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Isn’t it wonderful that students can now take a subject that is specifically designed to pass a test.
The President, Governor, Mayor, rich people and media must be so happy that this is what passes for education.

Very nice piece Arthur… and so true! Why these students have to take the English Regents…just doesn’t make any sense. Well, maybe it’ll be easier for them to pass the exam next year when it’ll be a one-day-only test!

Retiree,

I think that the people you mention have little or no concept anything outside of test scores actually exists.  So much of what happens in classrooms is intangible and gives them little or nothing to boast or complain about–so they never think about it.

Diana,

It’s so wasteful.  It’s incredible that the Regents are so ignorant as to the needs of kids.  It would be better to prepare them now, rather than sending them to college for remedial courses they’ll have to pay through the nose for.  I could give them exactly the same thing in high school.

Paula,

You may be right, but it’s also possible that the increase in MC questions will prove more difficult for them.  There’s really no way to know.  The only sure thing is that these kids are not the appropriate audience for this test, new, old, or in-between.

Miss Eyre,

I know exactly how you feel.  Sometimes kids come up to me and say they never read a book in English until they took my class and I dragged them kicking and screaming.  Usually they’re grateful in the end, but even if they aren’t I figure if they took the time to do the reading, they have the absolute right to complain about it as much as they like.

Ms. V.,

You’re absolutely right.  It’s idiocy piled upon idiocy.

I have been told that Regents exams are not appropriate for this sort of measurement, though.  Research seems to indicate that no other test is appropriate either, so I take little solace in that.

Mr. Goldstein,

According to the well-known educator and DOE consultant Jack Welch, children are a “product.”

It thus follows that you, as a systems-delivery unit for the value-added (“the enhancement added to a product or service by a company before it is offered to customers”) component of these products, should be making all efforts to maximize the performance-based metrics and presumed future marketability of the products under your management.

In other words, shut up and get with the program. There is no alternative.

As an ESL teacher who has just been excessed from my elementary school (despite the fact that the school cannot possibly comply with state mandates about services for English language learners, or ELLs, if my position is eliminated), I applaud you for raising these issues. The scoring rubric for the Regents is educationally harmful if it encourages students to apply a formula that cannot be used in real-world writing. Similarly, the fifth-grade social studies test encourages students to copy part of the essay prompt for use as an introduction: in the anchor papers distributed in scoring manuals, these copied paragraphs appear in the samples of exemplary writing.

I am also wondering why your school asked you to teach beginner ELLs. Are you certified in ESL as well as English? If not, your school is violating the mandates of a state education law, CR Part 154, which requires schools to provide 8 periods of ESL, dual language or transitional-bilingual instruction weekly — taught by a certified ESL teacher — to students who scored at the beginner level on the Language Assessment Battery-Revised (LAB-R, the entrance exam required of students newly enrolled in New York State schools whose parents indicate on a home-language survey that the students speak a language other than English) or last spring’s New York State English as a Second Language Achievement Test, or NYSESLAT.

Although it seems you are doing an excellent job, perhaps without specialized training, an ESL teacher would probably have more books, materials and tech-based resources to design engaging, varied lessons that would get the students communicating about everyday life and academic subjects. There are also communicative grammar books with exercises for group and partner work. You shouldn’t have to reinvent the wheel, and your school should have a library of books and electronic materials proven to be effective with ELLs.

Through Fair Student Funding, your school receives 50% more funding for each ELL on its roster (elementary schools receive 40% more). In addition, your school probably gets federal Title III funding for after school and Saturday programs for ELL. In the past, large numbers of city schools illegitimately directed these funds to their general budget, doing nothing special for ELLs. Now the city is trying to legitimize this by instituting new schoolwide budget formulas that will allow schools to take funds intended for ELLs and use them for other students, or for virtually any purpose. The public has got to stand up for ELLs and their families. Attention must be paid.

Arthur,
I sincerely apologize for not having clicked on your bio, which states that you are an ESL teacher. I am so sorry.

Thanks for your advice. Last year I was also excessed, but my principal restored my position when budget pressures eased. In the meantime the union was less than helpful, apparently because they sensed defeat. My chapter leader helped me file a Step 1 grievance, but the Brooklyn UFT office declined to take it to Step 2, stating that they did not think I would prevail. Compliance violations are widespread (see state Office of Bilingual Ed letters to districts and principals http://bit.ly/9PjESC, though many of these issues have since been resolved, as schools presented letters stating that parents prefer ESL to bilingual ed). The state audit did not check each school’s Language Allocation Policy in depth, and it is a simple matter, particularly for elementary schools, to submit fictitious weekly schedules for students in the LAP documents, indicating that students get the required services, when in fact they do not.

In any case, the city has indicated in its own Language Allocation Policy that it does not see much need for specialized ESL services, and that document was accepted by the state. Though journalists and politicians say they are concerned about ELLs, ELL services are quietly allowed to deteriorate.

Would having tests developed specifically for ELL students help?

Principals have the authority to remove OTPs. We lost 2 SETTS positions, and an ELL position.
We also lost an extra Reading position. Now classroom teachers have to deal with these issues during the pull-out period. We are left with so many children that need services, but teachers cannot fit them into their schedules. Yet our school can hire F-status teachers which cost more per day than a full-time sub. This makes so sense to me.

The use of testing described in this article is clearly inappropriate and has many negative consequences for students, teachers, and schools, which my fellow commenters have discussed. One consequence that has gone overlooked, however, is that it leads students and teachers to paint all large-scale assessment with the same brush. Not all test developers are heartless bean counters or craven capitalists, as Pogue and Michael Fiorillo suggest. Just because the Regents is not an appropriate instrument for high school ELLs doesn’t mean that such an instrument does not exist and cannot be developed.

“What is your name? Where are you from?” is a great first step, but in the academically demanding world of public education, it’s simply not enough. Once a student can answer those simple questions, what happens next? If they can answer fluently, with detail and expansion, does that mean that they should be placed in general ed classes without ESL support? Don’t laugh – I’ve known guidance counselors who would make that placement.

It’s easy for teachers to be frustrated and call for an end to assessment. I’d argue, though, that what we need is appropriate assessment that has been validated for our student population, and assesses them on standards that correspond with the instruction that would be most useful to them.

I agree that “test prep” is a tragedy. Quality of instruction is the first priority.

Daniel Ginsburg,

The issue is not the test developers per se, who you mistakenly construed to be the target of my attack, but rather the economic and political interests that drive the “all testing, all the time” regime. They were my target, and a deserved one.

First of all, I did not mean to imply that all testing is inherently evil, or that we need to end assessment completely.  Nor did I mean to suggest that basic questions like those I ask incoming kids are all that’s needed.  However, kids who can’t pass my little test ought not to be deemed intermediate or advanced on city and state tests, as they often are–and language acquisition entails not only passing multiple choice tests, but being able to actually speak and communicate.  

Stephen Krashen is absolutely right.  The Regents exam is inappropriate and counter productive for these kids.   Doubtless we can do better, but those who design tests for ELLs need to do a far better job of it.   And those who design Regents exams ought to know that what native and non-native kids need is not the one-size fits all they’ve been providing.