One usually doesn’t think of the wealthy Westchester village of Scarsdale as a hotbed for direct action protest. However, on May 3 this leafy community 20 miles north of New York City gained national attention when 67 percent of its eighth grade students—195 out of 290 students—boycotted day one of mandatory state standardized tests.
Similar protests broke out in New York City, Rochester, and Albany, where on May 7 over 1500 students, parents, and teachers from across the state rallied against standardized testing and called for the resignation of Education Commissioner Richard P. Mills.
By Mills’ initiative all public school students entering 9th grade this fall, including those at alternative high schools, will be required for the first time to pass five Regents exams—English, math, U.S. history, global studies and science—in order to graduate. Mills says standardized tests help pinpoint which students need help while creating a calculable means to track the success of specific teachers and schools.
Under Mills’ plan, the State Education Department will place poorly performing schools on review.
Opponents of the test warn of diluted curricula for the state’s brightest students, increased dropout rates, and the near annihilation of alternative schools, which historically have not used testing to gauge student success.
On August 16, the New York Performance Standards Consortium, a coalition of 28 alternative schools mostly based in New York City, filed a lawsuit in State Supreme Court in Albany to block Mills’ plan to require passage of the Regents exams for students in alternative schools.
"Normally one makes changes in schools that are failing, but Commissioner Mills is attacking schools that are highly successful," said Richard Davis, an attorney representing the Consortium.
Ann Cook, who is principal at the Urban Academy in New York City and serves as a co-chair of the Consortium, has repeatedly pointed out the achievements of the alternative schools. Recent statistics show that 91 percent of graduates from the 28 schools in the Consortium attend college compared to 63 percent of graduates from the remaining City schools.
Cook and other backers of alternative schools charge that tests should not be the sole guide to determine whether a student graduates. Other methods could include portfolios, research projects and internships.
Even a Mills-appointed panel had recommended that alternative schools be given a three-year waiver from the exams in order for the schools to adjust their curricula. But Mills rejected the recommendation, an action which, in part, prompted the lawsuit.
"There’s room for the use of portfolios in the classroom, but Regents exams and proven alternatives are the only reliable assessment for a high school diploma," Tom Dunn, spokesman for the Education Department, told the media after the lawsuit was filed.
In wealthy towns like Scarsdale—where the dropout rate is under 1 percent—educators feel the state is not needed to intervene in determining who can graduate.
Scarsdale Middle School Principal Michael McDermott described the tests as an "unnecessary intrusion" in an interview with the Westchester Journal News. "This takes 70 hours of instruction time away from us to prepare for, administer, and score these Assessments."
At the May 7 rally in Albany, Ben Decker, then a ninth-grader at Scarsdale High School, echoed the notion that the tests detract from other lessons. "Teachers are forced to spend the entire year teaching for the tests and rushing through the curriculum," he said. Scarsdale students have complained how teachers had to abandon special programs such as acting out "Romeo and Juliet" and mock courtroom debates in favor of what is known as "teaching to the test."
But critics of standardized tests fear that instituting the tests will have even more drastic effects, such as raising dropout rates, as already seen in New York City, and thus will widen the gulf created by educational inequalities even further.
Between 1991 and 1998 the citywide dropout rate decreased annually, but has since risen steadily. According to the city, 15.6 percent of students in the class of 1998 dropped out; 17.5 percent in the class of 1999, and 19.5 percent in the class of 2000. Figures for the class of 2001 are not yet available.
Some opponents link the increased standards to the dropout rate increase. The class of 2000 was the first class required to pass the English Regents.
"Some students, especially those learning English, know they have no chance of passing the Regents exam in English, so they dropped out," Jill Chaifest, director of Advocate for Children, told the New York Daily News last year.
