22 October 2003

Testimony before the NYS Senate and Assembly

Standing Committees on Education on “The Negative

Impact of the Five Regents Examinations.”

by

Dr. Dave Lehman, Principal

Alternative Community School

Ithaca, New York

It was almost four years ago to the date – on the 28th of October in 1999 – in Syracuse that I came before you as the Principal of one of the members schools of the New York Performance Standards Consortium “to request your support in continuing our waiver with the State Education Department for our “performance based assessment system” – for which we have had a waiver for the past six years – in lieu of the new Regents Exams.” Now, with four years of experience with our students beginning to deal with the new Regents Exams as they continue to meet our extensive “Graduation by Exhibition” high school graduation requirements, I come to you with essentially the same, but now even more urgent request, to assist us in re-instating this waiver. And/or, to create legislation granting us as an “alternative high school” the re-instating of the option of our students earning a “local diploma” based on their Graduation by Exhibition without the additional requirement of the five Regents Exams as proposed to the Commissioner of Education by the New York State Alternative Education Association (NYSAEA) some two years ago. And/or, to pass two pieces of legislation currently before you which address this issue: the “proposed Bill to Protect Multiple Assessment Bill #A11649” and the “proposed Bill to Protect Parents’ Rights #A00618” Our staff has had to significantly alter their curricula to incorporate more “coverage” of the minutia of items which may be on any given Regents Exam at the increasing loss of their time to go in greater depth in selected topics and case studies in order to help our students develop the highly valued critical thinking and problem solving skills as well as the imagination, creativity, and the ability to look at issues from more than one perspective so crucial to the development of citizens fully able to participate in a democratic society - the initial purpose of public education in this country.

But let me first, review some of what I presented to you four years ago as it is even more relevant to our case today – “Since [we began the school some thirty years ago as a junior high school] we have had twenty-three graduating classes meeting “higher standards” before they even were being called for by the State Education Department. From the beginning [and still true today] typically 80-85% of our graduates have gone right on to colleges and universities after graduating. The other 15-20% each year choose to do other things before beginning college some one to three years later; such as teaching English on a Hopi reservation, building schools in rural East Africa, hiking the Appalachian Trail, or working to earn money for college. Those who go to colleges/universities do so at schools throughout the state and the country, public and private, large and small, highly competitive and less competitive including all of the SUNY schools, from Harvard and Brown to the Universities of Michigan and Wisconsin, the University of Chicago, to the California colleges and universities – and all without grade point averages, nor class rank, nor letter grades, nor Regents Exam scores. Rather, in the last ten years in particular, our transcripts reflect our “graduation by exhibition” with “performance based assessments” – portfolios, demonstrations, performances, and exhibitions - of what our students know and can do.

I [still!] understand and accept the push for “higher standards” and believe that we have already been doing this - one reason why we were presented with our plaque by [former] Chancellor Carl Hayden at a ceremony before the Board of Regents in the spring of 1992 as one of the first fourteen “Compact Partnership Schools” throughout New York State to be cited for their exemplary work in secondary school reform. And it is why the State Education Department and WNET did a videotape about our innovative approach to science and math curriculum and assessment – “Learning by Doing: Lessons from the Field” – which has been shown widely across this state, and used in teacher preparation programs as exemplary. [A curricular approach which now is seriously jeopardized!]

Our students are, and have been, meeting “higher standards.” For example, all of our potential high school graduates must demonstrate proficiency in a foreign language (at the “intermediate” level beyond the Regents Proficiency exam), computer literacy (including keyboarding, word processing, database, spread sheet, graphics, and how to use the internet), a senior interdisciplinary team project, an individual senior project, and a minimum of sixty hours of community service….And our seniors in their senior year prepare a resume, a personal physical fitness plan for themselves, plans for life-after-high school, college or career explorations, and a series of personal reflections about what they have learned about themselves with each element of our high school program [all of which are currently being threatened as there is decreasing time available when our students and teachers had to take so much time simply to prepare for the five Regents Exams].

Thus, our issue is not with the formation of “higher standards,” but that there is only one way to assess higher standards, e.g. Regents Exams. Our middle and high school students have consistently shown their proficiency beyond that called for in the “higher standards” which is in large part why Chancellor Hayden presented us with our “Compact Partnership School” plaque. We also were one of the first fifty secondary schools in the country to join the “Coalition of Essential Schools” back in 1987, collaborating with other educators around the country working to implement a set of ten “Common Principles” - among them “graduation by exhibition” – to create the kind of learning environments that enable all students to be even more fully successful.”

In the past four years it has been demonstrated that there have been and continue to be - 1) major flaws in several of the Regents Exams each year which have caused undo distress to students and their families throughout the State, 2) students with English as a Second Language are being tested unfairly and un-democratically in a society which claims to be a land of equal opportunity since not only the ELA Regents Exam tests students’ English language skills, but all of the Regents Exams are essentially reading tests and 3) Special Education students who simply cannot pass the same Regents Exams that their peers have to take - yet who clearly can and have demonstrated proficiency in developing skills and understandings through performance-based means of assessments – are also being treated unfairly and unjustly, and who in addition are subjected to the humiliating practice of being “given the opportunity“ to take the Regents Competency Tests (RCTs) once they have failed a Regents Exam. Indeed our once “public” schools, particularly established to insure an educated citizenry for a democratic society, are rapidly becoming “government” schools directed from afar and held accountable to measures of success over which parent/caregivers, teachers, administrators, and local school boards have little real control.

Thus, again I am essentially asking the same thing I asked of you in 1999 – “… your assistance in securing an extension of our waiver as a member school of the New York Performance Standards Consortium simply to be allowed to continue our “graduation by exhibition” process utilizing our “performance based assessment system” which has already been shown to meet and exceed the new Standards, and to result in success for our students. – and/or – to create the legislation necessary to re-instate the local diploma option for alternative high schools throughout New York state - and/or - to pass two pieces of legislation which address this issue: the “proposed Bill to Protect Multiple Assessment #A11649” and the “proposed Bill to Protect Parents’ Rights #A00618”. And, again, I close my testimony before you today with my closing from 1999 – “Our young people deserve no less.”