Today’s New York Times has a front-page story about the success story in Region 5 and the leadership of its superintendent, Kathleen Cashin, that is a must-read for education reformers. This story will be discussed all week is my guess, and will set the stage for criticism of DOE, particularly in the areas of curriculum and professional development.
The story, by David Herszenhorn, says that Cashin’s results are in many ways a rebuke to Klein and Bloomberg. “Dr. Cashin’s results should be an easy reason for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein to gloat, a triumph in their takeover of the nation’s largest school system. But in many ways, her success rasies questions about the thrust of their recent efforts to reshape the school bureaucracy.”
It goes on to detail the fact that Cashin is a member of the “status quo crowd” that Klein constantly derides, a lifelong city educator who is not swayed by principal empowerment. What’s more, “while Mr. Klein has dealt with the teachers’ union on a war footing, Dr. Cashin has made the union a partner.”
Region 5 uses the UFT Teacher Centers exclusively for all its PD. They aren’t named but are clearly referenced in the story, and are clearly responsible for a good measure of the region’s successes.
Watch carefully what happens next. Klein cannot let this stand. He was quoted in the story indirectly (and he had his deputy Andres Alonso respond to claim that the region’s outstanding scores in reading and math may mask weaknesses in other areas). But he’ll have to react. Let’s hope it’s not Cashin’s head.
1 Comment:
1 Jackie Bennett
· Dec 5, 2006 at 12:12 am
The news about Region 5 is great news from every angle of the page. And it is especially good news because in a high poverty district, Cashin has instituted the very programs that Klein has ignored for years in spite of the hue and cry of some of NY’s top educators. Cashin used content rich programs essentially against all odds, and if they now become more widespread, it is Cashin who deserves the credit – she and the many educators who have kept faith with these programs through very these very dark days of the DoE – these people, not Klein.
I just posted (at ridiculous length) on this subject under Leo’s main post on Tough’s article entitled, “Out Damned Spot…” I think Cashin’s schools and her programs have implications for the achievement disparities between rich and poor, so the comment is there instead of here.
And hooray for our teachers of Region 5, and our Teacher Center. We knew it all along!