Valerie Strauss analyzes the debate between Chancellor Merryl Tisch and me on MSNBC’s “All In With Chris Hayes.”
She includes the transcript.
What she found odd was Tisch’s resoonse right after I explained that teachers are not allowed to see how individual students answered questions, so the tests have
no diagnostic value. All that teachers see is the students’ scores and how they compare to others. There is no item analysis, no description of students’ weaknesses or strength.
Tisch answered:
“TISCH: Well, I would say that the tests are really a diagnostic tool that is used to inform instruction and curriculum development throughout the state. New York State spends $54 billion a year on educating 3.2 million schoolchildren. For $54 billion a year I think New Yorkers deserve a snapshot of how our kids are doing, how our schools are doing, how our systems are doing. There is a really important data point.”
She began by saying that the Common Core standards and tests would close the achievement gap, although there is no evidence for that claim. Then she said the tests are a valuable diagnostic tool, but they don’t provide enough information to perform that function. Then she said the tests would show how our schools were doing, which I disagree with, because the passing mark was set artificially high, guaranteeing that most children would fail.
Unfortunately I had no opportunity to respond.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Texas Education.
That sound like telling her the earth is round and she is still going to argue that it is flat.
I strongly urge viewers of this blog to read the entire piece.
Chris Hayes was paying attention. Right after the comment by Meryl Tisch about the alleged diagnostic value of the tests he says:
[start]
HAYES: Wait. … I just want to point out something. That was interestingly nonresponsive to what she said, right? She’s saying this does not work as diagnostic tool for the child or for the teacher, you’re saying this is a diagnostic tool for the taxpayer who is funding the system to see if the system is working, right? Those are distinct.
[end]
Tisch then gets back to talking points, as if reading from a script.
Reminds me of George Orwell’s essay on “Politics and the English Language.”
Meryl Tisch is a tired cliché. And that’s exactly how she speaks.
😎
“a diagnostic tool for the taxpayer..”
Yep, a 2 billion dollar thermometer, hope it’s worth it to them.
What do they think the taxpayers will do with the information? Education isn’t improving, let’s shift 10 billion to state parks, what do their scores look like?
I think I have a cost-effective way of getting that snapshot of how kids are doing. Remember the photo booths at the penny arcades, where you could sit on a stool for a minute and take pictures that were developed in three. Wouldn’t that be a better way to go than testing everyone for hours and getting blurry results back months later?
Diane Ravitch, you did an excellent job with limited time they gave you. Tisch spoke in circles and contradicted herself when challenged. You could easily debate her side better than she can. The only thing Tisch accomplished was another huge leap of opt-outs for the NYS Math tests.
If testing takes 6 days out of the year, that’s about 4%. 4% of 50B is 2billion dollars of time spent on testing to tell us what we already know. That is a scary amount of money going down the drain.
I like your math.
The Chancellor is an uber-rich, anti-union, educational elitist socialite. Her and her East Side Fellows and Governor firmly believe that punishment of teachers, lowering of pay and employee protections and turning over public education to private sector owners is the key to fixing schools because that is the model they were raised in at their private schools and colleges and academies.
Meanwhile, the 90% of disadvantaged public students they have deliberately failed to “prove” public schools are a “disaster” are once again being left behind for another generation. While their kids move ever farther ahead and concentrating their wealth and power for the next dynastic generation.
M. Tisch had her comments all ready and even though the comments did not answer the question she said what she had prepared. M. Tisch has to go she is a 1% who cares nothing about the people she serves. She is a dictator. She has used her money to run state ed. in New York and no one seems to care. She created her own foundation and solicited more money from The Gates foundation and many other people with deep pockets to fund her Regents Reseach Foundation. These people are not New Yorkers and should not have been able to influence our education System with their money M. Tisch has hired 27 people who work directly for her, she pays them and hires them. This is a TRAVESTY HOW CAN THIS HAPPEN?
I also took a look at your debate with Tisch, and compared her statements regarding the rights of taxpayers to get a “snapshot” of how schools are doing, with similar statements from Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Wade Henderson of the Leadership Council at an NCLB reauthorization hearing, and Gov. Chris Christie at a recent Town Hall.
It seems standardized tests aren’t for kids, teachers or schools, they’re really for taxpayers.
http://mothercrusader.blogspot.com/2015/04/annual-testing-is-for-taxpayers-not-for.html
That is part and parcel of the script suggested by Milton Friedman and implemented by Jeb Bush and appropriated by neoliberal democrats and billionaire reformsters.
The narrative began by planting seeds of doubt in the he public sphere that claimed teachers and schools were ripping them off by being lazy and too liberal.
Accountability became the buzzword and teachers allowed standardized testing to be put forward as the means of measuring effectiveness without proof or serious challenge. And here we are.
And parents have no part at all in this equation! Shouldn’t parents be the ones to whom schools should answer?
We were very happy with our schools, but not anymore. The state has decided they aren’t good enough, so they are destroying them.
I agree that a main goal is to plant “seeds of doubt” among taxpayers. A school’s poor showing on the tests will further confirm that the school or district needs to be under the supervision of the state which, in turn, will lead to privatization. This is all part of the “gotcha” tactics of the privateers.
Bill Clinton was the President who began all this high-stakes testing versions of corporate “school reform.” In two State of the Union addresses he singled out Chicago’s “reform” and Mayor Richard M. Daley for praise. Let’s not distort history with that Obama-ized “George W. Bush caused all our problems” nonsense. No Child Left Behind was seeded by Clinton and his crowd long before Bush defeated Gore in 2000 (sort of)…
Not sure what you mean George. I called out neoliberal democrats like Bill Clinton in my comment. No one claimed NCLB sprung forth wholly formed from Republicans. It took both corporately-owned and controlled political parties to bring about the destruction. Obama succeedded more in forwarding Friedman-esque thinking than any Republican could have hoped for in my lifetime.
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!
Same thing here in my Northern NY elementary school. The reading specialists (we have 6 for 430 total students, K-6) will spend 15 days doing Dibels testing. Classroom teachers will lose 3 -5 days doing Fountas and Pinell testing, 6 days for the ELA and Math and God knows how many days for test prep. Then there’s the SMI testing for Math.
It’s whacked. When I started in the late 80’s we’d give the Stanford’s or Iowa’s for 3 days at the end of the year and we had about the same amount of info we get with the overload. Somebody make it stop, please……….
Yup – our reading intervention teachers start working with kids 3 – 5 weeks after school starts in the Fall and stop working with kids 3 weeks before school ends in the Spring so they can do all the testing. This is in addition to the weeks they are pulled for tests like the PARCC! I am not against a good assessment that gives me the immediate information I need to help my kids but I am against State Legislators and State School Boards pilling more and more on just so they can get some BIG DATA. And, BTW, now we teachers have to use the precious little time we have for planning to go to DATA TEAM meetings once a week!
Sounds like a carbon copy. We have the DDI (Data mtgs) once a month and I have to double my blood pressure meds before I go in. Stuff like comparing where our kids are on some benchmark as tgo where last years kids were at the same time. Extremely useful comparing those apples to those oranges. But, they can document that the mtg. occurred when Big Brother comes to check, which will be ?
Tisch should be forced to resign.
She might be a nice person in some ways. But Tisch must go.
She won’t starve.
Ms. Tisch is the classic corporate tool preaching the mantra of those who value profit at any cost. She cares not for the students that are the neediest.
Educational gentrification.
TAGO!
Nicely done. Or as one of my son’s would probably do it creating a super hero comic — KAZAAMMM!
For Tisch, Cuomo, Arne, and the rest of the plantation owners, this is their antebellum period, much like the late 1850’s, when the rumblings of war could be heard in the distance. Shots were fired across the bow this week, but they’re still in denial.
It will be a hard fall for them.
Great analogy! I hope they go down like the old South, although there are some that are still fighting the Civil War.
Tisch is atrocious!
Great job, Diane Ravitch; you absolutely made the most of the forum within the constraints in which you had to work. Thanks.
I think Tisch is right, though… for $54 billion dollars, there needs to be some accountability, some real testing. And the testing should really focus most on those with the most power over how that money is spent.
Ms. Tisch, please get comfortable; you may now log in to Part 1 of your 873-part April assessment.
And now State Ed. wants feedback from stakeholders? Seems like the tail wagged the dog here Andy.
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2015/04/want_to_tell_new_york_how_youd_like_to_see_teachers_evaluated_heres_how.html#incart_river
Call Chris back. Glad you were on the show. Next up Rachel and Lawrence.
Tisch is talking nonsense. We cannot use the test to write curriculum if we are not allowed to see the tests! As for diagnostics, if we don’t know what is on the test then what are we diagnosing? and if we can’t get a detailed report about our students after what are we adjusting?
Beginning last summer, Microsoft and Pearson teamed up to write/”develop” curriculum.
The taxpayers will pay Silicon Valley for curriculum, analytics, and hardware. If on-line doesn’t replace classrooms, computer technicians will be hired locally to trouble shoot equipment for Khan-like videos.
The tests have one purpose: To develop a false sense of the identity of “our” education in comparison with other schools, districts, states, and nations. Then, to allow that number to make or break us. Of course, the falsehood reassures some people, most particularly those who have the power and wealth, and who can use the falsehood to keep others under their thumb.
“Children today in third grade are taking eight hours of testing. They’re spending more time taking tests than people taking the bar exam.”
Good point Diane.
That point jumped out at me, too. As a third grade teacher, I read through the SBAC practice test in growing disbelief. Please look at the sample tests, consider the amount of time spent testing–and then recall that many of the children expected to pass these tests STILL BELIEVE IN SANTA CLAUS!
Tics goes into my LIAR LIAR PANTS ON FIRE” FILE.
Big lesson, Always have a clock to watch, know when the interview must end, and butt in if needed to have the last word. Otherwise, no contest, Ravitch wins.
Again, all I can say, is AT WHAT POINT DOES THE SHAME KICK IN? To use such pure garbage to bamboozle the people.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/BAMBOOZLE-THEM-where-tea-by-Susan-Lee-Schwartz-110524-511.html