Sunday, September 19, 2010

My unvideotaped debate with DOE's Suransky re NCLB, testing, and NYC's dismal results

On Wednesday, September 15, I was invited to New York Law School to debate Shael Suransky, NYC's Deputy Chancellor for Accountability, about NCLB and the negative effects of high stakes accountability systems.

I also took the opportunity to rebut the claims of impressive progress in student achievement in NYC that DOE continues to make, even after the state test score bubble has burst, and to point out the many errors in Chancellor Klein's written statements concerning this issue.

Unfortunately, NY Law School did not allow Lindsey Christ of NY1 or Norm Scott of Education Notes to videotape the event, reportedly because of pressure from DOE.

Lindsey was quite annoyed, and said she had never been barred from taping any such forum, either at NYU, Columbia, the New School, CUNY or SUNY.

For more on what transpired, you can see Norm Scott's accounts here and here, and the email exchange between Lindsey, the very testy VP for PR at NY Law School, and me.

As many people have asked for it, I am posting my powerpoint here, part 1 and part II. If you would like me to present it to your organization, please email me at classsizematters@gmail.com


-- Leonie Haimson, Executive Director, Class Size Matters


4 comments:

reality-based educator said...

I bet they didn't want it videotaped because it could be used to counter the nonsense NBC and MSNBC are spewing this week as part of their "Education Summit" - with both Bloomberg and Klein on stage as "experts."

They are "experts" all right - experts with phony test scores, an achievement gap larger than before they took over the system, and four re-organizations and hundreds of closed schools but no progress to show for any of the disorder and creative corporate chaos they have brought to the system.

escalante blogger said...

They must still be careful even they are already expert.

Anonymous said...

It's part of the systemic attempt to protect the DOE from admitting its mistakes, being accountable, and changing course. Typical.

Anonymous said...

It's part of the systemic attempt to protect the DOE from admitting its mistakes, being accountable, and changing course. Typical.