LITTLE ROCK — Congress did the right thing with the No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 when it required states to document student performance in yearly tests. (But) most states immediately undermined the effort by employing weak tests and setting passing scores too low.
David Steiner, the New York state education commissioner who took office a year ago, dealt head-on with the issue last week, admitting what many New Yorkers suspected: that the state’s annual math and English tests were too easy.
The problem in New York seems not to have involved deliberate deception. Rather, the state Education Department, which oversees the tests in cooperation with a panel of experts, allowed the math exam in particular to become utterly predictable, focused on the same, narrow subset of abilities from year to year. This made it too easy for teachers to teach for the exam.
New York’s parents . . . need an honest appraisal of whether the schools are preparing their children to succeed in a highly competitive world.
Editorial, Pages 10 on 07/27/2010