Updates from the New York State Education Department!

At their June 22, 2010 meeting, the Board of Regents approved strategies to achieve cost

reductions in the New York State Testing Program. Starting with the 2010-11 school year:

• Component Retesting for high school Math and English exams will be eliminated.
• The 5th and 8th grade Social Studies examinations will be eliminated.
• Scoring-related materials will be posted on the Department’s web site (effective August 2010).

The full memo regarding these changes can be read here.

At their April 2010 meeting, the Board of Regents approved a two-step implementation schedule for the statewide scanning of Regents Exam answer sheets. The two-step approach entails:
1. Starting in June 2011, answer sheets will be scanned for Department analysis for all students taking Regents Exams in the following titles: Comprehensive English; Integrated Algebra; Global History and Geography; U.S. History and Government; Living Environment; and Physical setting/Earth Science.
2. Starting in June 2012, answer sheets for all Regents Exams will be scanned.

The full memo regarding these changes can be read here.

Revised Instructional Resource on Social Studies Document-Based Questions (DBQs)

The Department's online instructional social studies resource, An Introduction to the DBQ, has been revised and is now available online.

This resource provides an overview of DBQs, and how to develop them for local classroom instruction to model the structure of DBQs found on State assessments. Revisions to this tutorial include:

* New and updated web links.

* Additional guidance on using DBQs for instruction.

* A revised Sample DBQ and Sample DBQ Scoring Rubric for instructional use that model the format of DBQs on New York State social studies assessments.

* Connections to the revised generic scoring rubrics for State social studies assessments.

This tutorial is only available online. It is also available on the Social Studies Publications web page.