Free Republic

The big story in New York education circles is the further confirmation of what longtime critics have alleged: that the feel-good story of rising student test scores over the last several years is largely an illusion produced by dumbed-down tests. David Steiner, appointed State Education Commissioner last year, believes that the system has led to “systemic grade inflation.” Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch agreed and enlisted Harvard testing expert Daniel Koretz to evaluate the state exams. On July 19, a preliminary report, based on Koretz’s findings, revealed that the jump in state test-score results over the past four years was indeed...

It’s time for my annual report on the pathetic condition of New York State’s once-vaunted Regents exams. Over the last few years, I’ve written several articles about the decline in quality of these tests. Whatever satisfaction I’ve derived from exposing how fraudulent they’ve become has been tempered by the fact that nothing has changed. The exams remain hopelessly manipulated, even as the New York Times touts the Board of Regents’ appointment of former Hunter College education dean David Steiner as its new education commissioner. The Times hopes that Steiner will lead “a review of teacher training and teacher certification across...

At first, Jeanne Heifetz thought she had merely tripped over one of those quirks that occasionally worm their way into standardized tests. Words were missing from a book excerpt she was familiar with on a Regents English exam. But when she discovered a second extensively altered excerpt, she began to wonder, "If there were two, could there be more?" Was something sinister afoot? So, driven by curiosity and her antipathy to the exams, she rounded up a batch of recent Regents tests, which New York State requires public high school students to take to graduate, and started double-checking the excerpts...