REGIONAL – State Education Commissioner David Steiner recently announced a shakeup of State standardized testing. Steiner presented to the State Board of Regents an analysis by university experts of state test scores. It compared students' third and eighth grade scores, with their performance on high school Regents, college placement exams, the National Assessment of Educational Programs, and the SAT. What the analysis found is that, over the past four year, standardized tests have become too easy. Steiner also said that the state will undertake a recalibration of the results of this spring's tests, which will almost certainly lead to more students failing.

The result that has set the state educational world abuzz was that only students with scores above 80 on the Regents Math exam, or 75 on the Regents English exam, had much of a chance of doing well in college.   > MORE