New Federal Tests
Reacting to Federal Guidelines, the state of New York, which has been highlighted as a role model for student testing by the Bush
Administration's Department of Education, has released the following memo:
In response to President Bush's Federal No Child Left Behind Act,
students will have to pass newly formed testing to be promoted to the next grade level. Democrat front runner John Kerry also fully endorse this plan. It is hoped that the nonpartisan plan will be uniformly adopted by all the states, thus illuminating New York to a glorious front runner position in education, it will be called: the Federal Arithmetic and Reading Test (FART).
All students who cannot pass a FART in the second grade will be
retested in grades 3-5 until such a time as they are capable of
achieving a FART score of 80%. If a student does not successfully FART by grade 5, that student shall be placed in a separate English program, the Special Mastery Elective for Learning Language (SMELL).
If with this increased SMELL program the student cannot pass the
required FART, he or she can graduate to middle school by taking a one-semester course in Comprehensive Reading and Arithmetic Preparation (CRAP).
If by age fourteen the student cannot FART, SMELL or CRAP, he will earn his promotion in an intensive one-week seminar This is the Preparatory Reading for Unprepared Nationally Exempted Students (PRUNES).
It is the opinion of the New York Department of Public Instruction that an intensive week of PRUNES will enable any student to FART, SMELL or CRAP.
This revised provision of the student-testing component of the House Bill 110 should help clear the air.
Best regards,
Glenn B