By Valerie Strauss | Published March 19, 2013 by The Answer Sheet
The bottom line: Sixty percent bombed the test. Translation: Of the 50 accomplished adults who took an exam made up of questions from the New England Common Assessment Program, 60 percent received a score that would — if translated to Rhode Island’s new diploma policy — put a student in jeopardy of graduating from high school.
Those were the results released Tuesday of the scores earned by the state legislators, council members, scientists, engineers, reporters, professors and others who took the test. The exercise was staged by the Providence Student Union, a high school student advocacy group, as a protest against a new state requirement that high school seniors must reach a certain level of proficiency on the exam to graduate.
This year, Rhode Island is implementing a new policy that uses the New England Common Assessment Program, or NECAP, as a high-stakes testing graduation requirement. Students — beginning with this year’s juniors – must earn a score of at least “partially proficient” on the NECAP to graduate from high school. The NECAP was not, however, designed for this purpose. It wasn’t even designed to assess individual students.
Montreal Teachers 4 Change.org 
Leave a Reply