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New York Regents Exam Controversy
Millie Davis, Division Director, NCTE Communications and Affiliate Services In June 2002, NCTE joined forces with 13 other organizations to protest the use of altered literary passages on the New York Regents Exam in English. The other organizations include organizations with which NCTE has had long standing relationships (American Library Association Office for Intellectual Freedom, Freedom to Read Foundation, National Coalition Against Censorship, People for the American Way Foundation), some with which NCTE has occasionally worked (American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, Association of American Publishers, National Center for Fair & Open Testing or FairTest, PEN American Center), and several with which NCTE has never worked (Americans for Democratic Action, NYC Chapter; New York Civil Liberties Union; New York Performance Standards Consortium; Patents’ Coalition Against High-Stakes Testing; Peacefire). The protest which included a press conference, a letter to the New York Commissioner of Education, and articles in The New York Times and The New Yorker resulted in an immediate response from the commissioner, Dr. Richard P. Mills, who declared that no more expurgated literary texts would be used on the exams. The protest and Mills’ declaration also led to a flurry of press which included more articles in The New York Times as well as articles in publications from Education Week to The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, scathing Op-eds by Diane Ravitch and Anna Quindlen and, in Ravitch’s case, several television interviews. Following is how NCTE played a part in this controversy.
The New York Regents Exams are high school exit tests that have been institutionalized in the public schools of state for decades, although the current exams have been changed from earlier versions to measure how well the student has met the recently developed state learning standards. Passing these exams makes the difference between whether a student receives the highly regarded regents diploma or simply a local diploma. Because of the high stakes nature of these tests, 12th grade teachers spend time preparing their students to take and pass the exams. Some use the tried and true preparation method of practice-testing their students with old versions of the exam. It is this practice that ultimately revealed the bowdlerization of the literary passages on the tests.
Jean Heifetz noticed that words were missing from a literary passage that she was familiar with on a practice test her daughter had brought home to study. Heifetz didn’t think too much of that until she noticed another altered passage. She then began her sleuth work of checking the passages on ten years’ worth of exams. Some of what she found included a passage by Isaac Bashevis Singer from which all mention of Judaism was removed, one by Ernesto Galarza in which a boy described a “skinny” became “thin” and another described as “fat” became “heavy,” a passage from a speech by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan from which references to the U.S. being the biggest U.N. debtor were removed, and one by Annie Dillard about the library she mentions frequenting as a child from which all reference to the library being in the African-American section of town was removed. In addition, it seemed that the questions that accompanied many of the passages relied on the expurgated parts for their answers. After her discovery, Heifetz contacted most of the authors and their publishers who were irate at having the works changed without their consent. These contacts spurred the involvement of groups concerned with censorship and ultimately of NCTE. According to the initial press release from the National Coalition Against Censorship, “In the last three years, 25 of 26 passages used in the test have been altered, often in ways that significantly distort the meaning of the works. ‘The tests appear to have been systematically stripped of references to race, religion, ethnicity, sex, nudity, and other things that might be considered "offensive,"' according to Joan Bertin, Executive Director of NCAC. ‘Ironically,’ she added, ‘many of the passages that were selected come from works that are about these very issues. The altered passages, and the questions asked about them, are confusing, if not nonsensical.’"
NCTE was contacted by Ann Cook of the NY Performance Standards Consortium and Joan Bertin, Executive Director, National Coalition Against Censorship. On June 3, 2002, NCTE sent the attached letter (see below) to Dr. Richard P. Mills, joining the initial coalition of groups protesting the bowdlerization of the literary passages on the exams. The letter became part of the press packet distributed at the press conference on that day, joining the National Coalition Against Censorship, NY Civil Liberties Union, NY Performance Standards Consortium, Parents’ Coalition to End High-Stakes Testing, and PEN American Center. Leila Christenbury, serving as NCTE spokesperson on the issue, received several calls. She was quoted in an Op-Ed by John Leland (The New York Times, “The Myth of the Offenseless Society,” June 9, 2002) while New York State English Council leader Donna Kemp was quoted in an article by Mary Ann Zehr (Education Week, “Stung by Criticism For Altering Texts, N.Y. Changes Policy,” June 12, 2002).
The coalition did not stop there, however. They have written a letter to Commissioner Mills and others asking for credible evidence that the State Education Department will no longer censor educational materials.
Further information on the controversy including examples of the expurgated passages may be obtained on the National Coalition Against Censorship Web site at http://www.ncac.org/censorship_news/archive.cfm.
June 3, 2002
Dr. Richard P. Mills
Commissioner of Education
The State Education Department
89 Washington Avenue
Albany, New York 12234
Dear Dr. Mills:
The National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) strongly supports the New York Civil Liberties Union, the National Coalition Against Censorship, the PEN American Center, the New York Performance Standards Consortium, and the Parents’ Coalition to End High-Stakes Testing and others listed in their recent letter protesting the use of expurgated literary texts in the New York English Language Arts Regents Examinations. NCTE, a professional organization of 75,000 members dedicated to improving the quality of instruction in the English language arts at all educational levels, opposes censorship and alteration and rewriting of original texts for use in instruction and, as in this case, in student testing.
As noted in the Standards for the English Language Arts, a nationally recognized document jointly crafted by both NCTE and the International Reading Association (IRA), a major goal of literature instruction is for students to build an understanding of a variety of cultures and experiences outside their own by reading a wide range of literature. Texts that have been purged of the very words and phrases chosen by their authors to represent various cultures and experiences lose their literary merit and leave their readers with distorted and incomplete impressions. Second, testing students on the basis of their understanding and interpretation of such mangled texts is exceptionally poor examination practice, and considering the high stakes of the Regents Exam, calls the validity of the test itself into serious question. As a third point, this covert alteration of texts makes a mockery of the literature, its instruction, and, most importantly, of the student readers themselves.
NCTE wholly opposes such abridgement or adaptation of texts as a form of censorship. Twenty years ago, the NCTE membership passed a resolution that “publishers present the complete text or sections of works which they choose to print, whether in a single text or in an anthology; and that if publishers do abridge or adapt a text, they clearly state in the text that these alterations have occurred, and explain the nature and extent of the abridgment or adaptation in promotional information, teachers' guides, and other support materials.” Additionally, as stated above, to examine and score students on the basis of their response to and interpretation of incomplete and altered texts—texts which it is possible they have also read in the original—is shoddy testing practice.
NCTE joins with those who urge you to immediately rectify this situation and cease the alteration of the literary texts used on the Regents Exam, to “respect the language chosen by the authors it quotes and the students who have worked hard to understand the craft and significance of literature.” Further, NCTE joins with parents and students who may legitimately question the validity of the Regents Exam when the examination material, which they interpreted and to which they responded, was falsely represented as original text.
Sincerely,
Kent Williamson
Director
Leila Christenbury
NCTE President
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