mr. lazar. >> senator alexander, senator murray, and distinguished members of the committee, it is an honor to testify before you today. i come as a proud national board certified public high schoolteacher. i teach at harvest collegiate high school in new york city. my students who are listening to us now and who i need remind to study for their history test tomorrow represent the full diversity of our city. i'm also embarrassed to say i was a teacher who every may until last would get up to apologize to my students. i would tell them i have done my best job to be an excellent teacher for you up until now. but for the last month of school, i'm going to turn into a bad teacher to properly prepare you for state regents exams. we would then repeatedly write stock formulaic essays. and practice mindless repetition of facts so they could be successful on exams. i did this because standardized tests measure the wrong things. i did this because the stakes for my students forced me to value three hours

and then i would like to invite mr. lazar to follow up his suggestion that one area where we might provide more funding is in developing better assessments. one of the deigns is whenever the federal government does that it likes to put its sticky fingers on exactly what to do and who must do them. your comments on that or from anybody would be helpful. >> yes. >> i'm interested in taking advantage of that opportunity and particularly because none of the witnesses had a chance to comment on what i said. >> so our folks have -- >> what's convenient for you? >> end of the week. >> the sooner we get the question out the sooner we'll get good answers. it may be we have round table discussions at some point and not be limited to five minutes of questions. so there are different ways to go about this. if you could let us know within a week or sooner sheldon, that would be a big help. and we'll go to work on that. usually we say at close of business this friday. that's what we usually say i'm told. i'm just learning. so fudge do it b