Even those who think standardized tests are great tool generally assume that the questions on the tests will have one correct answer that is not politically motivated, and that the samples that the questions are based on will be appropriate to the students and that the content of those samples is unchanged from the original, unless otherwise noted.
Last summer a parent in New York showed that this certainly was not the case, when she demonstrated that New York's high school Regent's exam (required for graduation) contained literature questions which had been altered to render them "inoffensive" to the reader. The alterations included removal of references to sex, race, ethnicity, religion, violence, and alcohol. In some cases whole sections were removed from passages without any notation to indicate that this was done.
No one is arguing that anything offensive should be included in the test, just that the samples used should be unedited for content. If content is an issue, different passages should be used.
State education officials promised at the time that this type of editing would no longer occur. This turns out to not be the case.
The most recent version of the Regent's exam contains passages from Kafka and Aldous Huxley that have ben altered, mis-identifies narratiors from television programming, attempts to ignore historical facts, and contains at least one question with more than one possible correct answer.
So some "educators" believe that students should be judged for their efforts on tests that are poorly constructed, and with "quotes" from important pieces of literature that have been mangled to fit their vision of what is appropriate.
And people wonder what has happened to the American education system.
Posted by Chris at January 10, 2003 04:14 PM