The usual suspects were up in arms last week over new reports detailing the Department of Education’s use of no-bid contracts on teacher training for city schools.
But hey, maybe they just need a little “demystification.”
That, for the education-jargon-illiterate, is the cornerstone of a trendy, $10 million program DOE purchased several years ago – through a no-bid contract – to help students understand the “uniqueness” of their individual “neurodevelopmental profiles.”
Say what?
Indeed, as the program’s creator, a nonprofit called All Kinds of Minds, explains: “As adults we’re allowed . . . to practice our brain’s specialties. Yet we expect school-aged kids to be rather good at everything. This expectation can have traumatic effects on students.”
Yes, yes, we know – and each child is his or her own special snowflake. (But then, how are children to settle on a “brain speciality” without sampling from a broad menu while on the path to adulthood?)
The irony here, however, is that blather about students’ being “traumatized” by “expectations” is exactly the rhetoric being used against Schools Chancellor Joel Klein’s increasingly successful push to hold schools – and students – accountable for their achievement.
And being “rather good at everything,” in this case, means mastering the basics of reading, writing and math that are essential for any further development.
Make no mistake: For the most part, we have scant difficulty with Klein & Co.’s use of no-bid contracts in situations like this; Gotham’s educators have every right to select for themselves the teaching tools they deem successful.
But when those tools showcase the same kind of tired clichés Klein’s worked so hard to put to bed – well, it’s more than a little bit, er, mystifying.