Dear New York State Lawmakers,

Your recent legislation affecting changes in Common Core implementation does not address the core concerns of New York’s public school parents and educators, and certainly does not help our children.

We are for high academic standards and for assessing student achievement; but state law must hold the State Education Department accountable for the credibility of its measures and methods.

We therefore urge your immediate action to:

1) Ensure state test validity, reliability and quality before administering to students.  State law should require external expert review of state-contracted vendor-designed tests to certify their worth as measuring instruments before they are administered to our students, with such reviews made transparent and readily available to the public, especially given the State Education Department’s current policy of withholding tests from public scrutiny. State law should further require that whenever student state test results are reported to districts, parents and the public, “the limitations of the test should be explained clearly to a lay audience,” including “such concepts as measurement error, significance of score differences, the probability of misclassification, and, when applicable, how well the test predicts future performance” (National Research Council Board on Testing & Assessment 2007).

2) Suspend tying teacher and principal ratings to student test scores. As the NYS PTA notes, “The moratorium on use of students’ test scores is contradictory: if the value of test outcomes is questionable for use in making student decisions, the same must apply for determining educator effectiveness.” State law should prohibit the State Education Department from tying New York teacher and principal evaluation ratings to student test scores until the validity and reliability of its method can be established.  At present, the American Statistical Association​, the nation's top experts on testing and assessment, and the overwhelming consensus of the broad research community are against the State Education Department’s use of student test scores in high-stakes decisions about educators.  

Sincerely,