ICE PAC (Parent Action/Education Advocacy Committee

On Tuesday, the City Council's education committee held a hearing on "Breaking Testing Culture." It prominently featured representatives (students, principals, the executive director) of the New York Performance Assessment Consortium ("the Consortium"), of which ICE is a member school. Consortium schools are the only schools in NY state that have a waiver from (most of) the Regents exams. (These are the "exit exams" that most NY state students are required to take for high school graduation.) The hearing began with testimony from actor/musician Anthony Ramos, who starred in the original cast of Hamilton, along with the high school teacher who championed him--even though he failed Regents exam after Regents exam, resulting in this clearly bright young man being labeled as "underperforming." The second part of the hearing, however, took quite a different turn, as representatives of the DOE confirmed that rather than trying to lessen the testing burden that had hobbled Ramos, they would be adding an additional test for our children...to be administered FOUR TIMES A YEAR. If you are concerned about this development, please consider joining ICE PAC so we can learn more, strategize, and fight back. You can reach us via 10th grade parent Kemala Karmen.

Here's a Daily News article about the hearing--the title pretty much sums it up.