Las Vegas Sun

November 10, 2009

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Letter: School district would rather dumb down test

Tuesday, June 10, 2003 | 9:28 a.m.

Concerning this math test that has everyone in such an uproar: When I was in high school, you had a choice of a regents or nonregents curriculum. Nonregents students had to take basic algebra and that was all. Regents students could go on to take geometry, trigonometry and calculus.

My parents put me on the regents path and made me attend summer school if I brought home a final grade below 75. From reading the recent letters to the editor, it seems that my parents were somewhat tougher on me academically than what seems to be the norm here.

If the administration feels it has to keep dumbing-down the test to allow more students to pass, why not make the whole thing easier? They could use pictures to convey questions so the students with below-average reading skills wouldn't have a problem. Better yet, why not just make the whole test a video game? Certainly then we'd have a higher pass rate and everyone would be happy.

I am a firm believer that knowledge is power and that increasing one's knowledge makes a person more open-minded, tolerant and well-rounded. If that feeling is not shared by the public school administration, why have a test at all?

DAVID E. BOSSELMAN

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