NYS Regents Exam Grading: Unfair for Teachers and Students
For Immediate Release
This June marks the first attempt at centralizing the grading process for two exams; Global History and Geography and United States History and Government. Completed student exams were placed in a shipping box and sent to be scanned by McGraw-Hill. The scanned version of the exam is then presented to a teacher for grading over the Internet using software that has been developed by McGraw-Hill.
Teachers arrived to their grading centers Monday to face one issue after another. Many teachers were not able to log in due to a problem with the authentication server. Others were able to log in but not able to access a single exam item to grade. Some of the essays were so poorly scanned that half of the content was covered. Although the system listed many exams available to be graded, it simply did not present these exams to teachers’ screens for grading. After two hours of sitting around, teachers were sent back to their home school.
Tuesday continued to pose problems. The software continued to freeze, worked only sporadically, then at 1:00pm it ceased to work at all. Again teachers were told to return to their home school. Teachers are hard working professionals who should not be sent from one place to another, especially when the scoring centers and home school may over an hour away from each other by public transportation. All while students await test scores to know if they are allowed to attend graduation.
A Brooklyn Social Studies teacher says, “The greatest travesty is the money being wasted, that could be going to our kids, is instead lining the pockets of private corporations. Bloomberg knew exactly what he was doing when he put the DOE in Tweed: the last ten years have been nothing more than an all out offensive to siphon as much money and resources as they could out of our public schools and into the hands of these corporations and wealthy individuals.”
The entire process was so poorly organized and shamefully inefficient. It needlessly created delays and unnecessary errors. This will inevitably require that personnel be hired and more money will be spent to grade these tests to make up for the wasted time. Teachers have always graded these tests with accuracy, diligence and in a timely fashion. McGraw-Hill was paid millions of dollars to set up a defective system. The mayor is guilty of wasting tax-payers’ dollars, that could be better utilized by reducing class-size, restoring after-school programs that were cut due to austerity measures, and giving educators the contract they deserve!
MORE’s claim to fame is speaking truth. But your post on the DOE’s grading fiasco tells a BIG LIE: “Teachers have always graded these tests with accuracy, diligence and in a timely fashion.” The opposite is true. NYC principals and teachers have been tampering with Regents for years and years. Has your anonymous author ever heard of “scrubbing”? Please retract this ridiculous claim..
what do you mean by “scrubbing”? do you mean what amounts to “quality control”–i.e., making sure students, especially those close to passing, are credited with the points they earned?
In general, re SS Regents, scrubbing means reviewing final grades close to 65 and then changing some internal scores on DBQs or the two essays to reach 65.
You’re clearly not a teacher, so you don’t know anything about it. I would personally love a more efficient system that lessened the margin of error, but once again the BOE spends tons of money on something not fully tested that will probably be defunct in a few years. The point of the article is they money being spent on ridiculous whims, so maybe try re-reading before dismissing it.
I’m a Social Studies teacher with an impeccable record, not counting three years in the rubber room and another three on the ATR trail. Don’t rely on me for opinion on Regents cheating. Just google it.
There was also a complete fiasco with the ELA Regents scoring. Many of us received an e-mail solicitation directly from the DOE advising us that our license indicated we were eligible to apply for per-session scoring and it was encouraged that we apply. Thus, many ESL and other licensed professionals applied and were accepted for the position. The original position was from Thursday, 6/13 through Wednesday, 6/19, 4 hours per night. We went to our assigned location the first night (Thursday, 6/13/13, 5-9PM) and received training and scored exams. The following night (Friday, 5PM), we showed up to our assigned location and began scoring the scanned exams. After about 20 minutes of time elapsed, they told everyone to log out for half an hour. After 30 minutes, they came back and made the announcement that everyone who didn’t have an English license was not eligible to score the exam. We were then threatened if we continued to score, we were in jeopardy of losing our license. They sent us home at 6PM and paid us for 4 hours for that night. I don’t know what they will do with the exams which were already scored? Now, to add insult to injury, we received another e-mail that we were given the wrong instructions in filling out the form to be paid. They are now mailing us the form we should have submitted and we have to mail them back the incorrect form. Also, many of us had made arrangements knowing that we would be scoring for 5 nights. Who, exactly, is in charge???
Bloomberg is in charge with a chancellor who has a waiver from the NYS Education Department. My concern is for the students who were counting on the regents for a High School Diploma. Some students don’t have it because of this fiasco. How are they going to be college and job ready with out a diploma? Where is the administration. Bring back the BOE and dump the DOE. It was better when the people had control over the education of their students.