Artifacts from the Field:  Are you kidding me?

The photo is the explanatory aide that teachers were given this week to help inform students how to fill out the new regents multiple choice sheets.  The sheets, which are optical scanned, are filled out in pen.  This necessitates all sorts of odd symbolism should a child decide to change his/her mind after filling in their first choice.

Essentially, the new testing language is as follows:

1. Students fill in the circle for the first choice.
2. Should a student decide another circle is more appropriate, they fill in that circle, and place a clear, obvious X through the former choice.
3. This mode could continue through all four circles.
4. If a student decides to revisit a circle that had previously been “X’d”, they must then surround the X’d circle with a clear, obvious new circle.

All in all, it’s about as bad a system to use with children as you could possibly design.  Why pencils (and their accompanying erasers) have been deemed to be no longer sufficient after 100 or so odd years of Regents exams is beyond me.  But then again, I’m not getting paid by New York State to act as if I have solutions for problems that don’t really exist.