Dear Commons Community,
Earlier this year I posted an entry on this blog commenting on the dishonesty of standardized testing in New York. See:
To me this was a travesty perpetrated upon school children and their parents who thought progress was being made only to find out that the New York State standardized tests had been “dumbed down” ove r the past eight or so years. I was particularly critical of the NY Times for not showing more outrage at this hoax. I am happy to say that in today’s NY Times there is a lengthy and well-done article on this whole sad episode of public education in the NY city school system. See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/education/11scores.html?pagewanted=1&th&emc=th
While still a bit too gentle on the complicity of Chancellor Joel Klein and Mayor Michael Bloomberg in this fraud, it does uncover many of the sad facts that led to it. Credit is rightfully given to NYS Chancellor of the Board of Regents Merryl Tisch, Regent Betty Rosa, and NYS Commissioner David Steiner for setting the record straight and taking the politically unpopular stand of recalibrating the tests. The last line of the article quoting Chancellor Tisch summarizes the situation best:
“We came in here saying we have to stop lying to our kids,” Ms. Tisch said in a recent interview. “We have to be able to know what they do and do not know.”
BRAVA!
Tony
