Deputy Chancellor, Department of
Education
We’re at a very interesting place, both personally and
organizationally. It’s kind of at the intersection of two somewhat
conflicting things. We have a great deal of pride in the plan
that’s underway and the progress that we are making and we also
have real humility about both our shortcomings and the distance
that is yet to travel.
There are more than 1,400 schools in New York City. (There are)
1.1 million children, there are many bright spots, yet at the same
time, I think we all need to be pretty candid, that we are failing
far too many kids.
The politics are tough. You may have noticed as New Yorkers
that pretty much everyone has an opinion and they don’t all align
perfectly.
We think we are on the right path. Reading and math scores are
up. Regents scores are up, we’re very honored to be nominated
for the third year in a row for the 30 million Broad Prize, which
pointed out that, compared to other cities in the great state of
New York, we are making substantially greater progress...
By both state and traditional New York City measures, graduation
rates are up sharply. We are outpacing both the state and
other urban districts elsewhere in the state, which in fact are
down during the same period of time.
We’re very pleased at the work of our educators, I can’t say
enough about teachers, I am a former teacher…hardest job I ever
had. And I’m very pleased that we have been able to increase the
starting salary for teachers by 43%, that we’ve expanded the lead
teacher program, and so on.
I think as significantly, the fact that we have invested 473
million dollars in professional development, which is up 25% since
2002, is a testimony to our commitment. We’ve moved about 300
million dollars from the bureaucracy…down into the
schools.
Something that’s had relatively little note, that 13.5 million
dollar capital construction school plan is going to help eliminate
overcrowding and make space for class size reduction, which we all
support. We calculate over 105 thousand new seats by 2011 will
be built with these dollars.
So I say all this with some amount of pride, but here comes the
humility part, we may be on the right path, but we are no where
near where we need to be. And there’s another part of this
humility. We’ve made a lot of mistakes & I promise you we
will continue to make others.
We need to be better and more respectful listeners and I think
we’re learning, I think we’re getting better, of both parents &
teachers.
So what are the guiding principals of the
reforms?
One, we believe deeply in accountability. We believe setting
expectations and holding everyone accountable for results leads to
great results. We believe that if we’re going to hold schools
and principals accountable for results, we must give them the
authority and resources to make those results actually
happen.
We believe that the single most important determinant in a child’s
education is to have an effective teacher in every
classroom. That’s the one thing we can all say has
overpowering social scientific data behind it. And we believe
that it is crucial to distribute our resources fairly,
transparently and ethically.