SCHOOLS

Central, Merrick districts refuse field tests

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The Bellmore-Merrick Central High School District and Merrick School District recently received shipments of multiple-choice tests, sealed in plastic wrap, from NCS Pearson, Inc., the company that creates and grades New York’s standardized tests for third to eighth graders. Both districts sent the test books back, unopened.

These were not the Common Core English Language Arts and math assessments that New York’s third- to eighth-grade students took in April and May, but field tests that Pearson uses to try out questions before placing them on future years’ assessments.

The state asks some schools to give field tests in multiple grades, some schools in only one grade and some schools not at all. Before the Central and Merrick school boards pulled the plug, Merrick Avenue Middle School eighth-graders were slated to take a science field test, Birch School fifth-graders an English field test, Chatterton School fourth-graders an English field test, and Levy Lakeside School fourth- and fifth-graders math field tests. The exams last 40 minutes. Their results do not affect students’ grades or any decision-making at the school district level — school districts, parents and students never see the results.

The Central and Merrick districts joined a chorus of New York educators and parents who are protesting what they view to be wrongheaded educational policies and priorities that place too much emphasis on test taking. According to Jeanette Deutermann, a North Bellmore mother and founder of the Facebook group “Long Island Opt-out Info,” at least 26 New York districts, from Long Island’s North Fork to Rochester’s suburbs, refused to administer the field tests.

“Parents … are relieved and grateful that our administrators and Board of Education members are placing the needs of their students above the continued onslaught of testing placed on our children by the State Education Department,” Deutermann said.

New York State United Teachers, a union that represents 600,000 teachers statewide, also came out against the field tests.

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