New State Tests - Failure Is the Norm - NYTimes.com Re "Test Scores Sink as State Adopts New Benchmarks" (front page, Aug. 8): As parents, politicians and reporters look to lay blame for New York's drop in student test scores, let's not forget to evaluate the Common Core-based tests themselves. Are the new tests really a measure of more sophisticated learning as advertised? I am a journalist and editor, and I found the writing on my third grader's sample language arts test so dense (and dull!) that even I sometimes had trouble reaching correct answers. Likewise, sample questions for the third-grade math test, which are intended to measure greater complexity in thinking, looked to me like basic word problems with lots of superfluous words. And then there's the ridiculous fact that these young kids were tested for 70 minutes without a break. I am not a professional educator, but I side with the group of New York City school principals who have already denounced the tests and are refusing to use individual results to evaluate middle and high school applications until the exams are revised. Let's hold the tests, as well as the students and teachers, to a higher standard! I know of no teacher who objects to raising the standards for all students. But raising standards is not to be confused with measuring whether students have reached those standards. Any teacher who constructs a test that only 26 percent of the students can pass should admit that the test was unrealistically challenging. When I saw the test in April - a test that many students could not finish, a test that left many in tears - I knew that the test was too hard. These test results are not surprising; the state Education Department had predicted a precipitous drop. They are, however, disheartening. The state has swatted a fly with a hammer. The writer is head of the English department at Great Neck North Middle School. Test scores. How meaningless they become when the tests change constantly, administrative cheating is rampant, the curriculum that teachers must cover is not given to them, and policy makers and administrators are often not experienced teachers. In addition, teachers have screamed for years that you should not include the scores of nonfluent, English language learners and learning disabled students in the analysis of standardized tests. The writer is a retired high school teacher.