David Steiner was sworn in as the new State Commissioner of Education Thursday, and was immediately greeted with a familiar song: Send More Money.

These are the education “advocates” who have become the perpetual remains of the “Campaign for Fiscal Equity,” undeterred even in the face of evidence that huge increases in expenditures in New York City schools during the Bloomberg years — some 79% in just six years — has barely moved student performance. And the song has barely changed, despite the looming reality of huge deficits in both state and city coffers.

These groups have come up with a “Sound Basic Education Covenant,” which, as Mr. Steiner was being sworn in, was being read at demonstrations in five cities across the Empire State. Even if they don’t have a single new idea to improve education, the one thing these groups get an “A” in is public relations.

Nowhere in the document are demands for high academic standards, nor does reform of New York’s watered-down testing regimen cause them concern. Fixing the testing program is the last thing the activists want. They use the inflated scores to “prove” that the huge infusion of more cash is “working.”

Were this a scientific experiment, we might have had a control group: a number of students in programs that received no new funding, but took the same watered down tests as students benefitting from this fiscal largesse. I would suspect that there would be little difference in outcome.

There was a bit of publicity recently for the work of a teacher, Diane Senechal, who proved that it is statistically probable that a child making random guesses on some of the state exams would earn enough points to be automatically be moved ahead to the next grade under Mayor Bloomberg’s program to end social promotion.

The standards are so low that only 0.2% of the more than 70,000 students taking the sixth grade English Language Arts test failed to earn promotion. Yes, that is two-tenths of one percent. Low standards in the State of New York are purer even than Ivory Snow.

I submit that such results make the testing regime worthless — to the students at least. In some cases teachers earn bonuses from these inflated scores, and so do New York City principals and assistant principals. They all must be delighted.

Certainly the politicians prosper. After all, there isn’t a day that goes by, and won’t be until after the election, that Mayor Bloomberg isn’t touting those test scores, crowing over his “success” in running the schools.

As to the “send more money” activists attempting to set Mr. Steiner’s agenda, according to Billy Easton, Executive Director of the Alliance for Quality Education, “the evidence is clear that money makes a difference in improving our schools.”

And the students? They aren’t one iota smarter, nor a scintilla better prepared for college or the workforce, something I am certain that Dr. Steiner is fully aware of.

I’m sure that it didn’t escape his attention that nowhere in the activists’ manifesto is a call for high standards, a return to traditional math instruction, and systemic and sequential content area studies of our western tradition. I would rather have my own child or grandchild in a class of 50 being taught a world-class program such as Singapore Math, than in a class of 10 learning the “fuzzy math” curriculum now promoted by the state.

The activists do, however, call for the state to “prioritize the specific needs of English language learners (ELL) through the creation of a senior level director who will be responsible for developing and implementing a strategy for increasing ELL outcomes.” As if adding more bureaucrats has ever worked for us before.

Also, the document advocates for providing “early childhood education, starting from birth.” I wonder who is writing the curriculum for that program.

My favorite demand is to “Close the achievement gaps related to race, language, income, and disability.” This implies that education is somehow a group endeavor, with various racial, ethnic and economic subgroups in some sort of competition where the teams all cross the finish line at the same time, the preferred politically correct outcome.

This is a concept we hear of all the time, that education is the “great civil rights initiative” of our time. The Odd Couple of Chancellor Klein and the Rev. Al Sharpton travel the country promoting this idea. As long as we think of educational outcomes in terms of groups, we will continue on the fast track to nowhere.

Education is a singular endeavor, accomplished one child at a time. Tests should be given to assess the performance of each individual child, and inform his or her teacher of strengths and weaknesses to optimize instruction looking forward.

Honest, well-constructed tests would be crucial first step in making that a reality. Instead we have created a culture of evaluating schools, groups, teachers and politicians by test scores. Children are an afterthought. Reestablishing integrity of the tests and a focus on rigorous individual instruction, not “sending more money,” is David Steiner’s great challenge in his new post.

andrewwolf@me.com