Exploring the Issues

Exploring the issues with: Sol Stern

Apr 26, 2007 3:04 PM

In this new feature, which will appear periodically, the New York Teacher interviews prominent observers of the education scene about topics of major interest to members of the union.

We start with Sol Stern, a senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, a conservative think tank. Stern and UFT members may not agree on many issues, but he is a prolific and influential writer and his ideas carry weight in the education community.

New York Teacher: Schools Chancellor Joel Klein is reorganizing the school system again. What does this say about his past attempts and where are we going now on school reform?

Sol Stern: In his January 2003 speech announcing the Children First reforms, Mayor Bloomberg unveiled a new structure for the schools that called for “one, unified, focused, streamlined chain of command,” and he also said that “the chancellor’s office will dictate the curriculum and pedagogical methods.” The mayor was as good as his word. For the next three years, teachers suffered the Tweed pedagogical dictatorship in their classrooms.

Then, last year, the mayor and the chancellor did a 180-degree turn. Dictatorship was out and school “empowerment” and “autonomy” was in. There has never been a plausible explanation coming from Tweed for this flip-flop. After all, the DOE was claiming the dictatorship model was producing “historic” test score gains. What this does suggest is that the chancellor didn’t believe his own press releases, or that he just likes to grab headlines announcing new and “revolutionary” changes.

Where we are going now is anybody’s guess. My sense is that Tweed is flying by the seat of its pants. Get ready for more reorganizations of the reorganization.

NYT: New York City class sizes are the largest in the state and the benefits of smaller class size are universally recognized. Do you agree with the UFT that lowering of class size should be a DOE priority?

Stern: I don’t agree. What’s “universally recognized” (i.e., supported by research) is that there are benefits for student learning from lowering class size in grades K-3. Mandating class size reduction across the board for every school and every grade makes no sense and is likely to be counterproductive.

I believe the DOE should use the extra billion dollars coming from the state next year to reduce class size in all K-3 classes in low-performing, poverty schools and to introduce scientifically based reading programs such as Success for All, Open Court or Direct Instruction. That’s our best bet for improving reading scores in the early grades, which would go a long way towards reducing the black-white academic achievement gap.

NYT: Are the chancellor’s new “accountability initiatives” for real and will they work?

Stern: I’m all for holding everyone in the system accountable. But it’s hard to take anything the Bloomberg administration says on this seriously, considering its own double-talk on the accountability issue. The public was promised that if the mayor gained control over the schools we would at least know whom to hold accountable; if we didn’t like what the mayor was doing on education we could vote him out of office. We soon discovered that what Mayor Bloomberg really meant was one election, one time.

But what if I don’t like Bloomberg’s school policies but I like Freddy Ferrer’s even less? What do I do then? The mayor’s answer (literally): “Well, you can boo me at parades.” Which sort of explains how it is that the mayor who talks incessantly about “accountability” has never fired anyone for any of the screw-ups in the schools, including the recent busing fiasco.

NYT: The real teacher-quality issue these days is the number of great new teachers who leave the system. Do you think that scaring them about tenure is a way to induce them to stay?

Stern: I’m not sure that “great new teachers” are going to be scared by Tweed’s so-called tenure initiative. So far it seems much ado about nothing. Principals are going to get e-mails reminding them of the teachers in their school coming up for tenure. Does anyone really believe that principals are not aware of this deadline, that they don’t realize that if they make a mistake in granting tenure they could be stuck with a poor teacher for years?

Potentially good teachers leave for other reasons, including the fact that they are not prepared by their loopy, progressive ed school classes for the reality of inner-city classrooms. Nor do these teachers on the brink get the right kind of in-school mentoring. So it’s not surprising that so many throw up their hands and leave.

NYT: Tenure gives due process protection to untroubled staff whose professional lives have been open books to their supervisors for three years. Why do you oppose it?

Stern: Who says I oppose it? What I do believe is that there should be a better way to deal with the problem of burnt-out senior teachers who are just going through the motions until retirement.

NYT: Are your views on tenure limited to teacher union members, or do you feel the same restrictions, if any, should apply to other tenure holders, such as U.S. Supreme Court judges?

Stern: Bad example. Supreme Court nominees are grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee for days before they get “tenure.” Do you want teachers to go through a similar vetting process?

NYT: Should the tenure decision be based, as proposed by the chancellor, on students’ test scores, regardless of other factors affecting the students’ educational development?

Stern: My understanding is that the chancellor has backed off on this. As I said, the “tenure initiative” is mostly a publicity stunt.

NYT: Many UFT members believe they are being scapegoated by the chancellor. What’s your read on this?

Stern: It’s not teachers per se who are being scapegoated, it’s the union. In fact, I would say that the chancellor and his allies are demonizing the union. That’s unfortunate, but as a political tactic it seems to work for Tweed.

The union plays into this because it too often is wedded to indefensible positions. For example, on the issue of charter schools the union comes off as rigid and retrograde. And hypocritical as well, since the union is now running its own charter and boasting about what a wonderful school it is.

Instead of fighting the numbers game, the union should say there should be no caps on charters but then insist on a very tough and rigorous vetting process to make sure every charter is at least as good as the UFT charter. That would win a lot of good will and make it harder for Joel Klein to demonize the union. And we might even get a few more good schools, which would also be good for the kids.

NYT: How have your views on school governance evolved in recent years, especially with respect to mayoral control?

Stern: My views on education reform are constantly changing. American education seems to be such an intractable problem that we have a tendency to latch onto some magic bullet that will bring about the necessary change. Thus, I supported mayoral control, just like most New Yorkers, including the UFT. I soon learned the painful lesson that when the mayor makes a dumb education decision — such as mandating balanced literacy and fuzzy math for all schools — it’s a real doozy.

The harm is magnified precisely because of the mayor’s new powers. I’m not for going back to the dysfunctional old Board of Education, but we clearly need to change the governance law to create more checks and balances and to force real transparency on the DOE.

NYT: What are your views about reading and math instruction and curriculum?

Stern: Thirty years of scientific studies on the most effective methods for teaching reading sponsored by the National Institutes of Health show that it’s possible to dramatically improve reading levels for our most disadvantaged children. Yet Chancellor Klein has studiously ignored the science and insisted on mandating an instructional method, balanced literacy, that has no science behind it. I regard this as educational malpractice.

The UFT should be congratulated for running a conference a few years back on reading science. I wish the union would do more to alert the public about this instructional issue. It’s much more important, in my view, than class size reduction.

NYT: If you could rub a lamp and a genie responded, what would be your dream for the school of the future? And what would be the role of the UFT?

Stern: When I rub my magic lamp every night I tend not to wish for things that I know are too complicated even for the genie too deliver — like great schools. So instead I ask for easier things — for example, another World Series victory for the Yankees.

To answer your second question: If we did have dream schools and men were angels there wouldn’t be any need for the UFT, and certainly not for Tweed.