Daily News Editorial Writers Blame Everybody But The Politicians And Education Leaders

In their shrill, bullying editorial attacking parents who opt their children out of the state exams or parents who question the validity of implementing the Common Core tests before the Common Core standards are fully in place, the Daily News editorial writers say the following:

Yes, they were set up to fail, but not by the test. What these moms and dads need to recognize is that the school system at large has set children up to fail in this increasingly competitive world.

Set up to fail by a curriculum far less rigorous than it needs to be.

Set up to fail by teachers and principals who were clueless as to what it took to prepare a young person for college or a career.

Set up to fail by passing grades on previous tests that required students to show far too little mastery of reading, writing and math.

So according to the DN editorial writers, the children have been set up to fail by "clueless teachers and principals" and by a "curriculum that is less rigorous than it needs to be" and by the "school system at large."

Do you notice who they don't blame for setting the children up to fail?

You got it - the politicians and education leaders who put that "system at large" into place in the first place.

Those education leaders include Merryl Tisch, current Regents chancellor, the one lecturing us all about "rigor" and "authentic assessments" who has sat on the Regents board since 1995 and kept her mouth shut when former Regents Chancellor Mills was inflating grades on the state tests like balloons at the circus.

In fact, Tisch defended the old tests and the inflated scores, telling the press when asked if city and state officials had hyped the state test results that “They have never, ever, ever exaggerated" when stuidents showed record gains.

Tisch's defense of the system came in 2005.  Finally in 2010, after years of NAEP and SAT scores showed littie-to-no growth in NY State, Tisch admitted the state test scores had been inflated, and called for reforms to the system that helped bring about the reforms of the current Common Core tests.

 

Apparently the previous standards that weren't as rigorous as they needed to be were the fault of the "clueless teachers and prinicpals" rather than the Regents who created them and defended them - including Merryl Tisch - or the NYSED that implemented them or the politicians who appointed many of these people to their positions.

It is so interesting that the power-worshipping DN editorial writers somehow miss that it was the powers-that-be in Albany who developed the past standards, put them into place, created the old state tests and the grading rubrics for those tests and instead blame the teachers and principals who just carried out the policies that were put into place in Albany.

It's a fine example of scapegoating, which is what so many in the education reform world do so well.