When New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg won control over the city's long beleaguered school system, we were cautiously optimistic that this move might be the long-overdue change in governance that could help turn Gotham's failing schools around. Unfortunately, that optimism faded as Bloomberg, schools chancellor Joel Klein, and deputy chancellor for teaching and learning Diana Lam-a former superintendent who, according to Diane Ravitch has "built a reputation for imposing pedagogical reforms, shaking things up, producing quick test score increases, then leaving with an angry school board baying at her heels"-unveiled the reading and math curricula that were then imposed on all but the most successful NYC schools. As Sol Stern reports in the Autumn edition of the City Journal, the tragic flaw in Bloomberg's education plan was his decision to put progressivist Lam in charge of selecting curricula for the city-a warning that Ravitch sounded back in January [see http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=8#368].
Sadly, it seems that Lam did not learn from her previous experience as superintendent of the San Antonio school district, which she left after "80 percent of the elementary teachers voted to drop 'Everyday Math,'" the same constructivist program she has now imposed on NYC educators. The name of her favored reading program, "Month by Month Phonics"-actually a whole language program with little systematic phonics-apparently duped Bloomberg and Klein into believing it was a sound, research-based curriculum. Quite the contrary. In fact, many schools were forced to replace the proven "Success for All" curriculum with Month by Month Phonics, which may yet cost the city up to $40 million a year in federal "Reading First" grants (because Month-by-Month Phonics is not backed by sound research).
Curriculum selection is only one, though perhaps the worst example of the Bloomberg administration's questionable decisions. In fact, though Lam insists that the NYC Department of Education is interested in an ongoing "dialogue" about education reform in the city, the list of "academic sources" that she consulted for advice on reading curricula excludes any education writer "who favors phonics for reading instruction or a curriculum emphasizing knowledge of facts." The list does, however, include a number of obscure progressives, such as the Australian Brian Cambourne, who believes that "what all conscientious teachers ought to strive to inculcate in their students is 'literacy for social equity and social justice.'" Quips Stern, "there's nothing wrong with healing the world, but the progressives have put the cart before the horse. There will be little improvement in our inner cities unless the kids learn to read and acquire other minimum skills."
Will Bloomberg and Klein reverse course? On some other key issues (such as charter schools) their instincts are improving. [See http://www.edexcellence.net/gadfly/issue.cfm?issue=121#1520.] But they have also shown a troubling tendency to grab at the first plausible-sounding solution that comes down the pike, without doing their due diligence. From one of America's savviest businessmen and most prominent anti-trust attorneys, we hoped for more.
"Tragedy looms for Gotham's school reform," by Sol Stern, City Journal, Autumn 2003
