Let the pointless torture continue!
New York’s Board of Regents has agreed to reduce the time devoted to state tests from three days for each subject (math and ELA) to two days for each subject.
Pray tell, why does it take two days of testing to determine how students are doing in basic subjects?
Will results be returned in August or September, as is now customary, when students have a different teacher?
Will students and teachers be allowed to discuss the questions that students got wrong?
Will the tests continue to lack any diagnostic value?
Or will the tests continue to be useless, other than as a means of ranking students, teachers, and schools?
As for those businessmen and financiers who love the tests and want every child tested with high stakes, I invite them to take the eighth grade math tests and publish their scores. Until they do, ignore them. They are bought and paid for by the privatization industry, which loves to raise standards that even they can’t meet. Designed to run down our public schools and our democracy.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You forgot a question Diane:
Will the state continue to use the error and falsehood filled standards and standardized testing malpractices that are known to cause harm to students?
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And if I may add to one of your questions:
“Or will the tests continue to be useless, other than as a COMPLETELY INVALID means of ranking students, teachers, and schools?”
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New York State, the center of Testucation*!
*Phil Cullen’s** term
**Wonderful and brilliant retired educator from Australia.
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“why does it take two days of assessing to determine how students are doing in basic subjects?”
It take two days because the folks doing the assessing (Pearson, members of the NY Regents and Mary Ellen Elia) are “two” dumb to assess in less (so dumb that they probably wouldn’t notice the “mistake” I just made)
NY has really gone down the toilet since I lived there. It appears that monkeys have escaped from the zoo and are now running the state.
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I forgot to mention the dumbest monkey of them all: Andrew Cuomo.
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I’m sure that you will soon be hearing from the lawyers at the American Society of Simians (ASS) with a cease and desist letter for associating its members with Cuomo, Elia, and the NY State Regents. I hope you have enough $$$ to properly respond and defend yourself.
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If someone loses two fingers instead of three, it still leaves a person with a handicap. The same can be said about reduction in the insane amount of useless testing in NYS designed to undermine public schools.
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“The floggings and beatings will continue until morale improves!”
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And the testing, harassing and blaming will continue so long as it is extremely lucrative to outside forces.
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This is Cuomo’s throw a bone.
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Cuomo is pathetic.
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I don’t recall NYS reporting their testing results until after the school year ended for the primary schools; while the Regent HS exams were always reported before graduation (many times beacuse students final grades and ability to graduate were hinged on them passing in order to graduate. (Not that passing equated to proficiency; especially for those with SLD’s, because the combination of the safety net and the built in curve was pretty broad and meant that a student could score a raw score of around 30 and still pass & graduate.)
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Notable quote by Lisa Rudley in the NY Times coverage of this. She says the tests are still flawed and there will still be opt outs: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/12/nyregion/new-york-to-shorten-standardized-tests-in-elementary-and-middle-schools.html?_r=0
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