Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Why urban public schools don't work: Insane Bureaucracy Division
A principal in a New York City public school who needs to suspend a disruptive student must work through this flowchart of required procedures.
This is one of a half dozen How Do I? procedural flowcharts for the NYC public schools, presented together with the texts of the laws, regulations and contracts that impose them, on the Over Ruled -- The Burden of Law on America's Public Schools web page, from Common Good.
The NY Sun reports....
Anyhow, see if you can find the regulations that govern rug cleaning. They're there. After all, we can't just have someone in a public school clean a rug without following legal procedures.
Of course, all this highlights the real problem with the NYC public schools: at a mere $11,000 per student, they don't get enough money.
A principal in a New York City public school who needs to suspend a disruptive student must work through this flowchart of required procedures.
This is one of a half dozen How Do I? procedural flowcharts for the NYC public schools, presented together with the texts of the laws, regulations and contracts that impose them, on the Over Ruled -- The Burden of Law on America's Public Schools web page, from Common Good.
The NY Sun reports....
Common Good, the New York-based legal-reform group that created a Web site to report its findings, discovered more than 60 sources of rules that govern what goes on at the classrooms, hallways, and offices of the city's 1,356 schools.Hey, principals are management. How do managers with six-figure salaries in the NYC public school system get to have their own union? But I digress ... that's for another post.
The regulations include 720 pages of rules issued by the state's education commissioner, as well as the 204-page New York City teachers contract, the 690-page No Child Left Behind Act, and mountains of other local, state, and federal regulations...
A click on the book representing "New York State Education Law" leads to the following description of the law: "The law fills more than 850 small print pages and governs everything from building plans to curriculum to teacher certification to the use of pesticides and automated external defibrillators in the schools."...
The chairwoman of the City Council's Committee on Education, Eva Moskowitz, called the report "terrific."
"Experience has taught me that there are just an incredible number of rules and regulations that don't necessarily enhance education for kids and at times impede it in a rather dramatic way," she said. "Having to go through this incredible number of steps means it takes longer, costs more, and there's a divided responsibility so the task is done more poorly."
Ms. Moskowitz said the rules not only make it harder for principals and teachers to do their jobs. They also deter educators from doing such things as suspending disruptive students and firing problem teachers...
The president of the principals' union, Jill Levy, on the other hand, said the report "misstated the problem."
"I would rather have a system of laws that protect people against random and personal behaviors than have a lawless system," she said...
Anyhow, see if you can find the regulations that govern rug cleaning. They're there. After all, we can't just have someone in a public school clean a rug without following legal procedures.
Of course, all this highlights the real problem with the NYC public schools: at a mere $11,000 per student, they don't get enough money.
