It is too soon to say what impact, if any, new federal education legislation will have for schools in New York State and for Roslyn in particular. Many of its provisions will not even take effect for several years, and we won't know for some time how New York State will choose to implement them.

What we do know even at this early stage is that many parents and educators are concerned about provisions for increased testing. Many have long felt that students are tested too much already and that too much valuable class time is being spent on test preparation.

We in Roslyn are not concerned about the results of any testing program. Our parents and teachers alike do an excellent job preparing youngsters for the demands of a rigorous academic program, and our students generally respond with scores on standardized assessments that are outstanding.

This consistently excellent performance of Roslyn students raises serious concerns about the need for more testing. There is no question that our students must be able to compete academically with the very best students across the nation and to gain the skills and knowledge they need to succeed in college and in their chosen professions. The question is, if Roslyn graduates already achieve very high rates of success and gain acceptance into America's top universities, will even more testing benefit our schools in any way?

Some, like the parents in Scarsdale who organized a boycott of certain tests given in the eighth-grade last year, would argue that more testing actually hurts high-achieving students because it mandates a "one-size-fits-all" approach to education that stifles teachers' creativity and simply takes too much time away from more useful instruction. Our own Coordinating Council of Parent Associations added its voice to those questioning aspects of New York's testing program with a letter to Commissioner Mills last spring.

In the introductory section of the new federal legislation, we find this statement: "States and local educational agencies need the maximum liberty to build upon existing innovative approaches for education reform and continue their proven record of increasing student success." It remains to be seen if a federally mandated program of testing in all grades from 3 to 8 can be implemented without contradicting this worthy concept.

It is difficult to argue with the stated federal goals of higher performance and greater accountability. The Roslyn Public Schools not only believe in those principles; we put them into practice every day. However, there are certainly public schools in the United States that are not able to provide the educational opportunities that all children deserve. The issue is whether schools will actually be allowed to continue following their own proven paths to success without the unnecessary distraction of even more costly federal and state mandates that are unlikely to have little, if any, impact on school districts such as Roslyn.

The new federal education law also asserts, "The best education decisions are made by those who know the students and who are responsible for implementing the decisions, and therefore educators and parents should retain the right and responsibility to educate their pupils and children free of excessive regulation by the Federal Government."

We agree. The Roslyn Board of Education and Roslyn school community have demonstrated over the course of many decades that they have the wisdom, resources and ability to provide an outstanding education for the children of this community. We will be working diligently in the months and years to come to ensure that this law's provisions can be reconciled with a commitment to local control of our schools.