Dear Congressman Payne and anyone else who will listen.......

October 1, 2007




Congressman Donald M. Payne:

I am a special education teacher at Nutley High School, in your ward. In the next few weeks, I will be putting aside my curriculum to prepare my students to take standardized tests. These same students are all classified with either learning or emotional disabilities.

During the course of a normal class period, I make sure these children are on task at all times, either through continuous work, or in the form of some activity. These students have trouble remaining focused for long periods of time, and are usually medicated to combat this aspect of their disability. Some students have trouble reading directions and understanding what is being asked, unless the directions are actually read aloud to them. Then there are the ones that have learning disorders, of which accommodations have been made to give them smaller, easier tasks broken down to basic form.

All of the students I have mentioned are included in the statistics for No Child Left Behind. They will be allowed some accommodations while taking the tests, such as added time, or oral directions, but will still have great difficulty remaining focused for 3 hour exams in 3 consecutive days.

We have created an insurmountable task that needs to be accomplished by asking these students to be proficient on these standardized tests. Can you think of anything as inane as that?

I am not saying to lower the standards by any means. We still offer a curriculum on par with any other school system.

When NCLB comes up for reauthorization this fall, please consider reassessing it, and possibly alter it. I do think that accountability is important in education. I think NCLB has kicked us in the pants to take stock in the type of teachers we all are. Where we lack is that all students should not be included in the totals, especially those that we know are incapable or would have extreme trouble being considered proficient by NCLB standards. Maybe there could be an alternate form of assessment that can be performed, or possibly, omit their scores from the totals.

As an elected official, I do hope that you would give this matter your utmost attention.


Thank You For Your Time

Carl Nastasi
Voting Member of the 10th District