Editorial: The new school plan: three elements of success

Last Wednesday, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg spoke in School District 5 and introduced his plan to reform the schools. The plan consists of three basic efforts. In his words, those efforts are:

1. “Ending the bureaucratic sclerosis that prevents resources and attention from going where they are needed: the classrooms.”

2. “Ensuring that every student acquires the skills in reading, writing and math that are the foundations of all learning.”

3. “Giving parents the tools, and the charge, to become full and active partners in the education of their children.”

To end bureaucracy, Mr. Bloomberg plans to create another hierarchy. In the new system, there will be 10 regional superintendents, rather than the 32 that now lead the districts. Each regional superintendent will then have ten local instruction supervisors, who will each supervise a dozen or less schools.

The good news is that all 110 of those people will focus on instruction alone. The budget offices will be consolidated into “back office support centers,” leaving the leaders to deal directly and entirely with the schools. The question is, will it only re-create some of the bureaucracy that existed?

The second part of the Mayor’s plan calls for the standardization of teaching materials and teaching techniques in all but 200 of the city’s schools. Those 200 schools, which have consistently performed well, will be given the freedom to determine their own curriculum. In the majority of the schools, however, teachers and principals may feel restricted by the new plan. The Mayor says this approach has worked in other urban settings. The only problem will be if teachers and principals end up more frustrated and leave the system. The Horizon will keep an eye on this issue for the years to come.

The final part of the plan is perhaps the most interesting to local residents. Each school will hire a parent coordinator, who will be an ombudsman, a sort of filter for local parents’ complaints. There will also be parent engagement boards. Groups of parents, under this system, are promised more power.

That’s something that a lot of parents here would like to see—the ability to have a say in local schools. But it also gives parents a huge responsibility. Will parents rise to the challenge?

The Horizon hopes that the Mayor will keep all three parts of the plan in mind, and that Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, and all who become involved in this system, will continue to evaluate the system and whether it works any better than the system now in place.