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NEW YORK, NY February 21, 2007 —Get ready for ANOTHER round of school reforms. This fall, City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein will be revamping the system for the third time since 2002. This shakeup involves putting more control in the hands of principals. WNYC’s Beth Fertig has more on what it means for schools.

STUDENT: Come on baby (giggling)

Students at the 21st Century Academy in Washington Heights use what’s called a dual language curriculum. Some of their classes are taught in English. But others are taught in Spanish, like this third grade science class – where students are studying how meal worms turn into beetles. Teacher Cindy Peralta taught at another dual language school last year. She says the classes at this small elementary school are more creative.

PERALTA: I know that we have more liberty to use different curriculum and be more flexible with curriculum try different things, it’s not so constricted as the other schools.

REPORTER: This school belongs to Chancellor Joel Klein’s Empowerment Zone. About 330 schools are members. They get more freedom in exchange for conducting more assessments. And their principals are held accountable if students don’t meet performance targets. Principal Evelyn Linares says it’s working. Her school has seen a double digit increase in reading scores over the past few years.

LINARES: I’m not going to hide that it’s a lot of hard work. But we have things in place things that we didn’t have before. For example one of the things the chancellor brought in were the coaches, the literacy and the math coach, which they have been in a good part responsible for our continued growth. And they have like good training for us and we also get a little extra money.

REPORTER: This is the business model the Bloomberg administration is trying to encourage in its schools. More freedom in exchange for results. Last week, the Chancellor brought U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to the 21st Century School so she could see his reforms in action.

STUDENT: You want to touch the baby one?

REPORTER: Klein and Spellings watched in amusement as third graders in the science class held out wiggling meal worms.

SPELLINGS: Chancellor grab a worm will ya?

REPORTER: This fall, the Chancellor is proposing to give more principals greater autonomy. As Klein told an audience of business leaders recently, the goal is to make principals the Chief Executive Officers of their schools.

KLEIN: No longer will principals be the agent for the bureaucracy in the building, where principals are told what they need whether they want it or not. I believe we need to unleash the creative power of our great leaders and educators, letting them select the tools and support they want to meet the needs of the students they serve.

REPORTER: Klein views these new reforms as a way of fine-tuning the model he’s already created. Principals will now be able to choose from three different management models, some more structured than others. But there’s also a bottom line: results. Teachers will have to conduct more assessments so they can figure out how to help struggling students. In the end, schools will get A-F letter grades based on how well they respond to the needs of their students - with test scores being the ultimate measurement. These scores will also be a factor in deciding which teachers get tenure. Quality review teams have already been visiting schools and writing reports. But not all principals are thrilled with this reform.

MACK: Frankly I think it’s very Orwellian.

REPORTER: Herb Mack is principal of the Urban Academy, a small school housed in the former Julia Richman high school on the Upper East Side. Mack’s school is already part of the existing empowerment zone. But he says the greater freedom Klein is now offering principals comes at a steep price, especially since the principals have been without a contract for more than 3 years.

MACK: I would argue that empowerment is empowerment to the mayor and the chancellor. And it’s a very strange empowerment, it’s an empowerment that says that principals are responsible and if things go wrong the principals suffer and the schools suffer, not the mayor and not the chancellor. They’ve given us the power which is a fiction. Because its emphasis on data-driven testing is ludicrous.

REPORTER: The Urban Academy is part of a consortium of schools that opposes most standardized tests. They measure student performance through class work and other projects and believe their system is working – with a graduation rate of more than 90 percent.

At a few tables in a hallway, students study probability by designing their own casino games – with fake money. Sixteen year-old Jasper Singer came up with a card game.

SINGER: This is entre dos. It’s basically you pull two cards out of the deck, put them face up. And the player bets on whether the 3rd card pulled will be in the middle of the 2 cards already out.

REPORTER: Teachers at the Urban Academy worry the chancellor’s new reforms will force them to spend more time prepping for and grading exams at the expense of creative and often valuable lessons. Chancellor Klein insists he isn’t trying to stifle educators by relying on more assessments. If anything, he says a rating system – which was introduced in Florida by former Governor Jeb Bush - forces teachers and principals to be more responsive to students.

KLEIN: We’ve put out there that principals whose schools will get Ds or Fs, those are principals that we intend to terminate – the more you do that, I think the fairer, the better and more sensible it is to make sure they have choices.

REPORTER: School leaders aren’t the only ones worried about the upcoming changes. The Bloomberg administration is now embarking on its third major reform in five years.

DEMONSTRATORS: “Parents Count” chanting in English and Spanish

REPORTER: At a community forum in central Brooklyn earlier this month, Klein got an earful from parents who wanted more guidance counselors and smaller classes. He gave out his personal email and told them he values their input.

KLEIN: I want to hear form you. Parents, side by side with teachers working together can take this school system to an entirely different level.

REPORTER: But on the heels of a midyear busing change that angered city parents, Cypress Hills community leader Lenore Brown told him many people feel excluded from decisions that affect the schools.

BROWN: I don’t mind walking merely side by side but let us in. Let the parents, let the teachers, let the people who know what’s going on in the school, let them in to the drawing board when you get ready (APPLAUSE)

REPORTER: A coalition of elected officials, teachers and community groups is now calling on Klein to slow down before embarking on any more changes. City Councilman Bill DeBlasio says educators and parents all need to feel more involved. Deblasio belonged to one of the local community school boards, which were eliminated five years ago.

DEBLASIO: The previous system is portrayed as a train wreck, it’s portrayed as dysfunctional and it was far from perfect. But one thing that did work was parents could get real access to decision makers. Any parent could come in and raise any issue to their local superintendent. This has gotten very unhealthy. I have a lot of respect for the chancellor but top down governance doesn’t work.

REPORTER: Klein seems to be responding to that criticism. He’s now planning to eliminate the 10 administrative regions he created a few years ago, going back to the old model of 32 superintendents. Those superintendents will manage the principals. But Klein says the system will also give more access to parents. In keeping with his business model, he’s hiring a CEO for parent engagement. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.