Queens College Sponsors Discussion on
Educational Reform
By Nazneen Malik

Recently, the Queens College Department of Elementary Education and Early Childhood Education hosted a panel discussion on “Authentic Educational Reform—What Does It Look Like and How Do We Bring It About?” The panel consisted of seven speakers: City Council Members Eva Moskowitz and John Liu; Dr. Bill Ayers from the University of Illinois; Ms. Susan Ohanian, author and New York City teacher; Robin Brown, President of United Parents Association; Professor Richard Meyer from the University of New Mexico; and Molly Hunter Council for The Campaign for Fiscal Equity.

Eva Moskowitz, Chair of the New York City Council Education Committee, spoke at length on non-authentic versus authentic reform and challenges facing teachers today. Moskowitz defines non-authentic reform as “tweaking the system,” or incremental, transparent reform that fails to address the “resource question” or any underlying issue like teachers' compensation or improving working conditions and school environments. Authentic reform, Moskowitz believes, is “fundamental change.” It is introducing science into curriculums that concentrate heavily on promoting literacy before anything else. Fundamental change understands that to compete with schools that are “considered high performance, like Scarsdale, which spends significantly more per pupil than we do here,” there is a need for more resources. The last type of authentic reform, according to Moskowitz, “is changing the way we do business here.” She encourages teachers to read their union contracts as she has and invites them to come to City Council hearings. “We do hearings every other week, We cover as many topics as is humanly possible, both on the instructional side and on the operational side,” Moskowitz explains, “We have done everything from holding hearings on science instruction to toilet paper, paper towels, and soap.”

A hearing on toilet paper may sound absurd, however, at a Teacher's Speak-Out Moskowitz recently held, the lack of toilet paper, paper towels and soap was the single largest complaint. “If you look on websites like Craig's List, one of the items that teachers ask for the most are vacuum cleaners to clean the rugs in the new rug policy where the teachers are supposed to be [sitting] on the rocking chair and surrounded by the rugÉthere are much more profound issues that teacher's can be engaged with, but the state of affairs is such that they are asking for vacuum cleaners,” states a frustrated Moskowitz.

In fact, almost all of the speakers seemed to agree that there was some degree of transparency in educational “reforms” that are being made. The fundamental problems remain, and not only do schools have low budgets, they are in need of basic resources as well. Other concerns were about the No Child Left Behind Act. According to Ms. Ohanian, teachers are not being allowed the flexibility to generate their own lesson plans, and this could have an enormous impact on their effectiveness as teachers.