The New York Daily News reports that NYC’s Department of Education is spending $350 million per year on the Chancellor’s great dog-and-pony show, his so-called “accountability” system.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2008/11/14/2008-11-14_desp…
Chancellor Joel Klein is quoted as saying, “The dollars we’ve invested in this work are some of the smartest dollars we’ve spent.” This is nonsense. His multi-million dollar computerized system is a waste of taxpayer money. Why spend millions to invent a system when there are already several field-tested, time-tested and highly successful reading and math programs already in existence? All of these programs include student performance data that enable schools to demonstrate accountability. This is do-able because these programs include procedures for adjusting instruction based on the data generated through their assessments.
When Klein became Chancellor, the nationally renowned Chancellor’s District was already using, with great success, one of these programs—Success for All. Instead of spreading this program, which had demonstrated measurable improvements in under-performing schools around the city, Klein trashed it for an unproven “approach” to teaching literacy. “We’ll give you the guidelines,” the trainers told us, “and you can go and write the curriculum.” Lucy Calkins of Teachers College told us: “These Units of Study are not finished products. Think of them as gifts.” (You can’t make this stuff up.)
Instead of Success for All or any of a half-dozen other proven programs, we had Lucy Calkins and her staff (some of whom had little classroom experience and seemed barely beyond puberty) flying by the seat of their pants writing curriculum guidelines. And this was done only after lots of complaints from teachers. Lucy’s trainers began their new initiative by stating flatly that they don’t write curricula.
To this day, we still don’t have a citywide curriculum. We have experimentation and a lot of schools stumbling around in the dark—which is sometimes called entrepreneurialism. And now we have an “accountability” system instead of tried-and-true programs. It is unethical to make teachers accountable for results when they have not been given proven resources.
I have said before that I am in favor of value-added accountability systems, but they have to be managed wisely. In tough economic times, it would be wiser to incorporate existing, effective programs into a value-added approach to school accountability. If the millions being spent by the DOE are the “smartest dollars” they’ve ever spent then I pray that Klein and company never get their hands on my checkbook.
