Not only is Meryl Tisch chancellor of the NY State Board of Regents, she's also chairwoman of the the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty. Because really, controlling the education of millions of NY State children is kind of a part-time gig. When you're as rich as Meryl Tisch, you need time to play polo, to shoot skeet, to go fox-hunting, and of course you have to run a few charities. It's just what you do.

Naturally, you haven't got time to actually do any work at these jobs, because you're busy. There are gala luncheons and charity balls, there are clothes to have tailored, and vacations to plan. There are homes to redesign and servants to chastise. So you hire people to work for you. But good help is so hard to get nowadays. I mean, here you are paying some character half a million bucks a year to run the charity you're supposed to be in charge of, and he runs off and steals a few million.

And for a few lousy million, the papers are all, "You're incompetent," and "You're irresponsible," and "How can you run a school system if you can't even pay attention to what's going on in your own backyard?" I mean, the audaciousness! Who do these people think they are?

And you're kind to your inferiors. You pay private school tuition for them because, for goodness sakes, those public schools are just awful! And you know, because you run them. The fact is, even criminals who mix in our circles ought not to have to consort with the bootless and unhorsed in those public schools.

And now they criticize you for that as well! These daily periodicals are so vulgar! Why did you get involved in this whole Regents thing anyway? You could be wintering in the south of France! Then you wouldn't have to go to those awful dinners at Governor Andy's house with Sandra Lee cooking Spicy Spam Surprise, and making those awful drinks with the gaudy umbrellas.

You give and give and give, but for goodness sake, there's a limit!

Thank goodness we have Meryl Tisch making policy for us. In the old days, we would have students taking Regents exams, and kids would give the exams to their teachers. Then, the teachers would grade them. This was a terrible system. First of all, no technology was involved. Secondly, no corporations made money from this. And worst of all, every single teacher in the world is a lying, worthless, conniving. self-serving fraud who cares about nothing but appearance.

Because of this, we now have a far better system. First of all, we've paid McGraw-Hill 9.6 million bucks to scan all the tests. That's a huge improvement. Not only have we given a corporation millions of dollars, but we've also managed to add the element of scanning thousands and thousands of papers. This, clearly, is highly effective, and that's what matters in King Reformy John's feifdom.

Unfortunately, the parents, students and teachers are failing to get on board with this, simply because it's taking an inordinate amount of time for them to get their grades. When are they gonna sit down and figure this isn't about their selfish needs, but about business? We're finally able to take the money we used to fritter away on teacher salaries and classroom supplies and invest it in America's lifeblood--corporations.

The only real drawbacks are that the scanning is taking a long, long time, that teachers are sitting in front of blank computer screens for hours on end, and that the actual grading is simply not getting done. But again, McGraw-Hill has almost ten million bucks, and that's a win for Mayor Bloomberg. Sure it would have been better to give all the cash to Eva Moskowitz, but that may not have looked right.

So now hundreds of teachers will be earning 42 bucks an hour this weekend to stare at computer screens, and possibly grade exams. You never know whether or not there actually will be exams, as boxes of them seem to have gone missing, but everyone knows it's the thought that counts.

Thank goodness Meryl Tisch brought us this great innovation, and thank goodness Mayor Bloomberg took it to new heights. After all, his financial genius was precisely why we needed to scrap a law twice affirmed by voters so he could but that third term. And I don't see anything inappropriate about her being involved in Bill Thompson's mayoral campaign. After all, with Thompson standing firm for no raises for teachers, there will be plenty more cash to pay the likes of McGraw-Hill.

It's kind of amazing when anyone in authority speaks truth to Bloomberg. But Regents Chancellor Meryl Tisch is doing just that. I don't know whether or not someone tainted her breakfast cereal, but she seems to recognize that Bloomberg's political machinations have nothing whatsoever to do with putting "Children First, Always." Would that the local papers would share that cereal.

Bloomberg simply cannot fire teachers fast enough. I can't say why he doesn't simply jump on the new evaluation plan, but it appears that fair hearings for even 13% of targeted teachers is too much for Mayor4Life. His plan, simply denying every appeal no matter what, appears to be more to his liking. After all, the PEP simply does whatever he says. Why can't everyone simply do whatever he says?

Let's hope against hope this is a wakeup call for Mayor4Life. Maybe even the privileged have had enough of his absurd nonsense. Perhaps he will find himself unable, even with all his money, to buy himself that fourth term he fantasizes about.

And let's hope he lands somewhere where he won't be able to hurt working people any more than he already has.

Well, if you happen to be inquiring about the NY State Board of Regents, as of April 1st, that would be Meryl Tisch, from one of "the city's most philanthropic families." That's important, of course, because in Mayor Bloomberg's New York, only rich people have the insight to dictate to poor people what sort of education they need.

For just one example, last year NYC's public school parents selected smaller class sizes as their number one concern. Fortunately, chief "accountability" officer Jim Liebman was able to conflate their number two and three concerns, and let parents know that class size wasn't their number one concern after all. That's what "accountability" officers do when they aren't literally running from public school parents.

Back to Ms. Tisch, one might ask where all those "philanthropic" funds came from. Well, a good deal of them came via the sale of Newport cigarettes, which they gave up last June. Apparently, the Tisch family was uncomfortable with selling such an odious product, which explains why they flirted with the idea for a mere forty years before renouncing it. As for Ms. Tisch personally, her philosophies seem ultimately very much in sync with billionaire Mayor Mike, according to Elizabeth Green of Gotham Schools:

Though Tisch has been a strong supporter of Mayor Bloomberg, she has also occasionally criticized him and his schools chancellor, Joel Klein. She told the Times last year that she disagreed with Klein’s request for looser regulations on state funds. “Nobody appointed him czar,” she said. She also testified to a committee that mayoral control of the schools, which Bloomberg strongly supports, should be curtailed. I reported her testimony, which was originally secret, at the New York Sun

Yet Tisch’s plans for the state’s public schools, which she laid out in a long statement accepting the new position, sound many similar notes to the Bloomberg administration’s work in New York City. It also echoes the Obama administration’s plans for education.

It's unfortunate that Ms. Tisch is so profoundly unaware of what's going on with public school kids that she'd dally with such preposterous and counterproductive "reforms." In her favor, it appears that unlike Chancellor Klein, Bill Gates, Jay Matthews, Randi Weingarten, and the other "experts," Ms. Tisch has actually spent several years working as a teacher. So perhaps there's a glimmer of hope somewhere.

If I could ask Ms. Tisch one thing, I'd ask her to stop requiring kids who arrived in the USA five minutes ago to take the English Regents. That way, folks like me could get back to the business of teaching them English, which personally, I've found very useful.

What would you ask Ms. Tisch?

Thanks to Greg D.