Tests So New They Outpace Lesson Plan

[elleng]

3. This infuriates me!

I attended NY public schools through high schoo, and had a fine education, including annual 'Regents' exams as FINALS in major high school courses, but THIS???

'Larry Larson, a Web developer with a fourth grader at Public School 58 in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, said he had started teaching his son concepts like long division. He said the new tests felt like someone “changing the rules of the road overnight.”

“From now on, everyone is going to be driving on the left side of the road,” he said. “In the morning, there are going to be a lot of accidents.”

Recently, administrators at Public School 94 in the Bronx invested in 300 protractors when they realized the tests might require them. “Now, we are teaching the kids how to use them,” the principal, Diane DaProcida, said.

To her students, Ms. DaProcida was sympathetic, but blunt. “To stay competitive in the global economy, you children need to be better prepared.”

Then she gave them a lesson in New York City bureaucracy. “This is going to take some time.”'