Sunday, April 19, 2015

The Re-Education of Merryl Tisch By Marla Kilfoyle - Badass Teachers Association

Badass Teachers Association:

The Re-Education of Merryl Tisch

By:  Marla Kilfoyle







 Merryl  Tisch is the Chancellor of the Board of Regents in New York State.  The Board of Regents “ are responsible for the general supervision of all educational activities within the State, presiding over The University and the New York State Education Department”    

Chancellor Tisch has been on the Board of Regents since 1996 and was selected to lead the Board of Regents in 2009.  She has sat on the Board of Regents for close to 20 Years.  “From 1977 to 1984 Chancellor Tisch taught first-graders at New York City’s Ramaz School and the B’nai Jeshurun School. She received a B.A. from Barnard College, an M.A. in Education from New York University, and an Ed.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University.”     



On April 15th Chancellor Tisch agreed to debate Dr. Diane Ravitch on All in With Chris to respond to the historic, and massive, parental test refusal movement that was going in in New York.

The statements made by Chancellor Tisch during that debate were, for lack of a better word, quite perplexing.   Let’s examine a few

  Tisch  claimed

“The intent of the test is to give a snapshot of performance and allow parents to know where their children are at any given point in their educational career as compared to their peers.”

“It is natural for parents to want to know how their kids are doing. And as for the diagnostic nature of these tests and the amount of information that is gleaned from them, school districts report to us all the time that they design curriculum around the results of these tests.”

Parents want a detailed report of how their children did.  One NY parent, who has a child with disabilities, agreed to share their son’s ELA score report with me. Their child received a score of 1 on this test.  Here is what was sent to their home in mid-October (6 months AFTER he took the test) .