In the heat of a New York City election season, the public schools are front and center — as they should be. But many of the education proposals I’m hearing raise red flags that we would all be wise to heed.
Let’s start with calls to curtail or end so-called “high-stakes testing.” That may sound appealing, but the implications are deeply concerning.
Despite the culture of failure that infected our schools for decades, the people who worked in them were barely held accountable for their schools’ results. There were no yardsticks to measure which schools were working and which were failing, which improved over time and which declined or how one school performed compared with others.
There were few objective measures of student performance, and the United Federation of Teachers made sure it was next to impossible to evaluate its members’ skills, much less take action if they were failing at their jobs.
We built an accountability system that included qualitative reviews and Progress Reports, and we made the information public. We abolished the absurd practice of promoting students to higher grades if they lacked the skills to succeed.
And, finally, we fought for and won — just this year — the first genuine teacher-evaluation system in the history of the school system. Now, if a teacher is deemed unsuited for the job, he or she can be removed from the classroom — something that was once impossible to conceive of.
Yet we can’t judge a teacher, principal or school without knowing whether their students are learning, and whether their performance is improving or declining.
School systems around the country, ours included, continue to adjust how standardized testing is used. But tests are a critical part of setting standards and measuring one’s ability to meet them. Ask yourself if those arguing to the contrary are interested in sparing our students the stress of exams — or in gutting an entire system of accountability.
The teachers union, for example, will inevitably demand that the state and city weaken the new system for evaluating their members. Whether the next leaders of our schools capitulate to that pressure will play a huge part in determining the future of our public schools.
Also of concern is the support from many candidates for a return to so-called “geographic management” of the schools. That obscure education-world term masks something enormously detrimental: Taking back the power that we have given to our principals.
It’s striking how little authority our principals once had to run their own schools. The community school boards controlled much of the money the schools received, and dictated to the dollar how it had to be spent. The teachers union controlled the classrooms, hamstringing principals from hiring, firing or even evaluating their members.
A lot of good people served on the community school boards, but overall those boards were a disaster for our students. The New York Times reported in 1996, “Investigations in some districts have shown that teachers and principals are routinely approached for political contributions and kickbacks.”
I got a behind-the-scenes glimpse of one district in 1996, when then-Chancellor Rudy Crew grew fed up with mismanagement at District 5 in Harlem, fired the entire board and appointed me as an interim trustee.
I was amazed by what I found. The district operation was basically a patronage mill; it had squandered millions of dollars in education money while students were studying from out-of-date textbooks. The previous superintendent had been escorted out of a meeting after getting into a fistfight. And that was hardly the worst district in the city.
Thanks to Mayor Bloomberg, those school boards are long gone. Most of their resources and power — including the power to budget for the school — has been placed in the hands of our principals.
True to what the critics say, there is no geographic management anymore. Our principals are the bosses, and they can make the best decisions for their students. My job is simply to set the bar that principals have to meet, help them meet it and do something about it if they don’t.
This has made it exceedingly difficult for power brokers to place their cronies inside our schools. There are no community school board members to influence, strong-arm or bribe anymore.
Ask yourself who would benefit from taking power away from our principals: one million students — or some special interests?
As a public-school student, a parent, president of the Urban League, member of the city’s Board of Education, deputy mayor for Education and now as chancellor, I’ve lived the modern history of the city’s public schools. I know first-hand that the downward spiral only ended when Mayor Bloomberg fought to be held responsible for our schools’ performance.
In the last decade, our graduation rate has risen by 40 percent. The school crime rate has fallen by 40 percent. And the drop-out rate has fallen by half. We have halted a runaway train speeding toward calamity. We have turned it around, and reset it on a positive trajectory.
But positive momentum is not the same thing as a mission accomplished. My hope is that the next leaders of this great system build upon our efforts, take them to the next level, keep moving forward. Handing back our students’ fate to the city’s special interests would be immoral. We need to give our kids a fighting chance.
Dennis M. Walcott is the city’s schools chancellor. Adapted from his speech this week to the Association for a Better New York.