The other thing they need to know is that New York City has not gotten remarkable results, even after doubling spending (much of which went to no-bid contracts, consultants, IT, dramatically increasing the number of schools and the number of highly-paid administrators, and a 43% boost in teachers’ salaries). The city’s proficiency rates, which seemed to be flying up by leaps and bounds every year, got deflated in 2010 when the State Education Department admitted lowering the cut scores on state examinations. Overnight, the New York City miracle disappeared, as the percentage of students who reached proficiency fell to levels near where they had been years earlier. And the achievement gap was as large as it had been in 2002, when the mayor took charge.
What is so maddening about the reformers’ promises is that they are not based on anything at all: Trust us, they say. Turn the public schools over to private managers, inject competition into the system, close low-performing schools, and student scores will go up. But nothing in the plan says what they will do to improve teaching and learning. There is nothing about class size, nothing about support for hard-pressed educators. Just trust these guys who know how to make money in the private sector.
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