The Board of Regents, which oversees education in New York, has authorized tests to be given to elementary school students based on what's known as the "Core Curriculum." The Core has been adopted nationwide, by 45 of the 50 states, plus the federal Education Department and President Barack Obama.
Only two states have authorized the tests to begin immediately, however. New York is one.
Despite considerable controversy over the value of the Core-based tests, Meryl Tisch, Chancellor of the Board of Regents, has said: "We believe that this is the right thing for students and teachers right now."
The Core Curriculum contains subject matter and problems which, for all the Regents know, have never been presented to many of the students taking the tests. The Regents might have taken steps to implement the Core Curriculum in the classroom first. They might have required each district and therefore each school, to teach the Core subject matter that would eventually be confronted by the students in the tests. Then, once the material had been presented to the students, the Regents could have tested them to find out how well the material had been learned.
But the Regents didn't do that. They have required many students to take the tests before being prepared to pass the tests. The material that they have never seen will befuddle those students, and, regrettably, they will blame themselves for not doing well.
Of course, some students will do well. Students from upper middle class families, whose parents have the leisure time to keep their children ahead of the wave in their school work, will do better. And parents who have the money to hire tutors or send their kids to prep classes will do best of all.
But students whose parents never went to college, or even finished high school, and students whose parents would like to help their kids through school but simply don't know how to go about it, will be blind sided. And they will blame themselves for being confused. Why wouldn't they. They couldn't imagine their teachers setting a trap for them like this.
And why indeed did their teachers, and the school district superintendents, and the Board of Regents set the students up, set many of them up for certain failure?
There is a notion afloat that this nation is falling behind in the global race to produce the best educated citizens. That there even is such a race is dubious thinking, but that drum is beat so constant that it creates the reality of an educational race to the top.
The resources devoted to education, many argue, have to be focused on winning that race, and assisting those students who have the best chance of moving ahead toward educational and economic success.
Who are those students?
They are the very students who will do well in these examinations, for which the general school population was inadequately prepared. If you have the kind of parents who will help you up the ladder to success, you will be welcomed on board the education express. And if your parents are not able to do that, for whatever reason, we would just be wasting our limited educational resources bringing you up to speed.
You did badly on the test that you weren't prepared for, we are effectively saying. That's a bad omen for your future studies. Better start thinking community college. Get to the back of the line.
The whole notion of education being a stepladder to success in American society is being abandoned. We don't seem to have time to deal with the wretched refuse of our own teeming shores, let alone immigrants. Let's move on.
There is certainly no evidence that the Board of Regents intentionally wants to skew the test results in favor of students whose parents are better able to help them succeed. But that will be the inevitable result.
That will be bad for social mobility in New York, the state that invented social mobility through education. In the long run, it will be to everyone's disadvantage.
Ed Sullivan is a former college professor and former chairman of the state Assembly's Higher Education Committee.