No Mayor Left Behind?

One of the most attractive provisions of the federal No Child Left Behind Act is the requirement that only reading programs that have been demonstrated by scientific research actually to work are eligible for federal funding. While our society insists that medications and vaccines must be shown to be effective, we have been less demanding when it comes to choosing the education programs used to teach our children. Any wonder that we have little to show for the billions of city, state, and federal dollars spent over the years on reading programs of the so-called "progressive" ideology? These are the instructional techniques chosen not because we know they work, but because some educrats "feel" that they should work. So it should come as no surprise that the reading program chosen by the "New Tweed Ring" would be rejected by the state officials under the new federal guidelines.

It was almost a year ago that the mayor, Chancellor Klein and his deputy, Diana Lam, announced the new "uniform" curriculum for reading and math at Brooklyn's P.S. 172, a reading success story. The outcry over those choices was immediate and compelling, yet the Tweed Ring pressed on. Within three days, G. Reid Lyon, who is a researcher at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and has the ear of the president on these matters, warned that New York's program would not pass muster. This warning was ignored.

These concerns were reprised on these pages by educational historian Diane Ravitch, Sol Stern of the Manhattan Institute, and our own Andrew Wolf. Mr. Wolf disclosed that the reading success at P.S. 172 came from the use of other programs, not those chosen by the chancellor or Ms. Lam. Tweed would not budge. Seven reading experts, independent researchers from the realm of academia, even wrote Mr. Klein to warn that Month-by-Month Phonics "has not been validated scientifically" and "is woefully inadequate for many reasons." Yet Tweed slogged on, spending hundreds of millions on programs from which they now must begin to retreat.

We have strongly supported the concept of mayoral control of our schools. We were comfortable with the "back-to-basics" approach that the mayor frequently articulated in his campaign and during his quest to win legislative approval for his reorganization. We support much of what he and Mr. Klein have done, and are willing to give them the benefit of the doubt on more questionable aspects of their program. But their swerve on instructional policy just fills their well-wishers with dismay, particularly over the highhandedness with which they chose personnel whose ideology runs so far afield of the traditional ethic. It's a blunder on the order of his foisting the Bloomberg School of Public Health ideology on our bars and restaurants.

The provisions of the No Child Left Behind Act were already in place when Mr. Bloomberg won control of the system. That he permitted the hiring of those who do not believe in the new direction that education is moving nationally was a mistake that he can address now, or answer for at the polls in less than two years. It turns out the mayor can admit mistakes, as he did in the case of school safety, where he changed course to wide applause. The city's instructional programs, particularly with regard to reading, are due for a course correction, back toward the traditional approaches the mayor once espoused. If that means dismissing Ms. Lam, the mayor and Mr. Klein have won both the authority and responsibility to take the step.