Everywhere in New York State, students in grade three through eight took a New York State Mathematics Test. This year, in 2011, the NYS Test was too difficult for the eighth grade.

An eighth grade math teacher said he has never seen some of the questions on the tests before and they aren’t even on his curriculum to teach. There was some he didn’t think were going to be there so he didn’t teach them to us. Why did the test change this year? President Barack Obama is working on his Race to the Top program. The Race to the Top program is where President Obama is trying to challenge the students education to get smarter and be ‘on top’, but when most students don’t know how to do some problems its not making them smarter, it’s making them very nervous. Also, the Race to the Top program tries to get everyone a good education so that the United States is smarter.
I am an eighth grader that took the tests and I could see all the stressed eighth graders. The tests could lower the confidence of abilities in students because they think they don’t know what the state is saying they should know. I am willing to take the tests as long as they are fair, and many other students will agree with me. In sixth and seventh grade, the state tests were fair. Some students thought it was hard but most students knew how to do most of the questions.
The mathematics test was very difficult, but if they put some of the questions into the eighth grade curriculum they could fix the problem of most students not knowing the answers. Don’t let your children suffer!