“Education Research Group Moves Toward Action”
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Regarding the article “Education Research Group Moves Toward Action,” any light shed on schools data is welcome but this private initiative should not supplant independent public accountability [New York, July 28, 2008].
The Research Alliance for New York City is best suited to assist researchers in obtaining customized datasets so that the Department of Education can apply study results to school improvement.
But the Alliance, with its interlocking financial and political interests, will always lack credibility in collection and dissemination of basic data, which the Department of Education will continue to control.
The best solution to this issue is to give the city’s Independent Budget Office statutory authority to obtain not only full DOE financial information — which the mayor’s office has stymied — but also non-confidential student and other data. The IBO has proven to be a reliable source of objective, professional budget analysis. Its apolitical institutional culture is above reproach.
Enlarging its portfolio for education — making it not only equivalent to its model, the Congressional Budget Office, but also to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (formerly the General Accounting Office) — would give the IBO an enforceable role as a reliable public source of public information.
DAVID BLOOMFIELD
Associate Professor,
Brooklyn College, CUNY
Brooklyn, N.Y.