Shael Polakow-Suransky Is Believer in (More) Testing - NYTimes.com
Mr. Polakow-Suransky took his ideals to New York, where he taught history and math to middle and high school students, and then was assistant principal for a year at Bread and Roses Integrated Arts High School, a new progressive public school in Harlem. That year he met Eric Nadelstern, a Queens principal who had joined the school system the year Mr. Polakow-Suransky was born. He shadowed Mr. Nadelstern to fulfill a requirement of his master’s in educational leadership from Bank Street College of Education.
Mr. Nadelstern, who is now deputy chancellor responsible for school instruction and support, took Mr. Polakow-Suransky under his wing. Together, they opened Bronx International High School, a school for recent immigrants. As the founding principal, Mr. Polakow-Suransky was able to put Professor Sizer’s ideas into practice, in addition to some of his own.
“Until we start seeing assessments that ask kids to write research papers, ask them to solve unfamiliar problems, ask them to defend their ideas, ask them to engage with both fiction and nonfiction texts; until those kinds of assessments are our state assessments, all we’re measuring are basic skills,” Mr. Polakow-Suransky said in an interview.
Mr. Polakow-Suransky acknowledges that the tests are imperfect, but says they are a necessary measurement tool. “To put it very simply,” he said, “how do you know that the kids are learning?”
He described one prototype question. Students would be asked to calculate the diameter that a straw needs to fit through a juice box’s hole, then write to a juice box manufacturer whose straws keep getting stuck in the hole to explain why its diameter should be changed. “It’s a ninth-grade problem that involves geometry and algebra in an unfamiliar context,” and tests several skills at once, he said.
