The latest proposal coming out of Albany to dramatically overhaul student testing makes me wonder if the Board of Regents and State Education Department have lost sight of a school district’s main goal: educating our children.

After years of pushing more and more standardized tests on students as early as third grade, the Board of Regents along with State Education Commissioner David Steiner now tell us that these same exams are flawed. For too long, they say, improvements on state test scores have been an aberration — nothing more than state officials manipulating data. Our students really aren’t ready for college and the work force, after all.

Come again?

By tracking student achievement as early as third grade, we’ve sent a message that the main goal of attending school is to pass these exams. Becoming an educated and well-rounded student has become a secondary goal.

If the commissioner and Board of Regents are correct — and our state exams do not really measure proficiency in math and English — then who is to blame? In essence, schools have been following Albany’s prescription. Teachers have designed instruction around state standards established by the Regents. Now, Regents Chancellor Merryl H. Tisch says, “We haven’t been testing the right things in the right ways.”

I’m all for making necessary adjustments to improve results, but this is changing the rules in the middle of the game. How do we know we will be testing the right things this time around?

I worry about how schools are going to pay for the extra support services and remedial instruction needed to help students meet the new standards, or the training to bring teachers up to speed on preparing students for the more rigorous exams.

We’re already seeing how the state budget crisis can impact this effort as this year’s state budget cut funding for teacher centers across the state. In fact, the Regents just approved a plan to cut $4 million from its assessment program to close a budget deficit for next year. This included eliminating social studies exams for grades five and eight, as well as component retesting in math and English language arts.

Pre-empting a poor statewide report card by claiming that we need tougher exams and a new statewide curriculum is smart public relations. But when the public sees a significant drop in the number of students in grades three to eight who are considered proficient in math and English, many will place blame solely on boards of education, superintendents and teachers.

My hope is that the commissioner, the Regents and local school officials can work together to develop an assessment program that is based on solid research about how individual children learn. We want our children to be prepared for a changing world, but we can’t keep moving the target and expect them to succeed.

Florence D. Johnson is a member of the Buffalo Board of Education.