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Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Draft of a Letter to the New York State Board of Regents 2011 | The Jose Vilson

Draft of a Letter to the New York State Board of Regents 2011 | The Jose Vilson

Draft of a Letter to the New York State Board of Regents 2011

To Whom This May Concern:

Anytime I get the opportunity to score the New York State Mathematics Exam, whether as scoring leader, table leader, or part of the scoring team, I try to ingest the super-technical rubrics and guidelines in order to be the best scorer possible. Every time we sit through the trainings, whichever end I sit on, the sea of groans often shakes the walls of the gymnasium with disgust. Disgust turns to disappointment when the sample papers look very much like the actual papers we start grading. None of this is in self-interest as we don’t grade our own schools, and never do we get to think of the ramifications of the students who miss a certain grade level by a few points.

With that said, if these exams are how we’re going to judge our students’ academic worth or our teachers’