NJ Education Report

Diane Ravitch’s op-ed in the New York Times today accuses New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein of fudging testing data and graduation rates to create the impression that the city’s schools have sharply improved. For example:

The graduation rate is another area in which progress has been overstated. The city says the rate climbed to 62 percent from 53 percent between 2003 and 2007; the state’s Department of Education, which uses a different formula, says the city’s rose to 52 percent, from 44 percent. Either way, the city’s graduation rate is no better than that of Mississippi, which spends about a third of what New York City spends per pupil.

Ravitch’s real beef is with mayoral control of schools, and the source of her disappointment is Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s support for continuing the Bloomberg reign. (The New York Legislature will decide in June whether or not to renew the law that gives the Mayor carte blanche with 1.1 million kids and 1440 schools. For a different view of who runs the NYC school system see yesterday’s New York Post article entitled “UFT’s Arrogant Puppet State: Teacher Lobbyists Run Amok.”) Ravitch, a little more reasonably than the Post, calls for some system of checks and balances so that Bloomberg’s and Klein’s claims of greatly improved student achievement can be properly audited.

Who can argue with a well-reasoned call for due diligence? Ravitch asks for the “legitimacy that comes with public participation,” i.e., school boards with some degree of authority. How does the N.Y.C. system compare with New Jersey’s? Apples and oranges is not even close; they’re not even in the same phylum. While our local governance is bloated and redundant, NYC’s is barely a paper rabbit, as all board members, according to Ravitch, just rubber-stamp the Mayor’s dicta and, in fact, are hand-picked by His Honor. On the other hand, our D.O.E., which emits countless mandates and regulations and seems beholden to no one, is almost Bloomberg/Klein-esque: witness last week’s D.O.E. wave-of-the-wand which reversed the State’s responsibility to issue an aid payment to all districts.

The bottom line is that reform doesn’t happen without public buy-in. If Diane Ravitch is any indication, N.Y.C. hasn’t achieved that. And neither has New Jersey’s D.O.E. Maybe we are the same phylum.