NY Times Shocked, Shocked Over BloomKlein Claims on Reading Scores

[Hannah Bell]

Yes, let's give the NY Times the Captain Louis Award.

You just had to hold your sides laughing at the front page story NY Times article on testing 10/11. "Warning Signs Ignored" is the title, and the NY Times was the leading ignorer. No one is really responsible you know. It sort of just happened. All on its own. Regent head Meryl Tisch? Former State Ed Comm Dickie Boy Allen? All innocent bystanders. The best quote: From Test Prep Queen Kathy (Who Me?) Cashin.

"As a superintendent in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, Kathleen Cashin had seen several schools improve throughout the early part of the decade. But when she saw the sudden jump, she said, she was shocked. 'I said to my intimate circle of staff, this cannot be possible,' Ms. Cashin recalled. 'I knew how much effort and how much planning any little improvement would take, and not all of these schools had done any of it.' But Ms. Cashin, who retired in February, held her tongue at the time. Asked why she did not take up her concerns with Mr. Klein or his deputies, she said, 'I didn’t have their ear.'

Excuse me while I take a minute............$##&*())()*)!

That felt better. I actually knew teachers at PS 193k when Cashin was principal (oh, boy) before heading Dist. 23 (in the status quo days), then Region 5, before Klein chose her as one of the 4 super superintendents, using her rising test scores at each post to rise further herself (there were even rumors she would replace Klein)...Well, I'll go no further because Leonie Haimson savages the Times for years of non reporting on the testing fiasco (continued...at link)

http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/


Education deformers are liars, hypocrites, careerists who swing whichever way looks most lucrative.

Everyone knew the scores were phoney. But Bloom/Klein used them to justify attacks on teachers & schools & the expansion of charters, careerists like Cash-in used them to promote themselves & further their careers, honest people who tried to point out the emperor had no clothes got fired & vilified, & the kids & parents got screwed.

But school deform, backed by the billionaire boys club & an army of eager lapdogs, just keeps rolling on.

WHY AREN'T THESE PEOPLE IN JAIL?

[dkf]

1. So everything was fine before these guys started messing around with education?

I guess this is what the teachers are trying to teach me right?

[Hannah Bell]

2. They phonied the scores & used them to pretend their policies were succeeding. Did you not get it?

[TBF]

4. Oh they get it alright - when Bush did NCLB it was horrible,

but Obama basically doing the same thing is A-OK.

[jpgray]

3. That it is impossible to go from bad to worse, I had almost forgot

:dunce:

[Pholus]

5. No -- but you didn't want to hear the solution they proposed.

You must like your tax cuts too much. Either that or you're a stockholder.

[n2doc]

9. Isn't the mantra that things were better in the old days?

So why not go back to them, when testing was something done in house and not used to promote/punish teachers. Or are you saying that schools have always been bad?

Schools are not businesses and should not be run as such. Trying to do so leads to problems like testing scores corruption.

[dkf]

14. The so called "deformers" got involved because our educational system isn't producing the workers we

need. Some here would like to think people like Bill Gates want to take over education to make money. Lol. The man is already retired! Maybe he isn't right on but this is sure spurring on the teachers, unions, and administrators to try to do it better.

I'm willing to give all sides a chance and see who can improve things. The status quo is unacceptable.

[sabrina 1]

13. No it wasn't. It wasn't okay when Bush instituted the

unbelievable failure and cynically named business program using children as commodities, known as No Child Left Behind. A program designed BY Businessmen FOR businessmen with little if any understanding of how children learn.

It was NEVER alright for progressives anyhow, who never supported Bush's 'educational' program. Reams of material was written about it by informed people, exposing who was behind it, who was profiting from it and why it was destined to fail. And I never met a progressive during that time, who didn't understand that you cannot teach by testing. Now suddenly since 'these guys took over' the guys with a 'D' after their name, some of the same people who cheered on the constructive criticism of NCLB, have done a complete about face and are defending it!!!

And here you are suggesting that when Democrats took over and not only continued this horrendous for-profit system, whose main goal was to provide money, and it did, for businesses closely aligned in many cases with the Bush family, but enhanced it, pushing for the privatization of the Public Schools even harder than Bush did, pouring money into 'faith based' schools, all of a sudden we were supposed to say 'Oooh, now that this disastrous program is in the hands of people with a 'D' after their names, it is suddenly great??

So to answer your question, no, nothing was fine during the Bush years before Duncan, Gates et al started messing with the same failed system. And that is why we voted for Democrats. To fix it, NOT to make it worse. Because it was bad enough BEFORE they got their hands on it.

[eilen]

6. It seems like everyone was juicing results

to make their "reform" look good from the NYPD to the BOE.

[seabeyond]

7. i have watched my kids in the system more than a decade. i see the reality of what teachers, adm

are doing. i have not bought "schools failing" from the beginning. all i see is a continual effort to destabilize the system and it pisses me off.

[n2doc]

8. Not only aren't they in jail, they are in the White house

or pulling down 6-7 figure salaries "running things"

[Starry Messenger]

10. This whole sordid affair of reform is like something out of the 19th century.

I never expected to live through something this insane.

[Luminous Animal]

11. Kick.

[Johonny]

12. Pataki ruined the NY Regents

they need to go back to the old system.