Michael Winerip Lays Waste to NY State Ed Department Testing Program

The headline in today's eagerly awaited Michael Winerip column in the NY Times – 10 Years of Assessing Students With Scientific Exactitude – probably tops all that went before in terms of how far Winerip's tongue is planted in his cheek in the use of the words "scientific exactitude" in describing a decade of NY State Ed Department testing.

He lays waste to former Commisioner Richard Mills - one of the worst people in the world - by capturing some of his rediculous comments after every single test fisaco.

He gives a little credit to current regent head Merryl Tisch – the 2nd worst person in the world – when he says:

Finally someone — Dr. Tisch, the chancellor of the Board of Regents — has the sense to stand up at a news conference and say that the state test scores are so ridiculously inflated that only a fool would take them seriously, thereby unmasking the mayor, the chancellor and the former state commissioner.

Tisch deminstrates she can count to two

Tisch is anything but a fool - though she may be a crook in the way the wives of billionaires can be - call her a moral crook. (Check her family connections below to the K12 online operation the Times exposed last week WITHOUT MENTIONING THE TISCH CONNECTION plus other exposures we have done over the years.) If she didn't do something she would have had zero credibility and zero reputation so she saved her ass, which has brought her into some mild conflicts with her next door neighbor Michael Bloomberg.

Winerip took a nice shot at Tisch back in August as chronicled in this Ed Notes piece:

Ed Notes Online: Is the Evil Meryl Tisch Even Eviler than Eva?

Aug 16, 2011

Michael Winerip wrote Monday on the evil and the good at State Board of Regents which ostensibly should control the absolutely evil NY State Ed Dept but even eviler (out eviling Eva) Regent boss Meryl Tisch has taken all ...

How well did her choice - David (Give Cathie Black a Waiver) Steiner do before running for the hills after just 2 years? His successor John (I love any charter no matter what) King also comes in for some biting satire in the Winerip piece:

NOVEMBER 2011 New York is one of two states in the nation to post statistically significant declines on the National Assessment tests. John B. King, the education commissioner, says the state is certainly going in the wrong direction, but has a plan to spur students’ achievement. “The new Common Core Learning Standards will help get them there,” he says.
DEC. 19, 2011 Nearly a quarter of the state’s principals — 1,046 — have signed an online letter protesting the plan to evaluate teachers and principals by test scores. Among the reasons cited is New York’s long tradition of creating tests that have little to do with reality.

But my favorite part of the article is this hit at Tweed slug Shael (I can find a way to justify ecery single bad policy decison we make) Polokow-Seransky

Mr. Polakow-Suransky says that even if city test scores were inflated, he is not aware of any credible research calling the city’s 64 percent graduation rate into question.

FEBRUARY 2011 The city’s 64 percent graduation rate is called into question. The state announces a new accountability measure: the percentage of high school seniors graduating who are ready for college or a career. By this standard, the graduation rate for New York City in 2009 was 23 percent.

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I've has the Merryl Tisch "I am not a crook" photo on the sidebar for quite some time. I was going to remove it but thought: It will always come in handy.

From Ed Notes May 4, 2011:

Tisch Family Connections to K12 Board and Charter School

K12’s board is headed by Andrew Tisch, co-chair of Loew’s Corp,  the brother in law of Merryl Tisch, who is in turn, the head of the NYS board of Regents. Meetings of the NY state education department are often held in the Loew’s headquarters, which is run by Merryl’s husband,  James.  http://www.loews.com/loews.nsf/OfficeOfPresident.pdf

The NYS Regents are currently considering eliminating all seat time requirements, and to allow the rapid and essentially unregulated expansion of online learning. In addition, K12 has submitted a charter application to the Regents/NYSED, called “NY Flex charter school” in D2, that has gone through the preliminary approval process by NYSED.  (EDNote: Pedro Noguera who is considered by many to be on the anti-ed deform side chairs the SUNY charter committee. There have been charges he approves every charter request.)

In  an earlier iteration/application, K12 was clearly running the school, now the application has been revised to indicate that the school will “contract” out with K12 for services, including curriculum, assessments, teacher training, and other support and services as requested by the Board and staff of the school.   

This recasting of the application is to avoid legal conflicts w/ the new NY state charter law which bars for-profit companies from operating charter schools. Here is an article about this controversial issue: http://www.citylimits.org/news/articles/4185/pedagogy-and-profits-charter-school-bid-raises-questions

MORE TISCH ON ED NOTES:

Ed Notes Online: Dishonor Among Thieves: Merryl Tisch Wrote ...

May 15, 2011

Ed Notes has learned that the letter Governor Cuomo supposedly wrote to Merryl Tisch and the State Board of Regents calling for a change from weighing teacher evaluations based on state tests from 20 to 40% was in fact ...

http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/

Ed Notes Online: Is the Evil Meryl Tisch Even Eviler than Eva?

Aug 16, 2011

Michael Winerip wrote Monday on the evil and the good at State Board of Regents which ostensibly should control the absolutely evil NY State Ed Dept but even eviler (out eviling Eva) Regent boss Meryl Tisch has taken all ...

Ed Notes Online: The Political Underbelly of Ed Deform: Enormous ...

Nov 03, 2011

Now as an opponent of using tests to measure everything I hate to jump on the necks of Merryl Tisch and her neighbor Bloomberg - no, I really don't hate to do it - they lived by the sword and should die by the sword. ..

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Check out Norms Notes for a variety of articles of interest: http://normsnotes2.blogspot.com/. And make sure to check out the side panel on the right for important bits.

The Political Underbelly of Ed Deform: Enormous Money Wasted on Teacher Monitoring

UPDATED: Nov. 3, 2011, 11:40PM

On National Test, New York Declines in Math
Ohanian Comment: I had resolved to skip all stories about NAEP. After all, Gerald Bracey pointed out how corrupt the NAEP setup was from the get-go. And it certainly hasn't changed.[Don't miss this classic Bracey takedown.] And I studied the reading passages and questions carefully--and read the bizarre rationales the scorers gave for the scores they assigned. But I stumbled across this Merryl Tisch quote, and ohmygod, have to post it for posterity. It is so arrogantly incomprehensible that I'll post it twice, once here, and once in the article: 

"We cannot be diddling around with courts and lawyers while children and teachers in this state are going hungry for an evaluation. We need to get to a place in New York State where curriculum and instruction drive assets, and not the assets that drive the curriculum and instruction."--Merryl Tisch 

What IS she talking about? She is a prime diddler. 

I added the above since Susan grabbed the same Tisch asshole quote I did below.

First the ed deformers sell the idea that the teacher is the most important element in a child's education.
Then the witch hunts begin.

In my debate last week at Hofstra with Michael Regnier from the NYC Charter Center where ed deform reigns, he was asked for solutions and basically came up with better training for teachers, better method of teaching. That triggered my only heated moment of the evening where I categorically rejected the key idea of the ed deformers that all we need are better lesson plans. I'm glad that Yelena Siwinski, CL of PS 193K who accompanied me, asked Regnier if he ever taught- which he didn't - which led to his heated moment - he refused to accept the idea that you have to teach to discuss education policy. Sure, Michael, go discuss to your heart's content - but you are getting paid as part of the ed deform industry that has sprung up to move public policy. I stole the button from Pissed Off Teacher but there is another that reads - THOSE WHO CANNOT (teach) WANT TO MAKE ED POLICY. I just love those people on the ed deform dole who say they care about children but won't go near the highest level of showing how much you care - go teach those children you care so much about.

Oh, so simple. Just spend billions on measuring teacher effectiveness and get rid of the ineffective teachers who can't improve (hint: some have figured out a way to cheat on the tests).

The sad thing is that our unions - the AFT and UFT - often jumped in with glee to declare how important the teacher is while downplaying the factors that we know have the real impact.

At least Mulgrew jumped in to respond to this outrage by Tisch who placed the blame for the low NAEP's squarely on the teachers:

Merryl Tisch, the chancellor of the state Board of Regents, said the test results reinforce her argument that the state needs a strong teacher evaluation process.
“We cannot be diddling around with courts and lawyers while children and teachers in this state are going hungry for an evaluation,” Ms. Tisch said. “We need to get to a place in New York State where curriculum and instruction drive assets, and not the assets that drive the curriculum and instruction.”

And in the same Times article, another slug said:

Ms. Libfeld also blamed budget cuts and lack of money for teacher training. “It’s an issue all over that we need to focus on,” she said. “Money needs to be focused on professional development for teachers and that’s the bottom line.”

Sure, that's the bottom line. The reality is that we will always have a bunch of teachers who are problematic and even if you ended LIFO right now and allowed principals to fire every teacher they wanted to - we know that a whole bunch of these would be fired for nothing to do with their performance as teachers so so-called "good" teachers would be let go. But let's say they get rid of all the people they consider bad. Now they have to find replacements. Does anyone think that a whole batch of these replacements - who in most cases would be totally inexperienced - wouldn't also be problematic?

But this is where an enormous amount of money is going. Why test kindergarten kids? So they can get a baseline for their teachers. Insanity.

You can see ed deform at work every single day. Just this week we found out that NY State made no progress on the NAEP scores. Now as an opponent of using tests to measure everything I hate to jump on the necks of Merryl Tisch and her neighbor Bloomberg - no, I really don't hate to do it - they lived by the sword and should die by the sword. Even before the NAEP's were released I predicted that NYC would do a penny better than the rest of the state and even though last in the nation would declare victory. You know why? Because we have the least experienced corps of principals with so many coming from the Leadership Academy and many of them are at least competent in figuring out how to cheat - like going so far as to threaten teachers with their jobs if they don't. And of course with the witch hunts on to measure and fire teachers who don't perform, I can't blame them.

So there were lots of articles in the NY Times this week on what may look like separate issues but they are all connected.

Leonie Haimson linked these issues at the NYC Parent blog:

Today's scorecard on our schools: the news ain't pretty & the diagnosis bizarre

We have had nine long years during which NY state and city education officials have relentlessly focused on  high stakes testing, with school closings, grade retention, and teacher bonuses all linked to test scores.  So according to data released today, what have been the results?

• Test score tampering allegations are way up;

• So are suspensions;

• So are class sizes;

•  Meanwhile, our test scores on the most reliable national assessments are flat or declining.

So what do we need, according to NY education officials ?  Better tests.  Read it and weep.

Leonie Haimson tracks another waste of money by the Tweedies.

Many new positions to be  hired in “Teacher Effectiveness Support”; incl. two jobs at six figure salaries. meanwhile class sizes growing out of control and no money for classroom supplies. What does Support mean?  More rigid evaluation systems. Read the list below the fold.

Dishonor Among Thieves: Merryl Tisch Wrote Letter For Cuomo That He Ostensibly Wrote to Her

A NORMI-LEAKS SPECIAL

NOTE: Photo of Merryl Tisch posted earlier removed at request of the source who does not believe Tisch is a crook. No comment. Normi-leaks hungry for more.

Ed Notes has learned that the letter Governor Cuomo supposedly wrote to Merryl Tisch and the State Board of Regents calling for a change from weighing teacher evaluations based on state tests from 20 to 40% was in fact written by Tisch herself with the assistance of Deputy State Ed Commissioner John King and former Tweed Chief Talent Officer Amy McIntosh (Google her name and come up with all sorts of goodies). There may be a vote on Monday.

For background see posts at Gotham where you can read the entire "Cuomo" letter:

Cuomo: test scores should play a bigger part in teacher evals by Anna Phillips

Chris Smith reads Cuomo’s position on teacher evaluation as a bargaining chip for Bloomberg. (NYMag)

John King

To watch Tisch lie through her teeth numerous times, watch this NY 1 video:  http://www.ny1.com?ArID=139094

You will fall off your chair when she talks about the governor's right to comment and all the points he is making - which are in fact they are the points she, King and McIntosh made in the letter they wrote in the name of Cuomo - he is a busy guy.

She says that parents were part of the 63 member teacher evaluation task force though not a single parent representing parent interests (as opposed to some official who is also a parent) was on the task force despite demands from parent interests to be included. The task force consisted entirely of Regents members, school administrators, teachers, academic “consultants” and other educrats.

She also claimed that teacher evaluation added an “objective” measure of teacher effectiveness and that this new system must be implemented by next fall.

Behind it all is an attempt to end LIFO and use flawed tests.

Questions will be raised this week within the UFT over what looks like a reversal of a deal the UFT made with Regent head Merryl Tisch and State Ed Commissioner David Steiner last year. Was the UFT dealt dirty or were they partners?

Go back to the original agreement between the UFT and State Ed (Tisch and soon to be ex-commissioner David Steiner. Michael Mulgrew at the Delegate Assembly where they sold the plan to the members waxed poetic (as poetic as you can imagine Mulgrew waxing) over how wonderful dealing with these two slugs was compared to Klein and Tweed. For my money, I'll take Joel Klein over Merryl Tisch any day because he lied so openly - she actually tries to give an air of integrity - for a billionaire (and Bloomberg's next door neighbor - hey, how about a rally in front of her house - kill 2 birds with one stone.)

Can't wait to watch Mulgrew skip and dance over this one at the Delegate Assembly this Wednesday.

It is interesting in perusing the 63 member list, (below the fold) you will find some UFT and NYSUT people there ostensibly representing the interests of teachers. Interesting that Tisch says there was a lot of agreement. But why believe her on this. I would love to hear more from Jackie Bennett who many respect for her thoughtful analysis (even though the tows/toes the Unity Caucus line) especially on how flawed the tests are. See here and here.

Bennett, Jackie United Federation of Teachers
Gentile, Aminda Vice President United Federation of Teachers
Hinds, Janella United Federation of Teachers
Mendel, Michael United Federation of Teachers

Adams, Heather New York State United Teachers
Neira, Maria Vice President New York State United Teachers

Some comments from the listserve:

Patrick Sullivan:
I'm pretty sure Tisch is a mom herself.    I recall her daughter wrote an op-ed calling for a Bloomberg third term.  Maybe that's what she was thinking.   I don't think Tisch would see any value in including public school parents in decisions concerning our children.

Leonie Haimson:

Merryl Tisch’s daughter Jessica , wrote that oped in favor of overturning term limits and a third term for Bloomberg, based upon his terrific record at running our schools. 

Her oped is here: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/item_E7oQ1Nm80l89vCCqQXIUNK;jsessionid=AD5CBD148EEE8F9FAF48848B84A5F43F

And Steve Koss wrote about it here: http://nycpublicschoolparents.blogspot.com/2008/04/audacity-of-hubris-and-money.html

Jessica is now director of policy and planning for NYPD's Counterterrorism Bureau.

Perhaps parents could use our own counterterrorism bureau to protect our kids against the policies of the Regents and SED.

LINK: Teacher Reviews Will Put More Focus on State Tests

Posted by Leonie Haimson to NYCEDNews List:

NYS Regents now want to do end run around the law to allow state tests – which were not designed for that purpose – to account for 40% of a teacher’s evaluation,  despite all the evidence that  test-based value added evals of teachers are unreliable, unfair to teachers and damaging to kids.  This system – rushed through the Legislature to get Race to the Top funds - were originally supposed to account for 20%, with another 20% from “local assessments”.- MORE: Teacher Reviews Will Put More Focus on State Tests
The list below:

Tisch Family Connections to K12 Board and Charter School

K12’s board is headed by Andrew Tisch, co-chair of Loew’s Corp,  the brother in law of Merryl Tisch, who is in turn, the head of the NYS board of Regents. Meetings of the NY state education department are often held in the Loew’s headquarters, which is run by Merryl’s husband,  James.  http://www.loews.com/loews.nsf/OfficeOfPresident.pdf

The NYS Regents are currently considering eliminating all seat time requirements, and to allow the rapid and essentially unregulated expansion of online learning. In addition, K12 has submitted a charter application to the Regents/NYSED, called “NY Flex charter school” in D2, that has gone through the preliminary approval process by NYSED.  (EDNote: Pedro Noguera who is considered by many to be on the anti-ed deform side chairs the SUNY charter committee. There have been charges he approves every charter request.)

In  an earlier iteration/application, K12 was clearly running the school, now the application has been revised to indicate that the school will “contract” out with K12 for services, including curriculum, assessments, teacher training, and other support and services as requested by the Board and staff of the school.   

This recasting of the application is to avoid legal conflicts w/ the new NY state charter law which bars for-profit companies from operating charter schools. Here is an article about this controversial issue: http://www.citylimits.org/news/articles/4185/pedagogy-and-profits-charter-school-bid-raises-questions

Great reporting by Idaho paper below on the financial ties between the new Gov. of Idaho and the online tech industry. 

The Milkens’ privately held Learning Group LLC is the largest shareholder of K12, owning 24 percent of the company. Another Milken employee, Nina Rees, gave Luna $500. Rees and Luna worked together in the Education Department, where Rees led innovation efforts. Rees also advised Vice President Dick Cheney and the Romney campaign. She now is a senior vice president at Knowledge Universe Education, a California-based holding company chaired by Milken, with stakes in more than 50 education companies, including K12. http://investors.k12.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=214389&p=irol-govBio3&ID=170658

How much difference this reformulation makes, legally, is something hard to discern, but people should keep their eyes on this application:

K12 Classroom LLC, (“K12”) a subsidiary of K12 Inc., will be collaborating with us. K12 Inc. is an education company with a ten year history of providing outstanding curriculum and educational services to students in grades K-12. K12 will provide most of the school’s curriculum. In the 2009-2010 school year, K12 served almost 70,000 public school students through collaborations with public entities in twenty-five states and the District of Columbia. Since their inception in 2000, they have developed over 21,000 lessons of engaging curriculum—lessons, video, assessment, learning games, labs, textbooks, workbooks, and digital instructional resources that promote mastery of core concepts and skills for students of all ability levels. Their approach combines cognitive science with individualized learning and is well-suited for New York Flex. In addition to curriculum, the Board will specifically contract with K12 for assessments, teacher training, and other support and services as requested by the Board and staff of the school. Consistent with law and best practice, the Board and staff will retain the final authority for all decision-making, management, and operations including curriculum and personnel issues.

http://www.p12.nysed.gov/psc/documents/ProspectusReviewSummaryBrief3.1.11.xls

http://www.p12.nysed.gov/psc/documents/PostedNYFlexLOI.pdf

http://www.p12.nysed.gov/psc/documents/NewYorkFlexProspectus8.16.10.pdf

http://www.idahostatesman.com/2011/02/20/1535065/a-reform-plan-a-long-time-in-the.html

Tom Luna's education reform plan was a long time in the making

How Tom Luna’s co-workers from the Bush administration — and the private education companies they now help run — positioned Idaho’s schools chief to make changes that the for-profit education industry may cash in on

STORIES BY DAN POPKEY - dpopkey@idahostatesman.com

Copyright: © 2011 Idaho Statesman

Published: 02/20/11

MORE TWEED TECH SCANDALS:

• GothamSchools

  NEWS: Rise & Shine: Another DOE tech contractor under investigation
• 
  
  Perdido Street School

  TOP DOE Official Under Investigation In Conflict Of Interest Scandal