Farewell Chancellor Klein

Here's are a few tips for the new Chancellor of schools to consider (who probably won't because look at their background in business--looks like business as usual...):

1. Stop wasting money on redundant school accountability systems.  It is a waste of time, money, and administrative resources that could be better spent addressing truancy and attendance issues.
2. Stop testing these students to death.  Having to take 2 History Regents and a Science Regents as a requirement for graduation is hardly necessary. It is statistically unreasonable to say that if you don't know the intimate details of ecological succession that you should be denied the right to graduate and apply to a college.
3. Promote the vocational schools!  Promote GED programs!  Promote community outreach and apprenticeship programs!  Promote any means of moving students forward rather than stoop to the concrete barrier that is the Regents as the end-all and be-all of graduating from a public school in NYC.
4. Reconsider the need for confrontational policy debates with the Teacher's Unions and the NEA.  These are organizations that know what they're doing, because they do it for a living.  Confrontation leads to expensive lawsuits.  Learn from your predecessor's mistakes!
5. Stop blaming teachers for things beyond their control.  We cannot force students to do everything correctly or properly.  Using data to evaluate an educator's efficacy is a fool's notion of success in an educational system when the reality is that the data would be used as a methodology to propagate professional abuse.
6. Stop locking out the community in terms of making decisions for their children.  The DOE seems to hold the future of their children as commodities by telling them what needs to be done without ever listening to their concerns.
7. Start investing in infrastructure!  Some of these school buildings are falling apart.  If the schools are a reflection of society then perhaps we need state-of-the-art resources to provide that level of education to our children.  If the ceilings are falling down and there aren't enough outlets in a classroom for microscopes, we cannot do this!
8. Tenure reform!  Necessary but not in the manner that's been advertised.  Advocate fair and in-depth review processes, not the draconian witch-hunt that Guggenheim and others are looking for.  Understand that our children are a unique population with unique hardships.  The efforts of educators are not simplified by a game of numbers.
9. Don't focus on looking good.  Focus on getting positive, holistic results for all student populations.  If the agenda of the new Office of the Chancellor is to continue the policies of the former Chancellor, then we have only regressed.  You ask for patience and understanding but it is more important to push for reasonable educational reforms than to focus on scapegoating.