NJ Education Report

From Chalkbeat, which asks if  the pending retirement of  Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch is a victory for labor leaders of the NYSUT (who felt little warmth for Tisch’s ed reform tendencies) as well as a “perilous setback” for NY’s  movement toward higher standards and assessments because, according to the Daily News, Tisch was an “increasingly lonely bulwark against the adult-protection racket?”

Their question is, will [Tisch’s] aggressive policy agenda survive the transition? And where does this leave New York’s education debates? 

This week, both sides acknowledged that her exit in five months poses some threat to policies Tisch implemented, like teacher evaluations linked to student test scores and New York’s adoption of the Common Core. But current and former education officials said that momentum and the state’s political dynamics would ensure that the most important elements of their policies would endure. 

“I see this less as an end of an era and more as a phase two,” said Kristen Huff, New York’s testing czar during much of Tisch’s tenure. 

For one thing, they say, it would be hard to change some things back. 

“A lot of the stuff is enshrined in statute,” said Julia Rafal-Baer, a former assistant commissioner for the State Education Department. 

The most obvious example is the state’s teacher evaluation law, which has been heavily debated since it was first passed in 2010. But five years and several edits later, the law’s main components — particularly that student performance be a significant factor in evaluations — have not been watered down.