Education Reform: The First Hurdle Surmounted
June 11, 2002

By Henry J. Stern

 
    The agreement giving Mayor Bloomberg more control over the city school system through the appointment of the chancellor, majority control over a defanged Board of Education, and the new chancellor’s authority to appoint all 32 district superintendents, creates a great opportunity for educational reform.

    Alone it will not do much to improve conditions in the classroom.  It does, however, provide a dramatic but limited opportunity to turn some of the rascals out who have impeded education because they are unable or unwilling to do their jobs.  After all, why should the school bureaucracy be that much better than the FBI or the CIA?

    Now the Mayor can select a chancellor, subject to the approval of the State Commissioner of Education if the candidate is not from the school bureaucracy.  This dodge was used l4 years ago, when a rightfully forgotten state paper-pusher vetoed Mayor Koch’s selection of Robert F. Wagner, Jr., who might have made a difference.  In 2002, with a co-operating mayor and governor (unlike Koch and Cuomo), these matters will be worked out in advance by gentlemen.

    An early possibility is Paul Vallas, former Chicago superintendent.  He was appointed by Mayor Daley, but walked out on the job to run for Governor of Illinois.  He lost in the Democratic primary, so he is now available.  Our chancellor, Harold Levy, flirted with a mayoral candidacy in 2001.  There must be something in the air in the schools.

    Mayor Bloomberg has done the expected in appointing Nat Leventhal,  who was selected as a deputy mayor by Edward I. Koch.  Leventhal headed the transition and talent search for the new mayor last year, as he did twelve years ago for Mayor David N. Dinkins. Nat has a fine record, including seventeen years as president of Lincoln Center.

    A great deal will depend on how quickly and resolutely the mayor and his new team, once chosen, move to take real control of the schools.  They will be dealing with the most wily and resilient bureaucracy in the free world, people who have outwitted and outlasted other educational reformers.   The mayor has succeeded in Albany, although at enormous financial cost to the city.  Now he proceeds to try to tame the lions, or to put them out to pasture, with the generous feed that our pension system provides.

    Once they have done that, they can start to figure out how to teach children to read, write and cipher, and how to hire people who are able to do that job in the classroom.  But I am much happier with Bloomberg’s crew trying than with their pusillanimous predecessors.

Henry J. Stern is the director of NYCivic.