Carol Burris, principal of the year in New York state, has written a devastating critique of the leadership of New York state.
Let’s name names.
State Commissioner of Education John King (who taught for 2 or 3 years and founded a “no-excuses” charter chain that has a high suspension rate) chose to set the passing mark on the new tests so high that the failure rate was certain to soar.
Merryl Tisch, chair of the New York Board of Regents, selected John King (he was in her cohort in a quickie doctorate program at Teachers College) and has supported his every step in setting the bar so high that large numbers of students would not reach it. Tisch is a billionaire who has a hard time imagining what the lives of other people are like. She once, many years ago, taught kindergarten in a religious school. When she was recently honored by Teachers College at its commencement ceremonies, many of the students and faculty protested and wore signs that said “Not a test score.”
King and Tisch seem determined to destroy public confidence in public education, to demoralize teachers and principals, and to crush students’ love of learning by making testing the only consequential aspect of their schooling.
Long before the new tests were given to students, state officials predicted that the passing rates would drop dramatically.
Why? Because they want it to.
Merryl Tisch said it was time to jump into the deep end of the pool (meaning that students, whether or not they know how to swim, should jump into the deep end and drown if they can’t swim); Dennis Walcott, New York City’s chancellor (with no educational experience, although he allegedly taught briefly in a daycare program 30 years ago) said it was “time to rip the band-aid off.” Meaning, it is time for students to suffer. Remember, folks, these are the people who are in charge of education in the state and the city. Merryl Tisch has been a member of the Board of Regents since 1996. For 17 years, she has been in a decision-making role in the state. Yet, they shrug off all accountability for themselves.
They made the tests so “hard” that many students who were previously proficient will now qualify for remedial services; the students and their parents will be devastated.
Parents, teachers, principals, and school boards should understand one simple fact: The passing mark on the state tests was politically determined. It has no scientific validity. None whatever.
The best response to the new Gradgrind regime is to opt out of testing next year.
Join other parents. Join organizations like United Opt-Out. Join the Network for Public Education to stay informed.
Say no. Say it loud. Say it often.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Without test scores, they have nothing….no inbloom data to collect, no failures to report, no students, families and teachers to shame. This entire reform charade crashes when parents and students opt out.
Second option, don’t choose a single bubble and write opt out on any open ended questions and be done.
As the students get older, they will become sick of it and begin to revolt themselves. We saw many student protests in many cities last year: Seattle, Providence, Chicago, etc.
May the revolution spread far and wide.
Linda,
We don’t need change.
We need a revolution . . . .
I said no, so my child will not be receiving a failed score. However, I live in a suburb of NYC. The children of NYC public schools do not have this option. If a child does not take the tests, Bloomberg’s punitive policies flag them for being held over. They must then attend summer school, and, you guessed it, take make-up tests. This is not a policy of NYS, it is a policy of the little emperor. Parents need to begin protesting this in NYC.
The people in charge of New York’s education and Bloomberg are sickening.Good for the faculty and students at Teachers College!
When is someone going to shine a light on Meryl Tisch’s relationship with Susan Fuhrman, President of Teachers College AND Pearson Board member? The stink is putrid. And please do not dismiss the Presidential aspirations of our governor Andrew Cuomo.
Someone should also shine a light on the fact that Meryl Tisch’s brother-in-law, Andrew Tisch, sits on the Board of Directors of K12, an online charter school. In fact, Andrew served as the Chairman of the Board of Directors until June of 2012.
http://stage-marketing.k12.com/about-k12/our-team/board#.UgJX_uBSYso
There needs to be a comprehensive investigation into cybercharters. The problem is the companies are national but the inquiries and investigations are done at the state and local level, and reported in state and local media.
The fragmentation of the information means they simply set up shop in a new state and it’s a clean slate. Maine doesn’t know what’s happened in Florida and Ohio, prior.
Maine has a great reporter who did an expose of cybercharters in 2012, Jeb Bush’s lobby shop was behind the push, and that media investigation alone halted cybercharter growth in the state.
What’s appalling about reading it is, the same push that happened in Maine happened in Ohio first. It’s the same companies. There’s no cumulative, national effect to these exposes because education is “siloed” at the state and local level.
Suzanne,
See Furhman:Cut Ties with Pearson Group on Facebook.
I still listen to many administrators and teachers who drink the Kool-Aid as they “just follow orders”. Then there are teachers in the know, are empathetic to students needs, who are becoming physically sick over this. Very sad situation in some parts of NYS.
It is true. It has had a negative effect on people’s well being and mental health. Pretty sad.
Ms. Burris, I appreciate your taking time out to fight the woes that our NY State Commission of Ed. has inflicted upon our state. However, you said,
“Merryl Tisch, chair of the New York Board of Regents, selected John King (he was in her cohort in a quickie doctorate program at Teachers College) and has supported his every step in setting the bar so high that large numbers of students would not reach it.”
I have no great love for our State Commissioner of Education who brought our state into the this educational nightmare of Nat’l Standards along with its testing program. However, I find your statement of a “quickie doctorate” from Teachers College perplexing. It sounds so negative and doesn’t help the cause of defending our school system in the US.
Columbia with its various schools like Teachers College is a difficult university to acquire a degree from. My daughter presently is enrolled in its doctoral program in Cognitive Psychology. It is no cake walk. Prior to her acceptance in Columbia’s Teacher’s College she graduated with a masters from Johns Hopkins and a masters from NYU plus she had a year at Fordham Law school leaving as an A student. All those schools are difficult to get into and are very demanding as is her present program at Teacher’s College.
Yes, it takes a long time–years, in fact–to get an earned doctorate.
However, Teachers College has a special program called “Inquiry” that enables busy educators like Merryl Tisch and John King to get a fast-track doctorate.
Trying to find info about the Inquiry program at TC was fruitless, leading only to an article about John King. It sounds a lot like the “program” that was designed especially for fast-tracking Paul Vallas at CTU. I’ve taught in higher ed a couple decades and I had no idea that universities could design fast-tracks for favored students.
Inquiry ended about a year or two after King and Tisch went through. It was run by Tom Sobol, who led it well. It was two years of coursework if you had a masters and then a few years for a dissertation.
Apparently Commissioner King was able to complete the TC Inquiry program at the same time that he earned a law degree at Harvard and ran a charter school in Massachusetts. Quite a guy.
Must be a real multi-tasker. The thing about juggling so many plates is that something often suffers…
In my experience, new college programs are not readily approved. They must pass muster with the Department, then committees, such as the Curriculum Committee and Faculty Senate. Then they must be approved by the state board of higher education, as well as the regional accrediting body. Since it takes jumping through so many hoops, once programs are on the books, they’re not typically removed, even if they’re not being offered presently. So, they could be offered again…
What really concerns me though are “programs” like the one designed for Vallas, because it sounds extremely fast-track and abbreviated, so I have to wonder if it was approved by all the necessary parties.
Diane,
Just a friendly suggestion: please put the word “educators” in quotes when referring to the likes of Tisch and King.
Bogus degrees conferred because of someone’s social or political standing, combined with having a cup of coffee in the classroom, do not an educator make.
Do you include Dr. Burris in the group of folks with bogus degrees?
teachingeconomist,,
I hope you are more careful when reading about economics before teaching your students than you are here, since Diane’s comment discussed the matter.
Then again, considering the sorry state of the US economy, perhaps we should blame you for lacking the reasoning skills to teach your students effectively.
Additionally, had you bothered to read my comment and think about it, you would have also noticed that, unlike Ms. Burris, King and Tisch are politicsl figures, nott bona fide educators, due to their minimal classroom experience.
So only some students in the in the Inquiry program at Teacher’s College receive “bogus” degrees. How did the degree requirements in the “bogus” track differ from the degree requirements in the “non-bogus” track?
TE, The creation of bogus programs are not unheard of for corporate sponsored “reform” leaders. Those designed specifically for John Deasy, who is in Los Angeles, http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439×130523 and Paul Vallas in CT are prime examples: http://jonathanpelto.com/2013/07/29/vallas-saga-offers-teachable-moment-on-abusing-power-by-wendy-lecker/
I received a Master of Education Degree from Teachers College. I also have a Master of Science Degree in Mathematics from Tennessee, and a Bachelor of Arts from Tennessee. I did my administrative certification work at Syracuse. I put all of those down, because of all of these degrees, my degree from Teachers College was the easiest. Only one of the classes I took had any academic rigor to it at all, and I found myself getting a degree that looks good on my resume, but is the most meaningless to me. I’m glad your daughter is having a different experience.
Education schools do tend to pump out Ph.D. students.
TE,
Is that true?
Yes, is true.
Lets take my own university as an example. One of the most popular departments in the school of education has averaged a little more than 160 doctoral a hear. The department has 10 tenured faculty, giving a ratio of 16 docoral students per tenured faculty member. Assuming a five year program, each tenured faculty member must successfully supervise three dissertation students to a successful defense each and every year. This is far more than any professor in liberal arts would be able to manage.
TE,
What are the statistics nationwide on this sort of thing?
You might look at the survey of earned doctorates.
Where do I find it?
I suggest your favorite search engine. I use Google.
When you say “the survey”, does that not refer to an official work that has been produced? I’m confused.
. . . Only becuase you used the word “the”. . . .
Would not the indefinite article made your suggestion clearer?
Did you check your grammar for clarity and meaning?
Let me Google that for you;
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/srvydoctorates/
I’m looking at the data on doctorates by field here http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/sed/2011/pdf/tab12.pdf and I don’t see evidence that Ed Schools “pump out PhD students.”
In fact, the total proportion of Ed School doctorates has been declining since 1981, reaching its lowest percentage of total degrees by field awarded in 2011, at 9.6%, exceeding only the “Other” degree category.
Also, most degrees have been in Educational Research, which I studied, teach and happen to know is very rigorous, followed by Education Administration, which is not surprising to those of us in the field since an advanced degree with course work beyond the master’s is required in many states to be a superintendent.
TE,
Thank you.
Right, thanks, TE, for the link which leads to other links and data that disprove your claim that “Education schools…” “pump out PhD students.”
I’d suggest not generalizing what you think your university does to what all universities do.
In my experience a professor can supervise usefully supervise one defending doctoral student a year, not the three a year that the enrollment in the education school army institution. Perhaps Dr. Ravitch might wish to become involved. Does each faculty member in the history department average three graduating doctoral students a year?
I just looked at NYU’s History department. They list about 50 tenured faculty (I did not include assistant professors and clinical professors in my count). To maintain the same ratio as my institution’s Ed school, that must mean they have 800 doctoral students. I can only find a list of a little under 200 students. I know Internet lists are sometimes inaccurate, but do you think they forgot to list the other 600 doctoral students?
You are confusing doctoral enrollment with completion. Doctoral programs have a high rate of attrition, 50%: http://chronicle.com/article/PhD-Attrition-How-Much-Is/140045/
If you want to say that the 50 tenured faculty in NYU’s history department only see 100 graduate students through to their degrees and the 10 tenured faculty in the education school department only see 80 students through to their degrees, I will go along with that.
Your formula does not predict doctoral completion rates. In 2011, NYU awarded 23 doctorates in History. I believe your university awarded 43 doctorates in Education then: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/sed/2011/pdf/tab8.pdf
Are you not counting education administration, etc. as education doctorates?
I referred to the Education total, which is listed on the left. Each major within education is broken down to the right of that on the chart.
I don’t know how NYU functions, but if they only awarded 23 doctorates in 2011 and that is typical, then it does not look like they have the very high ratio of doctoral candidates to doctoral supervisors you are suggesting.
I don’t know how doctoral committees work where you are, but in my doctoral program, there were other faculty from different but related departments who contributed to doctoral advisement, too. Maybe they do that at NYU as well, such as by having experts in education history, like Diane, working with education students whose dissertations address that topic.
Mary, I never referred to the program as a “quickie program”…in fact, that is not my quote. I do not know where it came from. Yes, they were classmates in the cohort of 2000. I know, because I was in the cohort of 1999. And I worked very hard. My dissertation won a national award. It was a good program led by fine scholars at TC. Please let me know where that quote came from….I was not the author.
The quote was from Dr Ravitch’s post. It is a little unclear, but now I believe it is Dr. Ravitch who characterized the program as a quickie doctoral program.
Carol,
I was the author of the reference to the Inquiry program as a “quickie doctorate.” It is a fast track to a doctorate, not the usual years-long course of study that most graduate students must complete to receive either an Ed.D. or a Ph.D.
Thanks for clarification. Yes, the course hours were done in chunks on weekends and all through July. Different from traditional semester courses. Glad it got cleared up. I was afraid someone was posting using my name. cb
While naming names, let’s not forget the saturnine, reptilian, living, breathing, and walking e-bola virus known as Michael Bloomberg.
Merryl Tisch owns an apartment in the building next to Mr. Grinch Bloomberg’s mansion on East 79th Street in Manhattan . . . a behemoth spread on the upper east side in the most expensive part of the priciest borough of New York City.
The two power players’ daughters grew up together and are best friends. The two have also enjoyed dinner together at each other’s homes, travel not being an issue.
Though both are already in committed relationships, they are so politically intertwined with each other that they might as well beomce the cute couple you view on the Newly Wed game, and will continue to wreak havoc on public education, filling in each other’s blanks, long after they’re out of office.
Bloomberg is also one of the reasons why NY State is STILL participating in InBloom.
Bloomberg got himslef elected an illegal third term after greasing many city council members’ palms with deals and positions.
Ah, the legacy of Bloomberg will be a horrible one, having come from a horrible little man, a frog faced financier, an evil data consumed mad scientist, a rotting piece of roadkill smooshed and wiped upon most every city resident’s mouth and nostrils. . . .
Michael Bloomberg is by far the worst mayor this city has ever had. . . and one of the worst humans this globe has ever carried.
Your second to last paragraph should be a billboard in NYC and now I wonder if the BLOOM in inbloom and Bloomberg isn’t a coincidence. Before it was creepy now it is dirty and slimy too. Yuck…time to shower again.
You are funny. . . and insightful.
“While naming names, let’s not forget the saturnine, reptilian, living, breathing, and walking e-bola virus known as Michael Bloomberg.”
good one Rob!
Thank you. That’s the G-rated, legal version.
Please DO NOT FORGET in September that the illegal third term was rubber stamped by Christine Quinn.
Quinn is Bloomberg in a skirt.
The other thing they are setting us up for now, is to renew the cycle of dumbing down the test. What happens when your tests are so laughably easy? You make an all new super hard test and then water it down over time again. You get your increasing scores over time that will “validate” school reform – until we can prove that they fall out of sync with their “objective” commitment to NAEP.
“There is, for instance, zero sound research that demonstrates that if you raise a student’s score into the new proficiency range, the chances of the student successfully completing college increases.” – Carol Burris
“Parents, teachers, principals, and school boards should understand one simple fact: The passing mark on the state tests was politically determined. It has no scientific validity. None whatever.” – Diane Ravitch
“Two years ago the Board of Regents announced that the State would begin testing students on more rigorous academic standards beginning this year. The goal is to make certain that all students are on track to succeed in college and meaningful careers when they graduate high school. Parents who keep their children from taking these tests are essentially saying, ‘I don’t want to know where my child stands, in objective terms, on the path to college and career readiness’ — and we think that that’s doing them a real disservice.”
– New York State Department of Education Associate Commissioner Ken Wagner’s response to parents who chose to opt their children out of the NYS Standardized tests last April.
When parents choose to opt out again next year, could someone PLEASE explain to Associate Commissioner Wagner and Commissioner King that parents are not opting out because they don’t want to know in “objective terms” where their children stand on the path to college and career, but because the NY State DOE has not produced one shred of evidence, “objective” or otherwise, that these tests will prepare their children for college, careers or anything at all. Since Commissioner King’s credentials as an educator are marginal, and the evidence supporting the validity of these tests is non-existent, Commissioner King’s credibility is limited. Thus, parents are skeptical.
I wonder how we all succeeded in college and careers without these tests. Anyone think they want a redo?
Evidently, we’re all failures.
I joke about that to my colleagues, friends and family all the time!
Join http://www.changethestakes.org, in NYC! Parents, teachers and concerned citizens taking a stand.
Teachers College President Susan Fuhrman, is a non-executive director at Pearson PLC, earning about $100,000, and owns $240,000 in the company’s stock.
So you know that she is deeply invested in escalation of testing and the pushing of new curricular materials to support the Common Core that is an $8 billion bonanza for computer companies and publishers like Pearson.
This system is clearly dysfunctional and an aggressive overreaction to certain problems within our school system. With 48 states now locked into the Core, has anyone asked the question, “what if it doesn’t work”? Will this mean that we created a generation of flawed students. Who will corporate America and the politicians blame then? Let me guess, it’s always the teacher’s fault!
What has happened to years of research on child development? Why are core standards not age appropriate? Why are parents and teachers standing by and allowing so much testing to occur that children in first and second grade are reporting test induced stress? What has happened to the word appropriate in free and approiate education? We have become a country of passive idiots controlled by mega millionares who have no concern for the long term affects of their profit margin on our planet, our children or our middle class. Where are the reporters willing to report the truth? You won’t find them on fox news!”
I can’t comment on the political reasoning for these changes, but I can say as a college faculty member that we constantly see “above average” students (B and A level students) arrive on our campus in their first year, grossly unprepared to succeed at the college level. After only 14 years of teaching, I’m floored by the observable decrease in student knowledge and abilities. The phenomenon is not limited to my campus, but I hear this observation echoed among colleagues at many institutions. Yes, this is likely a complex and multifaceted issue, but maybe raising standards is the first step…