Letter to the Editor: New State Standardized Tests a Failure

To the Editor:

Yesterday, statewide standardized test results were released, showing that only 31 percent of third through eighth grade students tested in New York State “passed.”

While many state officials were quick to remind parents that the new standardized tests reflect tougher standards rather than student performance, that concept is hard to explain to a fourth-grader who’s been told he failed. 

Following yesterday’s announcement, students and teachers alike will have to live with the sting of failure until the next test date. Until then – regardless of whatever pronouncements come from Education bureaucrats – teachers will cope with pressure to do whatever it takes to raise the test scores.  Students, regardless of how they faired on the test, will suffer as a result of this added pressure.

Instead of giving that fourth-grader a chance to fall in love with a book, or work on mathematics problems at his or her own pace, teachers will be forced to “teach to the test.”

The result – a generation of students who are expert in mastering test questions but lack any experience in, let alone passion for, real learning – will be a disaster for our state.

In forgetting that students and teachers are first and foremost human beings, we forget that, just like everyone else, those teachers and students react negatively to failure. No one wants to be told they’ve failed – and yet that’s exactly what we’re doing to 69 percent of students in New York State.

Merely saying “don’t worry, we just raised the bar,” won’t take away a student’s despair after being told he or she failed a test that they were previously told was so important.

No matter how well-intentioned the new standardized testing scheme was, it failed to take into consideration the human side of education. As a result, students will begin to see themselves in a starkly contrasted black-and-white: either you passed or failed, with no room for error.

When a young student is labeled a failure at such an early age, such a label causes irreparable harm. Standardized tests only serve to give bureaucrats numbers to crunch. It’s time to take a hard look at the new Common Core curriculum and ask whether our students and teachers deserve better. I think they do. 

Assemblyman Edward P. Ra