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2002
   
 
New York City
August 2002

Memo to Chancellor: Get into the Middle of Education
By Assemblyman Steven Sanders

Chancellor-select Joel Klein, a person of extraordinary accomplishment, will have his hands full if approved by State Education Commissioner Richard Mills. Mr. Klein’s credentials as a manager and as a person able to oversee a large government bureaucracy are without question, but his appointment by Mayor Bloomberg nevertheless requires a waiver by Mills (as did the designation of outgoing Chancellor Harold Levy) because he lacks the legal requisite educational credentials.

Assuming Commissioner Mills does grant the waiver, Mr. Klein can then take charge as the first Mayor-designated Chancellor of the New York City public schools.

Once in office, the new Chancellor will have to tackle many difficult issues, but here are a few that he cannot wait on, if he is to be successful:

First, he must recruit the finest and most experienced educational minds into his administration, especially in the key roles of his top deputies. Education isn’t just another business; obviously he understands this. But he needs the right people around him who can work as a team to assist him in developing an education vision and a strategy to move this system forward.

Additionally, the new Chancellor must heed the meaning of the fourth- and eighth grade test scores in English and math. Without any question, the middle school grades—sixth, seventh and eighth—must be the focus.

It is clear that the State Assembly’s strategy of concentrating resources in the early grades is paying off. In New York City we have established a Pre-K program that has created 50,000 new slots for our four-year-olds, giving them a good head start. And we have supplemented this Pre-K program with a significant investment in class size reduction in grades K-3, with a goal of reducing those class sizes to no more than 20 pupils per class.

These efforts are paying off. All of the test scores in the last several years have indicated that we are experiencing significant improvement in the elementary grades across the board. The number of pupils in level 1, the poorest performing level, has been reduced dramatically.

Of deep concern, and a real warning sign of what’s to come, however, is the fact that there is also a noticeable decline in test scores after these kids graduate from elementary school and have entered either middle school or junior high school. This means that we must concentrate our efforts and marshall new resources for an all-out effort to improve learning and results in the middle grades. We can do this, in part by focusing on professional development and up-to-date learning technology for these grades.

There are probably another dozen things that the new Chancellor can do in these middle grades, and do them he must if these students will be able to emerge from the middle grades prepared for the increasing rigors of high school and beyond.

But there is really no choice here. Either we will succeed in the middle grades or we will continue to see an escalating dropout rate in high schools and unsatisfactory Regents exam scores. Failure is not an option. Go to it, Mr. Chancellor.

Assemblyman Sanders is chairman of the New York State Assembly Education Committee. You can e-mail him at sanders@assembly.state.ny.us or phone (212) 979-9696. His mailing address is 201 East 16th Street, New York NY 10003.

 

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