N.Y. officials under fire for altering literature on exams

By The Associated Press

06.03.02

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ALBANY, N.Y. — When students across New York read a speech by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for a standardized English test, they didn't see his remarks about the United States' debts to the United Nations — or his references to wine.

When they read a passage from Annie Dillard's memoir An American Childhood, gone were any racial references from a description of her childhood trips to a library in a black section where she was one of the only white visitors.

The passages were among those edited on New York's Regents English exams because they were deemed to be in violation of the state's "sensitivity review guidelines." The state requires public school students to take the test to graduate.

Writers, publishers and free-speech advocates say the changes have altered the works enough to change their meanings.

"What could be the purpose of an exercise testing students on such a lacerated passage — one which, finally, is neither mine nor true to my lived experience," Dillard wrote.

In a letter sent May 31 to state Education Commissioner Richard Mills, groups including the New York Civil Liberties Union and the National Association Against Censorship called for an end to the practice, saying it was "an odd approach to measuring academic achievement."

The groups were to challenge the state Department of Education today at a New York City news conference.

The state Department of Education prepares the test based on criteria in use for decades.

"We do shorten passages and alter the passages to make them suitable for testing situations," Roseanne DeFabio, the agency's assistant commissioner for curriculum, instruction and assessment, told The New York Times.

The guidelines were designed to ensure that no student feels "uncomfortable in a testing situation," DeFabio said. "Even the most wonderful writers don't write literature for children to take on a test."

Cathy Popkin, Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, said the texts should not be altered.

"I implore you to put a stop to the scandalous practice of censoring literary texts, ostensibly in the interest of our students. It is the practice of fools," she wrote to the state.

The groups learned of the practice from Jeanne Heifetz, a Brooklyn mother of a high school senior, who noticed words missing from a book she was familiar with on a Regents English exam.

After checking 10 Regents tests from the past three years, she found that many of the 30 selections deleted or changed references to race, religion, ethnicity, sex, nudity and profanity.

Heifetz contacted authors or publishers of heavily edited works. Many were outraged that their passages were altered without their consent.

In a passage from Frank Conroy's memoir, Stop-Time, the word "hell" was replaced with "heck" and a reference to two boys planning to kill a snake was removed.

"I was completely shocked," Conroy said. "It's going through and taking out the flavor of the month. It's terrible."

Update

New York to stop editing literature on tests
Announcement comes day after state education officials were criticized for deleting potentially offensive words, phrases from literary passages used on exams.  06.05.02