Peter Greene watched “All in with Chris Hayes,” in which Merryl Tisch and I discussed and disagreed about the value of the Common Core tests. The reason for the debate was the reports of large numbers of parents opting out their children.
Tisch, whom I have known for many years, is Chancellor of the Néw York State Regents. She defended the testing as necessary and helpful.
Peter Greene analyzed her changing rationales about why the tests are valuable.
She believes they help the neediest children, but of course these are precisely the children likeliest to fail. I don’t see how children gain motivation by failing a test that has been designed to fail 70% of all students.
She thinks that the opt outs are a “labor dispute” between the Governor and the teachers’ union. Unfortunately I did not have a chance to respond that parents do not act at the union’s command. They act in the best interests of their child.
Merryl Tisch is an intelligent woman, and I look forward to having a conversation with her, off-camera.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Unfortunately, Chris Hayes and other “progressives” have bought into the message of the DFER. His bias was evident, but at least he was willing to give both sides a chance to be heard, which is more than I can say for Rachel Maddow, who has been very disappointing on her silence on education reform. She and others like Cory Booker benefited from quality, well-funded public educations, but want to dismantle the very system that laid the groundwork to get them where they are now. Hopefully someday they will admit that they couldn’t believe they were on the same side as the Scott Walkers, Rick Scotts, John Kasichs, etc. Fortunately we have well-spoken, fact-based education policy experts on our side (thank you Dr. Ravitch!), while they have scripted, talking-points-rehearsed Tisch’s on their side.
Also, I love how Chris Hayes thought it was okay to test the kids in low SES schools, while presumably his private educated kids will be exempt. Nice, Chris…keep talking about closing those gaps.
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Liz, I have tried repeatedly to get onto Rachel Maddow’s show. I even encountered her in a makeup room at NBC and asked her directly, and she changed the subject. She doesn’t touch education, except for some powerful segments about a school for pregnant girls in Detroit that was about to be closed. Other than that, she excludes education as a topic from her show. I haven’t seen her show every night, but I have never heard of her taking on education issues. Also, Chris Hayes told us off-camera that he went to public school in the Bronx, and he plans to send his own children–1 and 3–to public school. I thought he was very fair, except that he allowed Tisch to dominate the discussion and I had trouble breaking in to her monologue.
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My take on the interview was that Hayes gave way too much deference to Tisch and not near enough time for Diane to respond, especially at the end.
I guess he knows who butters his bread.
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We usually watch at least 4 MSNBC commentary programs (they are not news programs) every week night and Melissa on weekends and love the Chrises and Rachel and the rest. They all have their blind sides. As a registered fanatic on this issue, I compared Hayes’ moderating to how he operates on other issues and I think he just hasn’t got into education the way he has other issues. Recall that Obama has a terrible approach to education and most people just don’t understand how students learn. That’s why so many people liberal on most issues turn Reformista on education. It is human nature to agree to the notion that things these days just aren’t like the good old days. Give Hayes time and he and Rachel and the others may sort it out. We hope.
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“It is human nature to agree to the notion that things these days just aren’t like the good old days”
NO! It’s not ‘human nature’.
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Tisch might be intelligent but that does not protect her from being a fool used as a tool by the corporate education reformers.
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Thank you to the owner of this blog for persevering in spite of so much journalistic apathy and ignorance.
The lack of a genuine engagement with education issues, though, has become the standard MSM response to CCS or high-stakes standardized testing and charters/privatization or anything else coming out of “education reform.” Well illustrated by the overall poor job done by the LATIMES on just about everything associated with former LAUSD Supt. John Deasy. There are bright spots here and there, but too often the MSM misses the obvious—and doesn’t even know that it’s missing it.
This blog is a light in the darkness.
😎
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Reposting comment I made to related post:
I’d like to underline a problem with all the testing that someone like Tisch just doesn’t get. Children who need extra help/instruction in order to learn more stuff FASTER than the kids who are scoring higher on the tests (thus closing the test score GAP) are getting LESS and LESS extra help because the people who would provide that extra help are being pulled to do all kinds of stuff related to the tests (attend test trainings, proctor tests, give make up tests, sort and bundle tests, monitor classrooms for days while a teacher gives all 30, say 5 year olds 5 different tests, etc). In Elementary schools in my district school schedules (lunch times, PE times, etc.) are shifted around to insure that there are enough blocks of time for testing. Virtually everyone in a school thinks this is nuts. It’s the most vulnerable kids who are paying for this criminal waste of tinstructional ime!
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The essence of what is going on here is simple. The advocates of “high standards” are like a high jumping coach whose athletes can’t jump over a 4 foot bar, so he raises the bar to 7 feet, and will punish them if they don’t make it. No coach would be that stupid, but that’s what is advocated, instead of looking at what actually helps. The idea is that threat of punishment is everything. When in fact it is counter-productive. “The floggings will continue until morale improves.”
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The last thing the audience heard was that it was all the fault of the teachers and thei unions. I too was sorry that you weren’t given time to respond! Am glad to hear that you will continue your discourse with her. You were, as usual, unflappable, Diane! All hail the queen!!!
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I would like to find a person who actually teaches poor kids that also believes the tests are helping those kids. Perhaps we can ask Tisch to bring us this mythical teacher.
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A 1st year TFA recruit who plans to quit after two years and will say anything to get that promoted high paying job in a position of power.
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And that TFAer, a product of NCLB, may think, “I had standardized testing and did fine at prestigious college, so they must be OK.”
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Too many people—like that TFAer—can’t think outside of their own perspective based on the life they live. They think that everyone else thinks like them and for those who don’t, there has to be something wrong with those people.
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