Parent Coalition
Taking Action - Sample Letters

Speaker Sheldon Silver
LOB 932/CAP 349
Albany, NY 12248

[enter date]

Dear Speaker Silver,

I am writing to express my deep dismay at Commissioner Mills' recent ruling requiring all future graduating classes in Consortium schools to take the English Language Regents exam. Make no mistake about it: assessment drives curriculum. The impact of this exam on our schools would be devastating, turning a student-centered, discussion-based curriculum into a test-driven one.

One member of the Board of Regents has repeatedly told us that our students could easily take this exam without any preparation. Why then are the exam schools, including Stuyvesant and Bronx Science, taking weeks of class time to prepare their students for it? With only a limited amount of time in the school day, I do not want my child focused on high-stakes testing, which can be severely detrimental to motivation and learning.

I applaud the idea of studying the outcomes of the schools in our Consortium (a study the SED was instructed to do under the previous variance). The Consortium asked Commissioner Mills to conduct such an evaluation over a year ago, but he refused. Now he is trying to play catch-up with a study rushed over the next few months. Such a study will have no scientific validity if Consortium students are asked to engage in some kind of hybrid educational approach -- part performance-assessment and part Regents exams. A valid study would take pairs of schools with matched populations, and compare the outcomes of students in performance-assessment schools with students in Regents' exam schools. Please speak to Commissioner Mills and urge him to accept the offer of the Performance Assessment Review Board's experts who have called for a valid five-year longitudinal study using matched populations. Members of the Performance Assessment Review Board, Inc., have offered to raise funds to conduct such a study.

Nothing is more important to me than my child's education. I did not seek a voucher to take my child out of the public education system. I found an excellent alternative within the public education system. I chose a performance assessment school because it provided the best education for my child. This school works! Parents in private schools who feel that their schools' approach is the best for their children have the luxury of saying "no" to Regents exams. I feel exactly the same way, but I don't have that luxury.

In this election year, where education has become an important political issue, I look to my elected representatives to advocate my point of view. I hope I can count on you.

Sincerely,

Address:

School: