Scoring the Regents

Here we are: It's June, Regents Exams are over and graduation is coming next Tuesday. However, there are no scores for the Regents. We do not know who graduates and who goes to the Summer school. It's a mess.

Why do politicians have to make politics even where it does not belong? Why do we always have to find somebody to blame when we run into a problem?

We have a mess with the Regents scoring only because the new system is coming to schools and the system is not completely ready to be used to all exams. It needs some adjustments like any new car need the parts to start working together and rub on each other.

We need this new system because it's efficient to use computers for scoring, not because the "scores were inflated" by teachers. What a bull....

We need the new system because we entered the 21st century and we do everything on the computers and on-line, shouldn't we score the papers on-line too? Of course we should!!!!

I scored Chemistry in January online. It was great experience. Fast, efficient, no paper cuts or paper dust. Old tests were recycled and I got the disk with my students' exams for storage. I love everything about the new system. It's coming and it's almost here.

Unfortunately, there are problems: politics and money. Naturally!

Politics, because they have to blame somebody for everything, so this change is blamed on the teachers who can't score their students' papers, but by some mysterious reason can score other teachers' students work. Same people, same students, same papers. I scored them the same way I always did. I do not care if the student is mine or somebody else's. Other teachers are like that too. It's our job to grade papers, we've done this for years. I like the new system, I hate being lied to.

With the new system a "for profit" corporation comes into the old public system. Now we have to share our tax payers' money with the company which scans and converts all exams into digital form. How much is too much? How much is enough? Who do we have to blame if the computer freezes?