Professor Celia Oyler has started her own blog, called “Outrage on the Page.”
She is a teacher educator at Teachers College, Columbia University. She has been a brave critic of “reform”
She has opened her blog to a anonymous guest blogger, who explains why so many are offended by Chancellor Merryl Tisch’s efforts to defend high-stakes testing.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I agree totally with the blogger. For Tisch to say or even think that a State Test tells parents more about their children then the teachers who teach them 180 days just goes to show how out of touch she is with the reality of what teachers and students do on a day in day out basis. To say that a test that is given once a year tells us more about our own children and students than the very teachers who conference with our children, give quizzes, exit slips, notebook checks, homework checks, classwork checks, kid watch, analyze student work, compare portfolios, listen to students and parents, adjust lessons in progress to meet students needs is perplexing and insulting to all of us who are educators.
In addition the very notion of allowing some students to opt-out is unjust. What is she afraid of if the teachers in these high performing, upperclass schools are evaluated the very same way that those who serve in Title 1 schools with 100 % minority enrollment? Perhaps, these educators would not do as well, because if they have children who come to school reading and doing math on grade level there is no where for them to progress; therefore, they may score low, yes? And if they score low these teachers would be removed from the school and the parents would become very upset, yes? Perhaps? I don’t know, but I do think it is very curious as the blogger said why some should get a pass on these evaluations. This is not to say that educators who teach non-struggling students do not work hard, they do. But I can tell you from my own experience on both sides of the tracks that there is no comparison in teaching children who are significantly behind in grade level, extremely poor, homeless etc…
So, I wonder who is Tisch protecting? and why? Why do we have to place such high stakes on a test that is esentially useless to the student and teacher because by the time we get the tests back the child is in another grade learning a new curriculum. Isn’t the point of assessment to drive instruction? To make immediate adjustments to our teaching and learning. Do you think that the teacher, parent and child of a 6th grader reading at a 1st grade level needs the state test results to tell her/him this? They know already, they live with it everyday; chipping away at making progress that the state tests says is not enough. No, it is not enough, but it has nothing to do with that one teacher. As Farina said, if a child falls behind in Kindergarten it is very hard for them to catch up if they ever do. So, I say that our schools in the poorest districts, the least money, classrooms with 38 students and building conditions that are unfit are making huge progress with our students, but that takes time. Tisch needs to come and live in a school building in the Bronx for a while, see what happens day in and out, see what these supervisors like the Superintendents, Cluster Leaders and network due, or I should say not do to help schools.
When people in power get so disconnected from what is happening in our schools of poverty then it is time for them to go. Just because you are wealthy and hold powerful positions it is not ok to ruin students and educators lives.
Merryl Tisch has an Ed. D. from Teachers College at Columbia University
Did they teach her anything there?
Prof Oyler, be careful, Tisch and your president are thick as thieves.
She is undoubtedly the driving force behind what is now taking place with regard to this mess and is acting as dictator in charge of the NYS Educ dept. Others are trying to correct the errors of her many ways but to no one’s surprise she’s in cahoots with the governor and is now blaming the legislature’s actions but we all know better, it was you M. Tisch behind all of this but now there are more real educators on the bd. of regents and your days are numbered – just hope they can keep the damage to a minimum before you are NOT selected to return to the bd of regents when your term is up. Your arrogance and ignorance will go down in history as some of the darkest days for education for NYS kids. The Bloomberg administration is right next to you as well and his understanding of the educational needs of NYS children can be summed up in two words – Cathy Black.
Thanks, surfer, for your warning about president of TC Susan Fuhrman and Merryl Tisch. I have been 100% up front with Susan Fuhrman about my analysis of the utter destructiveness of M. Tisch’s policies on children and teacher. “Darkest days for education” in NYS: without a doubt. I wrote to President Fuhrman the day that Tisch announced her apartheid proposal for NYS. I asked her to tell Tisch what she is doing is wrong. I was also very vocal to President Fuhrman about TC awarding a medal of honor to a person who was working to roll out a system of teacher evaluation that was unjustifiable in terms of what the evidence clearly shows.
In this post Diane Ravitch called me brave. I disagree with Diane; I am not brave. I have tenure. The brave people, I think, are the TEACHERS OF CONSCIENCE (https://teachersofconscience.wordpress.com) who are refusing to give the tests. Civil disobedience is called for when complying with the law means you are breaking a higher law. Teachers of conscience are breaking a law – and jeopardizing their jobs – because they are refusing to enact an injustice. Across the history of the United States we have countless stories of everyday people who witnessed injustice and stood up and sad, “Basta! No more! Not in my name. I will put my body on the gears of the machine.” That is brave.
And teachers who do not take up civil disobedience, but come into their classrooms day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, offering rich curriculum to their students; who teach with passion and joy and relentless devotion, not because they may get a bonus, or because they need artifacts for their Danielson rubric, or because they are trying to get “the 2’s to move up to 3’s.” but because they love the world. And they know that every child they ever teach has the potential to shape our world in unexpected and wondrous ways. They teach their hearts out because they are accountable: to the public, to the commons, to the greater good. And that — the greater good — cannot be commodified, or quantified. And that is how we will win this war, and slay the monster. I call for the ouster of Chancellor Tisch!
Lately, Tisch has been all over the place on issues. She clearly is under great pressure and seems willing to say whatever she believes might temporarily relieve that pressure. I want to ask one simple question, “Have two totally inexperienced leaders like Tisch and King ever been put in charge of such a significant enterprise as public education (Pk to Graduate) in NY State?” John King had been the principal of a small charter school. Tisch had taught a few years and is married to someone with great wealth. Does that merit being placed in the leadership positions they occupied? Did anyone believe five years ago that we were not headed for a train wreck? The question then becomes, “Did those in power want a train wreck–an excuse to declare public education a failure and shift funding elsewhere?” I cannot accept the mess we are in now was an accident!
Lots of people have teaching experience and lots of teachers have advanced degrees, Few are married to the heir of the Loew’s family fortune. I think that’s the “qualification” that led to Tisch’s elevation to NYS ed policy maker.
While Tisch taught first grade for a few years, she taught at a private, religiously oriented school on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, currently charging more than $30K per year in tuition and fees. This teaching experience gave Tisch NO exposure to the challenges of low-resource public schools teaching students from poor families.
This lack of experience and understanding show in her policies and her push to have her inexperienced grad school classmate, John King, placed in charge of the NYS education department. Perhaps this also shows her lack of wisdom as well.
Over the years, I have seen lots of promising young people in my work. I would have been be doing those young people a disservice if I put them in a job they did not yet have the life experience to handle or that put other people at risk.
In this case, when Chancellor Tisch got John King to head the NYS Dept of Education, she put the education and life chances of millions of NYS children at risk. It’s great to have a new job that stretches your abilities, but not when your mistaken judgments adversely impact the lives of millions.
What we have gotten with Tisch and King are people who will advance the privatization reform agenda no matter what, which I guess is their greatest qualification for the people who are keeping them in place.(King is now at US DOE, apppointed by Arne Duncan.)
I previously thought Tisch was just clueless, but given her scrambling over the tests and her disengenuous statements on the Brian Lehrer show, I’m starting to think it’s based on genuine political preference for private schools and her genuine belief that poor, low-income and minority kids should be taught in authoritarian, creativity-crushing, no-excuses test prep factories instead of the progressive, free-expression-inspiring, exploration-oriented imagination-sparking schools that the overclass send their children to.
Her problem was she thought that the middle class should have these types of schools, too. (The middle class needs to learn unquestioning obedience to authority, after all, if we are to become passive subjects of the oligarchy.) Now she’s realizing her full-court press toward privatization was attracting too much outrage, so she’s going back to tried and true PR tactics of bad people who are trying to pull one over.
I believe it’s called destruction by design. What have we accomplished if children hate going to school, feel like failures or prepare for a test by doing close reading and not allowed to use that strategy on the test because there is no time to read a test closely!
The impunity, hypocrisy and sense of entitlement of the so-called reformers truly is limitless, as is the deaf, dumb and blindness of their media enablers.
Teachers are constantly lectured about “accountability” and forced to jump through ever-moving hoops to achieve it. Many teachers have been professionally destroyed or had their health destroyed by these absurd demands, each one a panacea until it is quickly replaced by the next…
Yet, Meryl Tisch, a Regent since 1996, brazenly proceeds to hold everyone accountable except herself and those who implement her policies. If things are so bad, as she’s always telling us, where is her responsibility for that? If she had a shred of integrity, she would have resigned, while accepting responsibility for her innumerable failures.
Teachers College has for the most part been an enabler to so-called education reform – it’s previous President provided legitimacy to Bloomberg’s attacks on the NYC public schools – so Professor Oyler’s efforts are especially important.
Greed is a boundless addiction to money that is sick, and causes untold damage. We need a movement that puts together those who see and recognize this.
This made me think: We need a whole national, anonymous teacher-blog website. Anybody know anybody who could make something like that happen?
I understand the need for anonymity, but this is the problem that keeps teachers and administrators who really want to help our children and need to expose the wrongdoing at the very highest levels silent. If we are anonymous they have no face to attach our voice to. I know that people lose their jobs for speaking out, I was there done that and am moving on, but anonymity silences our strength. Only in our true identiy can we fight for the justice that our children deserve and the justice that all of us deserve. Faceless protests have no power.