Fuzzy Math, Courtesy of Your New York State Board of Regents
I thought, when a heard a math teacher from my school ranting white with rage about a question on the algebra Regents, that this was an isolated incident. This particular teacher was so incensed that he was putting together a PowerPoint breaking out every single thing wrong with the question and showing it to his colleagues, all of whom were shaking their heads sadly. Yes, I thought this was an isolated incident, but I am wrong. (Even if you're not a math teacher, click over to take a quick peek at the post from JD2718; it's short and you'll get the point.)Yet we as teachers are supposed to be just fine with having these tests, and the people who create them, holding the swords of Damocles over our jobs. I've scored both the middle school ELA exams and the English Regents exams at this point, and there are many multiple-choice questions that are ambiguous or can have more than one "correct" or "best" answer choice. Even the
