In The New York Times, Michael Winerip reports on the latest efforts of New York State Education Department to destroy alternative schools via the imposition of mandatory graduation tests.
Students in New York must pass five exams to graduate from high school. In the mid-1990s, former state education commissioner Thomas Sobel granted 28 alternative schools (serving 16,000 students) an exemption from most state tests that permitted more innovative curriculum and teaching.
Current NYS Education Commissioner, Rick Mills believes that all students, without exception, should take every test. Mills has turned New York’s public schools into one of the most test-driven systems in the US.
Mills has been battling the alternative schools–now organized as the New York Performance Standards Consortium–for years and may have the upper hand as the exemptions handed out by Sobel are set to expired.
Consortium schools now have the backing of the chairmen of the education committees in both the State Assembly and the Senate Education, so the stage is set for what might be test of Mills’ draconian rule as the biggest test-pusher this side of George W. Bush.
For more on the NY Performance Standards Consortium see: resisting the tyranny of tests.
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