Rockville Centre school administrators give state exam plans a failing grade

“Just when you think everything’s going well,” said school Superintendent Dr. William Johnson of new testing guidelines recently issued by the New York State Education Department, “it’s not.”

At the Board of Education meeting on Sept. 28, he and Christopher Pellettieri, Rockville Centre’s assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, outlined a number of “deficit-reducing” changes to the state’s assessment system that were proposed in September — changes they say could adversely affect Rockville Centre students.

Among the proposed changes are the elimination of the second language proficiency exams at the middle school level, and Social Studies tests in grades 5 and 8. Component retesting in Math and the ELA Regents are on the chopping block, as are the August tests for Algebra II/Trigonometry and Chemistry that have enabled students who failed the Regents in June to graduate with their class — eliminating two “safety nets” for them. Other changes include longer ELA tests for grades 3, 5, 7 and longer Math tests for grades 3, 5, 6, 8.

“I don’t think we should go so quietly into the sunset, on this,” said Dr. Johnson. “Some of these changes will hurt South Side High School students — on one hand [the state is] claiming they have no money, on the other hand they’re spending a lot of money revising tests.”

Johnson said some of his objections are based on the fact that curriculum is not yet in place for the changes. Another serious concern he said, is that there are not enough vendors developing tests and there is not enough time to properly test the tests with field, pre-tests and item tests, to ensure their reliability and validity.

Johnson ended his remarks by noting that the state has only announced the changes. “They may not be able to pull it off,” he said. “There will be more to come. We’ll stay on top of it.”