THE GREAT SCHOOL DEBATE: 'CIVIL-RIGHTS' CHARADE

Sounds like a whole lotta nonsense going on in this CFE case.  Did the judge REALLY let Randi Weingarten testify?!

Judge DeGrasse allowed the plaintiffs to parade to the witness stand almost anyone with an opinion. UFT president Randi Weingarten and Chancellor Harold Levy were allowed to testify that, of course, the system needed a lot more money — despite their obvious institutional interest in that outcome.

But the judge suddenly turned super-legalistic when the state sought to submit an outside consultant's study purporting to show how much an adequate education in New York City should actually cost. This "costing out" study was done by an independent research firm called Management Analysis and Planning. As MAP's president, James Smith, explained to the court, a diverse panel of 12 professional educators, all of them from outside the city, constructed a reasonable budget for an education system with demographic characteristics similar to New York's.

The MAP panel's major finding: "The financial resources available to New York City public schools are adequate to provide the state-specified 'opportunity of a sound basic education'. "...

Thirteen years of litigation presided over by Judge DeGrasse — part political carnival and part show trial — has added nothing to public understanding of what ails the schools. The budget for the city's schools has now topped $17 billion. That's about 50 percent higher in inflation adjusted dollars than when the CFE case was first filed. If Judge DeGrasse has his way, the budget would soon surpass $22 billion, or about $20,000 per pupil — higher than almost every school district in the country.

I would support pouring more money into city schools if I thought it would do any good, but unless there are major changes made to the SYSTEM, then every piece of evidence indicates that it won't make any difference in the only thing that matters: student learning.  Yes, the facilities would undoubtedly be nicer, overcrowding would be reduced, etc. -- all nice-to-haves -- but the only things I think it makes sense to spend more money on, given that we're already spending somelike like $12,000 per student per year, are those that are proven to raise learning.  And the current, broken system, with little accountability, virtually no ability to remove poor performers, etc., virtually guarantees that the extra money won't move the needle on student learning and achievement.

 

One important step would be a "grand bargain" with the teachers unions.  They say they want to be treated (and paid) like professionals, yet they behave like the longshoreman's union.  I would be 100% in favor of spending more money to pay great teachers $100,000 (or more), but ONLY for great teachers, and only if there were a system in place to measure each teacher's value added (yes, such systems exist and work) and only if unskilled or unmotivated teachers were removed from the system (I've heard estimates from people in the know that as many of 30% of teachers in inner-city schools fit this category, horrifyingly enough). 

 

At the end of the day, everything boils down to the quality of the teaching that takes place in each classroom, and we currently have a system that, in nearly every way imaginable, results in the opposite of what we want being the norm.  Spending a lot more money to perpetuate this system is madness.

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THE GREAT SCHOOL DEBATE: 'CIVIL-RIGHTS' CHARADE
By SOL STERN, NY Post

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/63472.htm

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February 14, 2006 -- IT was almost predictable that Robert Jackson, the new chairman of the City Council Education Committee, would hold an early hearing on the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case, as he did yesterday, and that the proceedings would be more like a political rally than a fact-finding effort.

After all, Jackson is one of the original plaintiffs in the case and a co-founder of CFE. Jackson and most of the city's political establishment, including our mayor, believe that Gov. Pataki's unwillingness thus far to roll over and accept Judge Leland DeGrasse's order to come up with an additional $5.6 billion in annual operating funds for the city's schools constitutes a civil-rights issue.

Before blindly accepting this civil-rights spin, city and state taxpayers who would be stuck with the bill ought to consider some historical facts about the case — facts that went unmentioned in yesterday's one-sided hearing.