‘Panel Will Seek $2.5 Billion’

Your page 1 story on the Alvarado panel’s recommendation for $2.5 billion more for school research illustrates the critical importance of The New York Sun’s reportorial vigor [“Council Panel Will Seek $2.5 Billion a Year More for School Research,” Deborah Kolben, October 18, 2005].

Those of us who work in higher education see the crippling effects of progressive education in the form of students’ innumeracy, dismal writing skills, and lack of self-discipline.

In her book “Left Back: A Century of Battles Over School Reform,” Professor Diane Ravitch, quoted in your article, demonstrates how the quackery advocated in the education schools by education administrations and by teachers unions has damaged education, especially of the poor.

That Gifford Miller and Anthony Alvarado are cynical enough to recommend budgeting $2.5 billion to support the education schools’ agenda portends a coming era of further decline in New York and a cogent argument for increased federalism.

Perhaps Messrs. Miller and Alvarado will next advocate spending billions to research astrology and the claims of the flat earth society, especially if doing means placating powerful union and academic interests.

MITCHELL LANGBERT
Associate Professor
Department of Business And Economics
Brooklyn College
The City University of New York

‘The Next School Reform’

Your editorial in favor of making it easier to establish charter schools in New York City [“The Next School Reform,” October 14, 2005] misses a key point. A school is not something to be started in a passionate burst of activity unless there is a commitment to lead and improve the school for as long as the need for schools exists.

The challenge is to run the school successfully – forever. This is one reason public education is a public responsibility. The real challenge is to provide a public education system that has all the perceived merits of a charter school.

There is a useful model in Chicago where, in 1988, the state legislature gave unprecedented power to individual existing public schools. They were each given a publicly elected school council with the power to hire and fire their principal, set improvement priorities, spend money, set up community partnerships, and run before and after school programs tailored to their own neighborhood.

Principals were empowered to hire their own staff for open positions and craft the curriculum. In short, every school could do what a charter school promises, and still be a neighborhood public school.

The path to public school reform in Chicago has not been easy, and it is far from perfect. The central school authorities have never truly embraced a system that gives so much power to so many. But it has worked in a sizable portion of the city’s toughest schools.

My organization has just released a study of Chicago elementary school test results over the past 15 years. We found that 144 schools that were among the worst in when the reform process began have shown steady and sustained improvement.

The 100,000 students at these schools have gone from reading and math scores far below national averages to reading and doing math at or above the national averages (www.designsforchange.org). These schools used the tools given them by the original reform legislation and applied them steadily over 15 years. Their success is remarkable and measurable.

Charter schools have shown no comparable record of large scale success in schools that must accept every student who appears at their door.

DONALD MOORE
Executive Director
Designs for Change
Chicago

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