wnyc.org / 93.9fm / am 820

When it comes to education, Mr. Lehrer (who presents an excellent show otherwise) seems always to "softball" NYC educational leaders when they are tearing down the "bureaucracy." Our current Department of Education leaders say they are reducing bureaucracy. They may be reducing numbers of people but they are paying very high salaries to many recently hired, inexperienced bureaucrats and consultants. Their claims of improved scores are suspect. Recently they claimed that the gap in performance scores between minority and non-minority students had been reduced by 10 percent. In fact, minority students had improved by 5 percent. Non-minority students had fallen back 5 percent. To call that a 10 percent improvement is dishonest. Patty's comment above is on target. The knowledgeable, caring, committed people who currently work on supporting parents and students in this way are being shuffled back and forth with rolling "reorganizations" of the department. Their efforts are being punished while self-promoters are being rewarded. Current educational leaders in NYC have perfected spin with questionable benefit for students and our city. The NYC educational enterprise needs much more careful scrutiny. Our "Chancellor" is a lawyer and a businessman. His claim that "dynamism" is healthy seems plausible. The effect of his "dynamism" is more like digging up a seed every day to see how it is progressing. People who are replanted frequently, are forced shift their concern from looking forward and working to benefit children to trying to survive day-to-day. The Chancellor is not an educator and we will be paying for his "dyanmism" for years to come.

I agree that all kids need to learn the "basics" and learn to be critical and creative thinkers, however I strongly disagree that children or students learn with constant testing. Studies show that constant testing of basic skills does not achieve a knowledge of basic skills or create critical and creative thinkers. What is needed is teachers that know how to work with high need students and their parents. Students need to be supported to learn not constantly tested (to be tested is not to learn)and the board of Ed. should develop a parenting program to educate parents. This parenting program should start from Pre-K.

I think the extensive preparation for standardized test is ultimately destructive to childhood development. Children need to learn the thrill of teaching themselves, not memorizing rote formulas for passing a test. I'm long since out of elementary school, but it doesn't sound like learning is very fun or confidence building anymore, especially if the parents and children know that the school's survival depends on some statistical numbers.

Forced learning of reading and math skills are well-intentioned enough, but what happen to the children's imaginations and the joy of learning in this education assembly line designed by adults?