Ad Campaign warns families & elementary students of harder standardized tests

Roughly 450,000 students will face more difficult standardized tests coinciding with new national standards in math and reading on Tuesday, April 16th, 2013.  To help families and students better understand the tests, city officials ran a $240,000 campaign of print advertisements used mainly in subway cars and on the Staten Island Ferry.  

“This spring, state exams for students in grades 3-8 will be different and more challenging,” one of the ads said. “And the test scores will reflect that at first.”

Education officials didn't launch the splashy campaign until Monday, April 15th, 2013, just a day before the students sit down to take the exams.  

While schools have been preparing for the new tests since September, parents of children say that their kids are scared and worried they'll do poorly.  The majority of the time, high-stakes exams are used when making decisions to promote students, award bonuses, or close schools.  

City schools won’t get a curriculum tailored to Common Core standards until September, months after the first group of students will have already taken the new exams, and education officials predict that students scores could drop roughly 30% because of the harder tests.  

I understand the importance of warning parents of more difficult standardized tests; however, I do not think launching an ad campaign a day before the already nervous children take the standardized tests is very appropriate.  Since the children have already been preparing since September, that would have been the most appropriate time to run an advertising campaign, not the night before to add to their worries and lack of sleep.