Old Problems Need New Approaches

5 million dollars. Klein and co. are spending five million dollars on management consulatants and Chris Cerf of Edison Schools to draw up a new plan for New York City's school system. This is the kind of top-down, half-blind planning that has been proven not to work time and again. (I spoke about the roots of this mindset in another posting.) No classroom teachers are involved. The group plans to interview dozens (!) of principals. Dozens! There are over 1,000 principals in NY. How many teachers will they speak to? Students? Parents? Listen Joel, I could save you a lot of money. If you want to know how to improve schools just get a metro card. Come up to the Bronx and spend a week in my school. Just write down everything that is going wrong here. Then go out to a school in Brooklyn, IS 318, same demographics as my school, but much more successful. Spend a week there and note down what they are doing right. And then encourage all schools to copy that example. Don't ask management consultants. Don't talk to principals of specialized selective schools. What they do is great and it will always be great for the kids they work with. But what about the rest of the schools, that's where the kids are, Joel. Most kids are not in the autonomous zone. Most kids are not in charter schools or KIPP schools. So save your 5 million. You can start changing the school system for 4 bucks.

Comments

[NYC Educator]

Perhaps it's simplistic, but CFE, the NYS Supreme Court, and yours truly all agree that the formula is simple--good teachers, amaller classes, and decent facilities. It's kind of costly, though.

However, it seems to work.

It's far easier to seek scapegoats and hire consultants with well-established records of abysmal failure, I suppose.

[H.W.C.]

NYCE,
I agree with you, but I think a problem is: what is a good teacher? How small are small classes? What are decent facilities? Also, even a good teacher can't operate in a school that doesn't support him/her or allow him/her to work to his/her potential.
This year my school had a major drop in enrollment and consequently I have had the experience of small class numbers, around 19-20. Some might think this is not small, but for NYC it's tiny. And it's great. But it's not everything. Small classes are also expensive.
I believe the DOE is very concerned with "good teachers." They created the open transfer system to try to allow good teachers to work in good schools, and prevent bad teachers from taking good jobs. But where does that leave the "bad" schools? Those kids deseverve an education, too.
Decent facilities- lets add good organizational systems to that.
Abysmal failure is right- did you click on the link for Edison Schools?

[NYC Educator]

Good teachers are what you get when you choose from hundreds of candidates and select the very best ones. The approach of lowering standards as much as possible, 800 numbers, job fairs, and intergalactic searches in order to float a pool of precisely the number of teachers needed, while concurrently offering the lowest pay in the area, in my view, is less than ideal.

I live in a racially-mixed suburb with a school system that carries a mediocre reputation. My fourth grade daughter has had on excellent teacher after another. Not for the kids in NYC, say Bloomberg and Klein. The important thing for them is to appear to be making progress while the papers regularly vilify rank and file, who have nothing whatsoever to do with hiring practices.

As for "good" vs. "bad" schools, that will not change, and may in fact worsen under the "new" system. The only real change is fewer options for teachers, There are ways to enlarge the teaching pool, but NYC chooses not to follow those paths.

I believe the DOE is interested only in talking about "good teachers," particularly because "bad teachers" provide a convenient and handy scapegoat for all the things they willfully avoid dealing with.

[AlmowlUncoolf]

Is that a new way? Sometimes I can't help but surrender to my inclusive skill I have a joke for you =) What do you call it when instead of raining cats and dogs, it rains chickens, ducks and turkeys? Fowl Weather!