The Day 127 Tests Up and Walked Away
Last June, my eyes popped wide and I snapped this picture outside my Regents' grading site. Students' regents exams were sitting exposed to all in an open vehicle. It struck me as odd and unsafe at the time. I didn't think and I still don't think that anyone would steal exams. It would have to be one desperate criminal. First, there's no money to be made in it; two, the boxes are very heavy and, three, it surely, in some ways, constitutes a crime against humanity. I suppose some unschooled crook might have supposed the box to be filled by unmarked bills, but I think it is far more likely that the boxes were lost through carelessness, rather than crime. My vague sense of foreboding about the situation, unfortunately, turned out to be correct.
The New York Post recently published a piece entitled, "127 students must retake Regents after city loses their exams." One could not help but feel for the kids at Thomas Edison Career and Technical Education HS, Community Leadership, Hillside Arts and Letters Academy and Jamaica Gateway, all in Jamaica, Queens. I suppose some people view these students as statistics, but each has his or her own story of hardship. And, I feel like anyone of them could be my student or my child someday.
Tests have been lost before, but only recently has the situation worsened. In 2012, seventeen exams from FDR HS in Brooklyn were lost. Last NYC Educator: The Day 127 Tests Up and Walked Away: