Correcting Mistakes
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The chancellor and board of the City University of New York deserve congratulations for their decision yesterday to grant tenure to history professor Robert David “KC” Johnson. They reversed an earlier decision taken by Brooklyn College, which is part of CUNY. The broader point is that it is nearly always a positive sign when public officials are willing to recognize when a mistake has been made and are willing, too, to move to correct it. Sometimes politicians and public servants hesitate in such instances for fear that by changing their minds or reversing decisions, they are admitting a mistake, thereby spoiling the public’s impression that they are infallible. Usually, however, the public is under no such impression.
It’s a point worth remembering as the city Department of Education considers the reading curriculum for the city’s schools next year. Schools Chancellor Klein announced with much fanfare on January 21 the selection of Month-by-Month Phonics as the citywide reading curriculum. It’s since emerged that the curriculum, created by Carson-Dellosa Publishing Company of Greensboro, N.C, has little in the way of a proven track record. Diane Ravitch, in a column that ran in The New York Sun on January 24, wrote, “before any curriculum or program is imposed on hundreds of schools, there should be solid evidence that it is effective. That is certainly not the case with the proposed reading program.” Our Andrew Wolf, in a February 14 column, reported on criticism of the program by seven reading researchers who wrote to Mr. Klein that Month-by-Month Phonics “has not been validated scientifically” and “is woefully inadequate for many reasons.” Sources have been telling us that Mr. Klein is considering reversing the decision on the reading curriculum and going with another one that has a better track record. It would be a courageous step. And admitting a misstep now, just months after it was made, would be far wiser than making the city’s students live with the consequences for years.
More broadly, the misstep should raise questions about the risks of the centralized, command-and-control model that Mayor Bloomberg and Mr. Klein are advancing for the public schools. A faulty curriculum choice in that model means hundreds of thousands of students don’t learn to read. Our own preference would be for choice, competition, and decentralization, so that students would have the chance to switch to a school that fits their learning style or one whose choice of textbooks proves over time to be a success. Or, for that matter, the city could use a voucher system to do that, enabling poor children to have the kind of choices that wealthier children already have.