March 19, 2114--The Education Mayor

I'm no fan of most big-city public school systems (I could tell you stories from my own work with them that would spoil your day) and though I think of myself as a liberal who believes in the importance of strong unions, most municipal teachers unions, again from my experience and research, are often impediments to effective change.

So, though I know the mixed data about charter schools and the threat they exert on business-as-usaul (which, in itself can be a good thing), with caveats, I favor their existence and even the expansion of those, and only those that have proven to yield good results.

Something needs to be done to shake up the way we attempt to educate our most vulnerable citizens.

With this as context, I am feeling that the new mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, as an education mayor, is off to a false start.

As a candidate he ran against the idea of charter schools, saying that if elected he would not allow any more to be established and would cut back on city resources for the 183 that do exist. These serve 70,000 of New York's 1.1 million public school students. Well under 10 percent.

As mayor, he had his school chancellor break deals that former mayor Mike Bloomberg made with the Success Academy, one of the charter operations that runs 22 schools and, again with caveats, has a record of producing good results--essentially, high test scores and graduation rates.

The parents of children in these schools are pleased enough with the outcomes that 11,000 of them (an incredible number even by Big Apple standards) recently schlepped 150 miles to Albany to pressure the state legislature and the governor, Andrew Cuomo (who favors charters) to continue to support these independent public schools.

Some claim, that since the teachers union opposes charters (they are permitted to employ non-union staff) and since de Blasio was elected with overwhelming teacher support, his opposing charters is payback.

I do not know if that is true, though I have my suspicions. But what I do know is that many charters are exceptionally good, serve the lowest-income students, and are passionately defended by parents.

Also upsetting, again attempting to fulfill campaign promises, de Blasio has been moving rapidly to implement universal pre-kindregarten. His first moves have all been about securing the hundreds of millions needed to do this. His plan calls for a surcharge tax on NewYork City residents earning more than $500,000 a year. But since Cuomo and the legislature will not agree to this, he has been lobbying them to come up with the money in other ways. He appears to be making headway.

I call the call for universal pre-K upsetting because its effectiveness has never been demonstrated.

It sounds like a good idea--to get kids into a learning-rich environment as early as possible makes common sense. But, there are no large-scale studies about whether or not prekindergarten programs shrink the academic achievement gap.

There are some small-scale pre-K programs around the country, quite small scale, that appear to be effective--participating in them seems to lead to long-term gains--but none that have been objectively evaluated and proven to show that they can be brought successfully to scale.

Thus, to get the money to put tens of thousands of New York 4-year-olds in school feels irresponsible when educators have no experience doing this for such large numbers and there is no evidence that it works.

But do it we will because ideology is driving this agenda, teachers unions support it, and the money will in one way or another be found to implement it.

I almost forgot, according to a report last week in the New York Times, there will finally be a longitudinal study. Conducted by the reputable MDRC, 4,000 children in pre-K in 69 schools and community organizations will be tracked. Half the kids will participate in the perhaps-promising Building Blocks Program and the other half won't. Along the way, at least until third grade, they will be compared. If Building Blocks works, that would be persuasive. That, then, would be the time to scale it up. Not now before we know its worth.

But then again, universal pre-K feels like a good idea so why not try it? From history, though, when it comes to school reform efforts, there is a long list of reform silver bullets that turned out to be blanks.