolen test or answers should not nullify the testing. It should be rescheduled with a new test if it is so important.

This is why I believed back then (1982) and still feel today, that the regents is nothing more than complete BS and a money maker for the state at the expense of the students.

Take away the tests, make the course work that much more challenging and the results should be the same. Those who can, will and those who can't, fail.

Using an arbitrary test with content that also contains arbitrary material, that may or may not have been covered during the school year; is completely ridiculous.

[alcibiades_mystery]

18. Wow

I went to NYC public schools, and I was miraculously able to do well on all my Regents exams, largely by studying for them. I don't remember my English Regents particularly well, but I'm pretty convinced that the multiple choice section didn't quiz you on actually having covered specific authors so much as it tested your capacity to recognize particular formal attributes (i.e., you wouldn't have to know Alexander Pope, but you would have to recognize iambic pentameter, heroic couplets, and the like). It was all very New Criticism, which is not surprising, since the vast majority of HS teachers at the time were trained almost exclusively in New Criticism and historicism. I do remember that I decided to write my essay for the exam on Camus' The Plague, which I had read independently (i.e., not as part of the HS curriculum), and I still received a high score on the test, so I'm dubious about this idea that the English Regents was something like an "arbitrary" test of recognizing authors. This is, in fact, part of the problem with the GRE in English, and it's one of the main reasons that few graduate programs still require it, particularly after the canon wars of the early 90's. So, for example, I remember one question from the GRE in English I took in 1997 used this little satirical poem as the set-up:

Said J. Alfred Prufrock to Hugh Selwyn Mauberly (oops!)
"What ever happened to Sedin, ought nine?"
"He who did studies in Orientalia?"
"Rather."
"Lost track of him."
"Pity."
"Design."

From this, you were supposed to know that the character names come from Eliot and Pound, that they were modernists, that they were both American expatriates, that ought nine meant Sedin had graduated in the year 1909, that he studied Middle Eastern and Asian archaeology, and that Mauberly had "lost track of him" deliberately, because apparently some people don't know what "design" means in this context. It was like five questions, and I remember it distinctly over a decade later. There was nothing like that on the Regents. It tested formal understanding and genre knowledge, mostly, and these are things you probably should be covering in HS language arts and English classes. Specific knowledge of authors and works was placed in the short answer and essay portion, where you had choices that would presumably reflect your specific coursework (One should also understand proper use of a semicolon ;-)). Of course, I may be misremembering the whole thing, since it was twenty years ago. :-)

I never opened one of those "overpriced" test books that didn't correspond directly to the coursework we were doing.

[Javaman]

20. I'm also from NY.

graduated in '82.

I never studied for my regents and passed all with the exception of one.

that's my point, it's completely arbitrary.

The one I failed (even though I passed the course and it's final) I was then doomed to summer school.

That is completely ridiculous.

I had a friend who was valedictorian, fail her chem regents after getting an A in the class and a score in the high 90's on the final.

She studied for the regent and failed.

It's all BS. I can go on and on with examples. I had a friend who got one of the only few 100's on the geometry regents. He was an average student. Others who where walking calculators failed miserably.

I had another friend who published in her senior year yet failed the english regents.

need more?

[alcibiades_mystery]

21. Do I need more anecdotes?

No. In my experience, the results of the regents exams matched class performance fairly well. Certainly, it doesn't always happen that way. I also remember that many students didn't take Regents exams or seek Regents diplomas, but took the other test (which I do not recall the name of). I'm glad to see that you're so passionate about this, but I don't really agree with your assessment, or your characterization of the specific tests. That doesn't match my own memory of the process at all.

[pnwmom]

36. There have been many times over the years when specific Regent's exams

have been criticized for their flaws. You were lucky that you weren't one of the capable students who had a poor performance on a Regent's. I know a student who failed the Physics Regent's even though he had over a 700 on the SAT 2 and A's in all his Physics classes. There was a problem in Physics that year that led many students to fail.

As another example, here's a critique of a math exam from a few years ago. Bottom line, there's nothing sacrosanct about those tests, and knowing your subject or studying hard doesn't guarantee you'll do well in them. As the writer below pointed out, even professional mathematicians wouldn't know some of the material that has been covered in Regent's math exams. They weren't even consulted!

http://www.math.nyu.edu/~braams/links/regents-0306a.html

http://www.cims.nyu.edu/~braams/links/regents-0306.html

Imprecise and ambiguous questions; verbosity
The companion detailed critique shows several instances of questions in which students are forced to guess what is meant, for example by looking at the candidate answers in the multiple choice section. (Aug 2002, Q4 and Q14; Jan 2003, Q8 and Q18; Jun 2003, Q4 and Q14.) On their own these are not major errors, because indeed students can figure out what is meant. (The most serious blunder in this category is June 2003, Q14, for which the scoring rubric had to be adjusted.) This will explain also why these errors were not found in the pre-test field trials. However, these ambiguous formulations are damaging in an indirect way, in addition to being just plain unprofessional. The frequent use of imprecise language creates among students and teachers an understanding that the authors of the Regents exam do not necessarily mean what they write or write what they mean. Students may then find themselves re-interpreting the authors' intent also when the question means exactly what it says.
SNIP
Misplaced emphasis on the names of concepts
One cannot function mathematically without knowing the names of some important concepts. I do not object to see questions on the Regents Math A that require students to know what is the distributive property in arithmetic, or what is the difference between similarity and congruence in geometry. In many cases, however, the Regents Math A places undue emphasis on purely linguistic matters that are of little import.
In geometry one uses all the time properties such as that a certain pair of angles in a figure adds up to 90 degrees or to 180 degrees. The concept is important and it is proper to see that students have to use it on the exam, but I don't think it particularly important that they will know which are called complementary and which are called supplementary angles. Many mathematicians would have to guess. Certainly very few would know or care what is meant by a pair of "alternate interior angles" in a geometric figure of a line crossing a pair of parallel lines, but students on the Regents Math A must have memorized this concept.
The key topic in elementary logic is the manipulation of predicates. Only one kind of manipulation seems ever to be tested on the Regents Math A, and that is the transformation of p=>q to ~q=>~p, which students must be able to identify as the replacement of an implication by its contrapositive. In addition, it seems that every instance of the Regents Math A contains at least one question in which students are asked to identify the inverse or the converse of an implication or to distinguish between the two. Many mathematicians would have to guess what is meant.

[Javaman]

8. Having had to take those F'ing regents, I say, thank god!

I can not tell you just how colossally stupid those fucking tests were.

Here is how they work for those less informed.

I student can be an A student all year, pass their final for a particular course with a 100, yet, take the regent, fail and then doomed to repeat the class all over.

The regents are completely seperate from anything to do with the actual course work.

You see, on the regents, there is no way in hell to study for it. It's totally random and many of the questions in the test will not have anything do with the curriculum of the course.

You can fork over money (probably 50+ bucks by now) for these crappy study books that amount to nothing, but only to make money for the book writers or just wing it. I just winged it and passed all but one. I had to go to summer school, even though I passed the fucking course and its final, yet failed the regents.

So in other words, a english class can study everything required by the state, but if the state doesn't include, for example, Shelly, but then the Regents has a whole section on the English Regents on Shelly, the student is fucked.

I had many a friend who were A students completely fail the regents.

I on the other hand was miserable in Biology. I just squeaked by, yet got a 90 on the regents. Go figure. It's totally arbitrary.

Over the years, there have been many attempts to ban those fucking things.

I hope this happens, I really do.

[pnwmom]

26. I remember a controversy over the English Regents.

The tests included passages from the work of actual fiction writers. However, the passages were abridged, with any concepts or words that might offend or disturb any potential reader deleted. In some instances, this meant that the resulting reading comprehension questions made no sense. All this had been done without the permission of the original authors and the issue came to light when a number of them protested the use -- and misuse -- of their work.

[WriteDown]

29. "I student can be an A student all year..."

Maybe there should be even more testing. :)

[Javaman]

30. or perhaps, they should do away with the freaking test.

and stop teaching toward it which is impossible since no one knows what will be on it, or if it even pertains to anything taught during the year.

It's always been a complete bullshit test.

More testing solves nothing. Having a concrete curriculum and standardized testing within the course work. That is the way to fix it.

[jody]

9. Race to the Bottom thrives ! n/t

[Javaman]

12. Do you even know how the regents work? nt

[jody]

15. Yes. n/t

[Javaman]

17. And you have actually taken them? nt

[burrfoot]

19. I'm surprised, after

reading these posts. Either things changed since I took the tests or my understanding has been wrong this whole time- when I was in high school, not passing regents didn't mean you couldn't graduate- just that you didn't graduate with a Regents Diploma (which, since I think only California and New York still even use the system, honestly didn't mean that much).

Was there a change at some point, to system where it was either a regents diploma or nothing?

:shrug:

[alcibiades_mystery]

22. That's correct in my experience as well

I think they changed this in the late-90's or something. The vast majority of my friends graduated without the Regent's Diploma.

[Javaman]

31. Perhaps it changed since the 80's but in the New York school system

you didn't pass the regents, you didn't graduate. Period. No ifs ands or buts about it.

The stress associated with it made taking the SAT's a breeze.

[alcibiades_mystery]

34. That was not the way it was when I was in junior high school and high school

1985-1991.

[defendandprotect]

46. Thee was prestige in passing the Regents -- not everyone took them???

I grew up in NYC -- did everyone have to pass a Regents to graduate?

I thought only some took the Regents?

[CK_John]

23. There is no need for exams at all. School tests were used just to discriminate for jobs.

There are no jobs. No need for tests. Back when I took regents in the 50's
only 6% were college bound and your HS major was your ticket to a job.

NY always had a tradition of Majors, even had a HS of Aviation at La Guardia airport. This is continued even today in some fields that are college prep. But let the colleges decide who they will let in and not bother everyone else with a major distraction from life education.

The law can only mandate students attend school, not that they learn anything. They can mandate teachers teach, but it's up to students to learn.

[Javaman]

32. My dad went to Aviation HS. :) nt