Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch Wants Massive Expansion Of Charter Schools In New York State

Bloomberg is gone, but his pro-charter, pro-school closing policies live on at the state level:

The state should raise its cap to allow more charter schools, the Board of Regents chief said Sunday, running counter to the city administration’s position.

“As we look to this legislative season, people are going to say we need to raise the charter cap. I personally am a great believer in charter schools ... I believe in opening them aggressively” Chancellor Merryl Tisch said on the John Catsimatidis radio show. “I’d like to push more charter schools.”

Charter backers plan an effort to raise or eliminate the cap, which has 28 slots left in the city.

Tisch said the jury is out on Mayor de Blasio’s recently announced plan to turn around the city’s most troubled schools — but if they don’t show progress, the state will step in to attempt to shut them down.

“If we do not see movement on these schools, these lowest-performing schools, in terms of their ability to retool their workforce, by the spring, we will move to close them,” she said. “Because these are the schools that have failed for generations now.”

Isn't it time parents and teachers take aim at Regents Chancellor Tisch, the doyenne of testing as Diane Ravitch once called her, and force her out?

This is a Regents Chancellor who carries out the destruction of the public education system in this state by pushing the abysmal Common Core, the badly designed state tests (which are kept mostly secret by the state BECAUSE they are so badly designed), the badly written EngageNY curriculum and a teacher evaluation system that a study by superintendents in the Lower Hudson Valley shows is harmful to children and teachers.

Now she goes on the attack against public schools, calling for "aggressive" efforts to expand charters in the state and says the state will move to close "failing" schools in NYC if Mayor de Blasio doesn't.

Tisch continues to carry out the corporate education agenda, harming children all across the state with her CCSS agenda, the garbage in the EngageNY curriculum and the badly-designed state tests, and now she is looking to help her criminal friends on Wall Street cash in by pushing for a massive influx of charters around the state.

This woman doesn't belong as Regents Chancellor.

It is time to begin a parent- and teacher-led campaign against her to force her out.

You can start by calling Shelly Silver, her pal who put her in power in the first place.

Here's his number:

District Office

250 Broadway Suite 2307
New York, NY 10007
212-312-1420

Albany Office

LOB 932
Albany, NY 12248
518-455-3791

Email:  http://assembly.state.ny.us/mem/Sheldon-Silver/contact/

I'm under no illusion that it will be easy to push back against the Doyenne of Tests or force her out.

But it is time to try.

The harm this woman has done in carrying out her corporate education reform agenda needs to be stopped.