Letter to NY State Education Commissioner from Principal Phillips
by admin
Please see this link for original letter. Read content below.
Dear Commissioner King:
I urge you to carefully review this year’s state ELA exams. I have been principal for 13 years and have read the tests each year. Although there are always issues with selected questions, generally it is only one or two per test that the assistant principals and I can’t quite agree on. I am genuinely shocked that with the increased importance of state testing, there are so many more flawed questions than ever before. I wish I could go into detail here, but it violates test security for me to discuss the content of the tests or the questions, which is why I feel so strongly that it is important that you see these tests for yourselves.
In particular, I would recommend that you carefully read through day one of the fifth grade ELA. The reading passages themselves are not too challenging—surprising since the passages in the 4th grade test were not particularly easy and the Common Core Standards call for more rigor. However, the questions were nothing short of ridiculous. Several of them were ambiguous and seemed designed only to trick children (and adults….the answers were not clear to many of us). Overall, the questions did not serve to determine whether or not children
