Dropping the state exams

According to the Rockville Centre School District, on April 1, the first day of the state English Language Arts exam, parents of 774 students — 47 percent of the testable student population — had informed the schools that their children would not be taking the test. The majority of those students are at South Side Middle School.

“Parents have figured this out and have recognized that the state exam, as it currently is configured and constructed, is faulty, misleading, and they don’t want to submit their children to it,” said Superintendent Dr. William Johnson. “And I can’t fault them for that.”

After last year’s high number of “opt-outs” — 20 percent of students, among the highest in the area — Johnson drafted a letter to the principals of the elementary schools and the middle school, outlining what should be done with students who do not take the exams. In the elementary schools, students reported to their regular rooms for attendance, and then were assigned to either a testing or a non-testing room. In the middle school, students reported to pre-assigned testing or non-testing rooms. Those who were not taking the test were allowed to read a book. All students had to remain in their room for the entire allotted testing time.

According to Johnson, the state recently changed its stance on the test, saying that it would no longer be used to evaluate children, and would be a factor only in teacher evaluations. But the high number of students in Rockville Centre who opt out will likely ruin its value for that purpose as well.

“It means that the teachers’ scores will be meaningless, because they’ll be uninterpretable,” Johnson said. “Since you don’t know what the kids who opted out would have gotten, you can’t tell me a teacher is effective or ineffective based on information that’s incomplete.”

Johnson theorized that the decision to use the tests only to evaluate teachers and not students most likely led many parents to keep their children out of the three-day, nine-hour exam.

“It has no other purpose now other than to evaluate teachers,” he said. “It’s hard to make sense of it.

“Throw it out and start over,” he added.

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