Crains New York - July 15, 2013 - (Page 11)
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STEVE HINDY
Testing is poor gauge
of students’ abilities
P
ublic education is constantly under a microscope.
The current focus is on testing and gathering data
about students’, teachers’ and administrators’ performance. This is the focus in New York City and
New York state and at the national level, with the
Obama administration’s Race to the Top program.
I am not an educator.I tried teaching high-school English when
I graduated from college and nearly had a nervous breakdown.
It was the hardest thing I ever did. I
gave it up for journalism, which
Walter Lippman once described as
“the refuge of the vaguely talented.”
There are many educators in my
family, and I have been getting an
earful about how testing is out of
control.
My wife, Ellen Foote, is retiring
from the Department of Education
this year, after 23 years. She taught
in lower Manhattan for the first
eight and then ran a middle school
there for 15 years.
Ellen was at the top of her class
in high school in Seneca Falls, N.Y.
I scored average on standardized
tests, but I always managed to get
decent grades, putting me in the top
10% of my class. That got me into
Cornell.
It seems to me that standardized tests are not a great predictor
of success in our society.Two of the
greatest entrepreneurs of the current generation, Bill Gates and
Mark Zuckerberg, dropped out of
Harvard to pursue their dreams.
Apple’s crazy genius Steve Jobs
was no product of traditional
education.
There is a scene in the Whit
Stillman film Metropolitan where a
young woman tells a young man
that he is very smart. He
replies that he is not. She insists.
And then, I recall, he says, “Oh,
yeah, well, you don’t know what I
A Spitzer win would
be a disaster for city
T
he president of the Partnership for New York City
and the president of the United Federation of
Teachers rarely agree on the big issues confronting
the city. Not so when it comes to Eliot Spitzer.
They both said last week that he would be a disaster as city comptroller and would do what they could to make
sure he didn’t win.
They and anyone else who agrees with them had better be at
their best. Beating Mr. Spitzer won’t
be easy.
The former governor and Client
No. 9 will try to make this fight
about big and powerful groups out
to block someone who cares about
individual New Yorkers. He will do
his best to make it seem as though it
is all those bad Wall Street guys
again who have never forgiven him
for his investigations of their nefarious deeds when he was state attorney general. It will even be true that
the Establishment (capital E) is
against him.
That Establishment, however,
consists of many of the people who
care about the city the most. Yes, it
includes Kathryn Wylde of the
partnership and virtually every other business leader I have talked to in
the past week.
It also includes virtually every
union leader, beginning with UFT
GREG DAVID
President Michael Mulgrew. It says
something important that so many
people agree Mr. Spitzer would be
an egomaniacal and disastrous
comptroller.
The problem is that the Establishment’s choice, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, is a
got on my SATs.” Testing can tear
you down if you take it too
seriously.
The great teachers I remember
are people like Sam Dickieson, a
chemistry teacher I had in Seneca
Falls. When Mr. Dickieson informed me I was being inducted
into the National Honor Society, he
pointedly added that I should “keep
my nose clean.” Mrs. Wilson, who
taught English, helped me along,
too.
What those teachers did was to
find something good in my work
and show me it was mine. They instilled confidence. So when I got my
disappointing SAT scores, I didn’t
despair.
I don’t think the data wonks can
identify what it takes to make a great
teacher, or what it takes to make a
great entrepreneur or businessman,
or artist or community organizer or
politician or lawyer or doctor. Your
great teacher may not be my great
teacher.
Seems to me the emphasis on
testing enables lazy or bad teachers
to just “teach the test” and get by.
That is not good.
Testing is undoubtedly part of
the criteria that must be used to
judge teachers and administrators.
But I think it is only a small part. I
hope the next mayor, governor and
president rein it in.
weak candidate. He originally
planned to run for mayor but
couldn’t develop any traction. He
dropped down to the comptroller’s
race and used his bona fides with the
unions to scare away his
competition.
Convincing
someone
like
Brooklyn Councilman Domenic
Recchia that you are tough politically is child’s play compared with a
street fight against Mr. Spitzer.
It won’t help Mr. Stringer that he
is good on the tasks confronting the
next comptroller. Voters are not interested in a discussion of city audits
or pension arrangements. They will
decide this race on personality—
and Mr. Stringer doesn’t have much
of one.
Mr. Spitzer does have a personality, and a track record that is the
polar opposite of the image he wants
to project or the history he wants to
tell. So the way to keep him out of
public life is to attack him starting
yesterday.
If there is any lesson from the
mayoral race, it is that timidity is
dangerous. The biggest mistake
Christine Quinn and Bill de Blasio
have made in their campaigns is
not attacking Anthony Weiner
from the moment he admitted he
might run.
Mr. Weiner has clearly cut into
Ms. Quinn’s poll numbers and
pushed Mr. de Blasio far from the
spotlight. Ms. Quinn is belatedly
trying to recover from the misstep;
it is too late for Mr. de Blasio.
Let’s hope it is not too late for
Mr. Stringer.
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crains New York - July 15, 2013
Crains New York - July 15, 2013
IN THE BOROUGHS
IN THE MARKETS
SMALL BUSINESS
THE INSIDER
BUSINESS PEOPLE
OPINION
STEVE HINDY
GREG DAVID
REAL ESTATE DEALS
REPORT: HEALTH CARE
CLASSIFIEDS
FOR THE RECORD
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
SOURCE LUNCH
OUT AND ABOUT
SNAPS
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