Accountability and Rigor Marked Absent at NYSED - Again!

NYSED Thinks Your Kids Should Take this Test

Now that we've all seen NYSED's brilliance yet again in sending New York kids off to take Sexy Slut Tests, American Retard Tests and Are You a Mexican Tests in order to prep them for the coming Common Core onslaught in April I'd be remiss if I didn't pose these sages a few honest questions.

Their explanation for linking kids to abominably inappropriate web sites in the name of test prep essentially boils down to "shit happens." They claim that they linked it back in the fall  of 2012 and since then someone changed the content. They then excuse themselves for not monitoring their own site with the excuse that with so many links it's just too much to ask. They are of course spread so thin that Regent Tisch had to reach under her bed to where she keeps that creaky tin box with soap scraps and several billion in cash to hire her secret army of Regents Fellers her own self. Yes times in Albany are tough. 

Nowhere in NYSED's lame assed excuses did I discern an apologetic note. Of course I eschew their propaganda at all cost and even took the trouble to block King's absurd self promotions through my email at work. So maybe somewhere they mumbled a mea culpa but if they did I missed it. What NYSED loves to crow about for teachers though is Accountability. They and the Regents and Gubner Andy all think teachers need more of it and fast. It makes sense that these educational experts should crave as much accountability for themselves as they seek to inflict on teachers. And you know from experience what happens when a teacher slips up online -- Christine Rubino anyone?  If any of us linked our classroom websites to Sexy Bitch Quizzes and What STDs do you have sites you know retribution would be swift and severe. So, NYSED, whose head is going to roll over this egregious breach of basic common sense? Which genius sitting at an ipad with a latte and a spiffy private school degree mounted on the wall over their shoulder is headed to the unenjoyment line come Monday? We need a name, now. Oh you best not tell us nobody is going to be sacked for this. That would be sadly lacking in the rigor you all advise the rest of us, kids included are so sorely lacking. 

And speaking of rigor... Is it acceptable that NYSED posts links on a website and simply forgets about them for a year and a half? The internet is a fluid place, things change all the time. Does the only state still invested in InBloom and clinging with its' fangs and claws to slam Common Core down everyone's throat think they can simply slap up a website and do nothing to monitor it when a failure to do so results in kids being presented with filth, racism and homophobia when they try to play along with the game and prepare themselves for these ridiculous tests? 

Never mind the implications this fiasco has on the notion of NYSED handing over our kids' data to InBloom. Most of us laughed when we heard this story wanting to know what friendly hacker we owed a thanks to. But as it turns out this happened all on its own with no outside malicious force, NYSED's own laziness and failure of imagination did it all by themselves. So King has no "Special Interests" to blame for this one. It's a homegrown fuck up, another one, brought to us by the inept yet hilariously strident corporate pawns of the New York State Ed Department. Take a bow folks. As they bluster and fulminate in their edacious cries for accountability and rigor for teachers they continue to sit on their asses screwing up and making excuses that no teacher would dare hang a 3020a defense upon. 

To date we've seen their Pineapple Hare exams, their wrong math exams, their videos of a guy doing belly flops into a foot of water, their infusing calculus concepts into basic algebra and all but scrapping the concept of teaching literature in favor of factual texts about Kosovo. When this is done and this ship of fools are either put to sea or locked up for what remains to be seen the only question anyone will ask is How in hell did they get away with it for as long as they did?