We encourage parents to read the full article below. The New York Dept. of Ed is now engaged in encouraging school administrators to manipulate and lie to students.
While this is a different scenario that should send shock waves to parents across the country, we’d like to remind everyone that our own NH Commissioner has regular PRIVATE meetings with NH Superintendents. These private meetings are not open to the public so we cannot request notes or records.
While we are not suggesting the same kind of manipulation is taking place, it has concerned us for a long time that the Superintendent who is supposed to work for the local taxpayers, is now engaged in private and closed door meetings with the NH Commissioner of Education.
It is examples like the one below that makes us even more concerned about this lack of transparency on the part of the NH Dept. of Ed.
We’d also like to remind local school board members that the Superintendent works for THEM. The local school board is accountable to the taxpayers. It has been suggested by some that local school boards cut off the funding to Superintendents who attend these closed door meetings with the NH Commissioner. We’d at the MINIMUM, suggest that the Superintendents report directly to the School Board during public meetings and report what is going on in these meetings. There is NO reason the Superintendent cannot take notes and share this information publicly with the local board and community unless they have been told to keep the information in the meetings confidential. IF that is the case, we have an even bigger problem in this state.
We call upon Governor Hassan to stop these closed door meetings with her Commissioner of Education and bring transparency back to the NH Dept. of Education.
New York State Field Tests: ‘Students Should Not Be Informed’ Of Connection To Standardized Exams
A memo has recently surfaced in which the New York State Department of Education appears to encourage educators to mislead students about upcoming standardized field tests meant to “provide the data necessary to ensure the validity and reliability of the New York State Testing program.”
“Students should not be informed of the connection between these field tests and State assessments,” the memo reads. “The field tests should be described as brief tests of achievement in the subject.” (Read the document below.)
The memo is signed by Candace Shyer, interim executive of the state’s Education Department, and was sent to The Huffington Post by Leonie Haimson, executive director of Class Size Matters, a nonprofit organization that advocates for smaller class sizes.