New York State Is Reusing Previous Year's Questions On This Year’s Standardized Tests arrow The New York State Education Department confirmed it is reusing questions from previous exams on the English Language Arts standardized tests being given to students in grades 3 through 8. Officials said they hoped to get permission from the federal government not to give the tests at all, as was the case last year. But when the Biden Administration said states must administer the exams, officials said they chose to reuse questions because it was sanctioned by experts and also saved money. “As we said previously, the idea that state assessments this year could be ‘standardized’ is unrealistic given the varying formats of instruction and not including whole segments of our state’s children who will not participate,” officials wrote in a statement. “The students most in need of state assessments – those receiving remote instruction -- are the very children who are not required to take the test. As a result, New York students who are most impacted by the pandemic are among the least likely to participate in any statewide assessments. Again, this will have a disturbing impact on the assessment results and not be representative of the state’s student population.”