(Editor's Note: The following letter was sent to New York State Education Commissioner Richard Mills. It is being reprinted here at the author's request.)

Well, what many of us involved in education had predicted has finally come to pass. High school seniors all over New York State are being denied graduation diplomas because they have not met your stringent requirement of passing all required Regents exams. Having done away with the local diploma has put an undue burden not only on our children but also on our schools and teachers, those directly responsible for preparing our students to pass these high stakes tests.

As evidenced by the high failure rate on the state's recent Math A examination, your "one size fits all" education is not working. School boards all over New York State don't need data and analysis to tell them that the system isn't working. How well our students do on mandated, high stakes tests do not measure the educational programs being delivered by local school districts. All it does measure is test scores.

For the past few years, school boards, administrators, teachers, and parent groups across the state have been advocating for changes in the state's testing and accountability system. Some of the suggestions that have been offered are:

* Providing greater flexibility for school districts that annually meet or exceed the state's standards

* Broadening the safety net to include students involved in career and technical education programs

* Refrain from making judgments about schools based on single-year, single-event measures that assess different groups of students each year

* Reinstating the authority of local school boards to award a local high school diploma

Local school districts, through the election of their school boards should have the authority to set their own standards, those that are important to the community in which they live. Your performance levels and performance indexes are political, not educational. Our special education students, English language learners, and career and technical education students must be given an alternative path to a high school diploma. Recent research has just been proven true; without this alternative path, many hard-working, dedicated students will be denied a graduation diploma and more and more students will drop out of school. It is time for you to realize that there are students all over the state that, no matter how much intervention they receive, will not be able to pass all of the required Regents exams. There is no such thing as an acceptable loss ratio. If only one student was denied a high school diploma because of your requirements, that is one student too many. It is time to address the needs of all students. School districts that utilize alternative methods of assessment that more adequately measure a student's performance must, once again, be allowed to offer local high school diplomas. It's time to remove the political influences from our educational system and return to the days when preparing our students, all students, for what lies after high school was the primary objective.

For the Plainview-Old Bethpage Board of Education,

Jonathan Mosenson, President