Unfortunately, the unilateral decision by T.C. President Susan Fuhrman to honor New York Board of Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch next week at the school’s convocation defies this tradition. As a member of the board since 1996, Tisch has supported New York’s testing program as it became the black hole of education from the inception of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2002. Children have been reduced to data points. Education is now a census filed annually on their answer sheets.
Many in the Teacher’s College community as well as off-campus bystanders are disturbed by Fuhrman’s decision to honor Tisch who represents to her critics the testing agenda which they believe has corrupted education policy.
In 2009, after becoming chancellor, Tisch admitted that the test results during her tenure had been misleading but maintained that the tests were valid. Her agenda, with the promise of more rigorous testing, became the focus for New York.
The shift was navigated in editorial boardrooms where she won support for the idea that more testing was the way to go, and test scores could be defended in reaching high-stakes decisions about students, teachers and schools — uses for which they were never intended.
Not once did she ask for an independent investigation of the relationship between the test publisher and the State Education Department and how the results had become so spuriously high. The regent board member who watched the misuse of testing unfold was now in charge of its reform.
I've often wondered how it is that Merryl Tisch, who not only oversaw the test score inflation during Richard Mills' tenure as Regents chancellor but also defended those scores, now gets to dub herself the doyenne of testing standards.
Why wasn't there an independent investigation into the test score inflation?
Why did Ms. Tisch defend those scores back in 2005?
Did she not know they were inflated?
Did she know and simply spout the Mills party line anyway?
There was talk in the editorial pages of the Murdoch papers of Tisch running for mayor.
I was always hoping she would, because I thought that would give the public a great opportunity to find out just what Ms. Tisch knew about score inflation during Mills' tenure and why she only saw the light after the NYSED and the Regents were forced to admit the tests and grading were easier than they should have been.
I also wanted her to run for mayor because I wanted to find out more about her family's connections to K-12 Inc. and the for-profit education industry as well as the family history in the cigarette business.
As a former Newport cigarette smoker who started smoking at the age of 13 when Newport ran an ad campaign giving away free packs of cigarettes in my neighborhood during the summers to anybody who wanted them (including to me and my fellow 13 year olds), I always bristle when I hear her talk about how much she cares about children and teenagers.
When I was 13, about the only way the Tisch family cared about me was to try and hook me for life on their tobacco product.
They were almost successful at that.
Unfortunately for me, I was hooked until I was 32.
There are a whole host of reasons why Merryl Tisch ought not to be feted at Teachers College, from the test mess back during the Mills days to the K-12 Inc. link.
I think the history of the Tisch family's tobacco business and their concerted efforts to hook as many children on their tobacco products ought to be another reason why she not be feted at Teachers College (and no, it doesn't matter that the Tischs sold the company a few years back - they owned it for a long, long time.)
But of course she will be feted at Teachers College as if nothing is controversial about her, as if she isn't full of crap about what she did during the Mills era over the test score inflation, as if her family has no connection to the for-profit education industry and doesn't benefit from high stakes testing.
There is no accountability for the wealthy in this country.
That Merryl Tisch is being feted at Teachers College is just one more example of that sad but true fact.
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