Ann Cook
For Immediate Release:
June 3, 2002

At a news conference today, a coalition of groups denounced the New York State Board of Regents and State Education Commissioner Richard Mills for engaging in censorship on the statewide English Language Arts exam. The Commissioner and the Board of Regents have been giving an English exam to public high school students that sanitizes and butchers the literary passages the students must read and analyze. Of the twenty-six prose passages used in the exam over the past three years, nineteen were surreptitiously censored to remove all references to race, religion, sexuality, or anything even mildly sensitive. Since 1999 students have been required to pass the exam in order to graduate high school.

The coalition, which includes free speech, civil rights and parent/teacher organizations, as well as writers, scholars and publishers, demanded that Commissioner Mills immediately halt further testing with the butchered passages. The coalition also called upon the state legislature to hold hearings to examine who recommended, authorized and approved the censorship and whether those responsible were fit to serve in any educational capacity.

To make matters worse, teachers have told coalition members that these doctored passages have now become the unofficial but ubiquitous test-prep curriculum of high schools across the state, pushing out the use of original texts in the classroom. The censored passages include works by Isaac Bashevis Singer, Annie Dillard, Anton Chekhov, and William Maxwell, as well as writings by B.B. King and a speech of UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

The State Education Department bases its censorship of literary works and other writings on so-called "Sensitivity Review Guidelines." The guidelines recommends what the state considers to be appropriate references to gender, age, race, religion, disability,socio-economic class, and a category called "other."

"The tests' use of expurgated literary passages is a form of censorship that distorts the content and meaning of the original works," says Joan Bertin, Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Censorship. "The exam provides an object lesson in shoddy scholarship and intellectual dishonesty, " she added.

The butchery of literary passages was first detected by Jeanne Heifetz, co-chair of the Parents' Coalition Against High Stakes Testing, who then researched and uncovered the pattern of wholesale censorship. Heifetz said, "What possessed the State Education Department to remove all mention of race from Annie Dillard's sensitive writing about her experiences as a white child who regularly visited a library in an African-American neighborhood? Without that critical piece of information, how are students supposed to understand -- much less write about -- the way these experiences awakened her sense of social justice?"

Donna Lieberman, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, praised Heifetz and the New York Performance Standards Consortium "for bringing this shocking pattern of censorship to light." She said, "This censorship is incompatible with First Amendment principles. It imposes a bizarre and rigid form of orthodoxy that leaves no room for diverse cultures and ideas." She added, " the New York State Board of Regents has managed to violate the voice and intentions of brilliant writers and thinkers."

Ann Cook, co-chair of the New York Performance Standards Consortium, charged "This is the imposition of standards by people who have no standards." The thirty-two public schools in the Consortium obtained a waiver in 1995 to bypass the Regents' graduating exams and to use instead a performance assessment system that requires in-depth analytical essays on complete works of literature and oral examination of students by outside examiners. The Consortium has been battling the state in court over its attempt to overturn the waiver. "I think this test is hazardous to children's intellectual health. It shows such an awful lack of integrity and judgment that parents should question everything the Regents and the Commissioner claim about the need for high-stakes' testing," Cook added.

Cathy Popkin, Lionel Trilling Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, called the State Education Department practice of censorship "unthinkable," an "embarrassment" and "the practice of fools." Professor Popkin, questioning the very capacity of the State to evaluate its students, said in a letter to Commissioner Mills, " The thought that someone (or some body of 'educators') so evidently lacking in intelligence should be entrusted with testing our children makes me shudder." Her letter also stated, "As educators we must set and maintain standards of behavior and honesty for the students under our charge. Not only do they deserve it, but our society cannot endure unless these values are instilled and upheld."

Larry Siems, executive director of PEN American Center, speaking on behalf of the coalition, said, "First Amendment principles hold that government officials have no business censoring literary works. All great literature will inevitably contain some material that may offend someone."

Phyllis Tashlik, director of the Consortium's Center for Teaching and Learning, a teacher's center funded by the Gates Foundation, said, "One has to ask, who's testing the testers? I would give Commissioner Mills an F in accountability. In the real world, students engaging in this kind of alteration would be expelled."

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