How not to run a school system.
Mr. Murdock is a columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service.
September 7, 2001 9:35 a.m.The New York Police Department hosts cops from across America and around the world to explain how it successfully slashed crime. Gotham's Board of Education should launch a similar program to show visiting administrators how not to run a school system.Judging by its latest snafus, the board couldn't teach even that. The Big Apple's government schools epitomize academic failure, fiscal excess, institutional corruption; they are master builders of the wall of excuses that educrats tend to erect whenever anyone demands better. With 1.1 million students, 80,000 teachers and 1,200 schools, New York, New York boasts America's largest school system. When it comes to public education, if you can break it there, you can break it anywhere.
In last spring's citywide tests of third, fifth, sixth, and seventh graders, 57.8 percent failed reading. A stunning 69.1 percent flunked math.
The board tried to terminate 322 teachers and administrators since 1997, but sacked only 23, the New York Daily News discovered. Jean Stabinsky survived, even though she yelled, "Fight! Fight!" as two of her kindergartners punched and kicked a third boy lying on the ground.
"While she let them fight for a few minutes and provoked them into continuing it," hearing officer Howard Edelman ruled, "her actions were not so egregious as to justify her discharge."
Not even New York's no-nonsense mayor has tamed this city's schools. Like an octopus squirting ink at a predator, the board has escaped Rudy Giuliani's attempts to wrap his arms around it. He has advocated vouchers, higher standards and accountability. The recalcitrant board has eluded his every advance.
Of course, this tragicomedy's victims are the students, many of them lower-income, minority kids with limited life chances. Challenging their minds would lift them from the streets. Instead, government schools leave them intellectually stunted, often for life. That seems the board's last concern, however. "Up with people?" Try "Up with budgets, payrolls and union contracts."
Why can't kids learn? "It's not working because there's not enough money," Schools Chancellor Harold Levy recently bellowed. He lamented the board's $12.3 billion "shoestring" budget. The money never is enough for educrats like Levy, whose children attend the elite, private Dalton School. In fiscal year 2000, New York spent $9,739 per pupil. That financed an on-time high school graduation rate of 49.9 percent of seniors, of whom 62.6 percent entered college. Fully 19.3 percent of the Class of 2000 dropped out altogether.
In contrast, the Catholic Archdiocese of New York (covering Manhattan, the Bronx and Staten Island, too) graduated 98 percent of its 12th graders on time, 89 percent of whom then attended college. Fewer than 1 percent dropped out. Per-pupil cost: $5,500 for secondary and $3,200 for primary schools.
While New York's Board of Education teaches its students very little, it clearly offers one lesson to any outsider willing to listen: Don't try this at home.
