August 13, 2004

Assessments at SUNY

To the Editor:

The headline "SUNY Approves Systemwide Tests" (The Chronicle, July 2) inadvertently underscores the requirement's fatal flaw: The only "systemwide" feature of this Rube Goldbergian assessment program is that most campuses of the State University of New York are required to participate in it.

Campus-tailored and ultimately incommensurate assessment measures guarantee that student learning will not be compared on a systemwide basis. The abandonment of previously