Klein To Unveil Plan To Hold Schools More Accountable for Test Scores
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After months of talking about the three pillars of education reform, the schools chancellor, Joel Klein, today will unveil sweeping changes that are intended to hold schools more accountable.
The changes are intended in part to give school principals more control over their schools, including things like hiring teachers and controlling the school budget. In exchange, schools would have to meet certain attendance goals and test scores. They address the accountability pillar of reform; the other pillars are leadership and empowerment.
Earlier this year, the Department of Education announced it had hired a Columbia University law professor to serve as a newly created “accountability officer.”
Mr. Klein will officially announce the details at a press briefing this afternoon.
“To get a truly good or great system you have to unlock the creativity of the people on the front line,” a consultant who advised Prime Minister Blair and is now consulting for the city’s education department, Sir Michael Barber, said.
“Give them responsibility, if they do well, you reward them. If they struggle, you give them assistance. And if they’re not doing a great job, you intervene to change it,” Mr. Barber, who is now a consultant at McKinsey & Company in London, said. Over the weekend he addressed senior staff members at an education department retreat.
Mr. Barber said that model of “devolving” responsibility is one used by many large organizations.
Some critics yesterday questioned why the Bloomberg administration would go back to a more decentralized model after taking control of the city’s schools in 2002.
The changes are the first to come out of Mayor Bloomberg’s second term.
The announcement today comes as Mr. Klein and the union representing the city’s school principals are deadlocked in contract negotiations.
In a letter to school principals last week, Mr. Klein said that the education department needed to “hold educators accountable for their successes and their failures.”
The letter raised eyebrows among some school principals, who questioned what penalties would be implemented.
