GothamSchools — daily independent reporting on NYC public schools

Teachers from New Rochelle wore custom shirts designed to mock a state test question to Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch's breakfast talk today.

Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch fanned interest in a possible mayoral bid by refusing to deny her interest in the position at a breakfast hosted by Crain’s New York today.

Crain’s NY editor Erik Engquist’s first question for Tisch was about the persistent rumors, first aired last fall, that she might be considering running to succeed New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “Everything I have to say on that subject I think I’ve already said,” Tisch told Engquist.

What Tisch has said in the past hasn’t been entirely consistent. When GothamSchools broke the news about the mayoral murmurings in October, Tisch told us, “I am absolutely, positively not going to run.” But appearing on Inside City Hall the next month, she was less definitive.

“I have an obligation that I am fulfilling right now and I am very happy in my work,” she said. “And I know there is a really crowded field out there of very eager people and I am sure they will emerge and one of them will serve the city very well.”

Host Errol Louis pointed out that Tisch hadn’t actually said she wasn’t considering running. ”I’ll take that as a ‘I’m thinking about it,’” he said. She answered, “That’s what you said.”

A mayoral bid appears unlikely — but is by no means impossible — with the campaign in official kickoff mode and six Democrats angling for the nomination. But allowing the rumors to persist could work to Tisch’s advantage as she works to advance the Regents’ agenda even as Gov. Andrew Cuomo works to advance his own similar but not identical agenda.

For example, the Board of Regents added passing the DREAM Act, legislation that would give children brought to the country illegally by their parents access to financial aid for state universities, to its legislative agenda this year. Tisch today urged audience members to press lawmakers to pass the bill — but so far Cuomo has stayed mum on the topic.

Tisch was more forthcoming today when offering advice for the city’s next mayor, saying, “I would say to anyone who runs for mayor that the education system is something that they’d better know inside out — first of all because it is the heart of economic development for this city, second of all because a huge part of the city budget goes towards it, and third of all because the public is paying attention to education and its outcomes as never before in our history. Study up, guys.”

Tisch was also forthcoming when discussing problems with this year’s state tests, which she called “inexcusable.” The criticism started over a seemingly nonsensical and ultimately spiked story on the seventh-grade reading exam — referenced on the t-shirts of some teachers who attended today’s breakfast — and have picked up steam in the weeks since the tests ended. The latest mistakes to be revealed are more than 20 translation errors on foreign language versions of the exams that made some questions unanswerable.

“The psychometricians have assured us that the reliability and validity of the exams … is not contaminated by these errors,” she said. “What does drive my anxiety is [test-maker Pearson's] ability to deliver on the contract. The mistakes that have been revealed are really disturbing. I don’t think children should sit in an exam and be confused about the exam. I think testing needs to be as straightforward as possible.”

Tisch said she has warned Pearson officials to consider how this year’s exam snafus have eroded the general public’s confidence in the tests at a critical time.

“I would suggest to Pearson that they take this very seriously, because next year we are moving to the Common Core standards and those tests are going to be harder still,” she said. “What happens here as a result of these mistakes is that it makes the public at large question the efficacy of the state testing system.”

Changes to the tests that are on the way should restore some of that confidence, Tisch said, and she suggested that Pearson speed up the test scoring to counter objections to the state’s testing program.

“The purpose of these tests is not to play gotcha with school districts. The purpose of these tests is to inform instruction,” she said. “If we can’t get the results back to districts in a time frame in which they can actually use these measures to inform instruction, then you’re just testing for the sake of testing, or for some federal accountability system.”