At the hearing of the Board of Regents on November 9 at Medgar Evers College, the interest of the audience, mostly educators and parents (sprinkled with a prominent handful of politicians), was divided between two connected issues:
1.Trying to get an explanation for why the "recalibration" of the state-wide test scores had been done in such a messy fashion. It left over 60,000 students back a grade and waived the needed remedial work to get them back on grade. After listening for almost an hour and a half to the elaborate "plan" to rectify the problems of the schools -- and establish "new standards" for "college-ready" high school graduates -- I did not hear a word about the test mess. Nor did I hear about how a "higher standard" of educational excellence could be achieved in the "Regents Reform Agenda Implementation Update," as the presentation was called. Especially since the same flawed "high stakes tests" would be used as "data" to determine student progress. The power point presentation by John B. King, Senior Deputy Commissioner of the State DOE, was as lucid as the earlier power point presentation I had seen several months before by the Resident Explainer of the City DOE, which showed that the low grades received were by the students were better if you looked at them a different way.
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