IN 1997, fewer than 20 percent of third-graders in New York City’s public schools read at grade level. In 1998, third- and sixth-grade reading scores fell even lower.
In 1989, a scant 23 percent of New York City high-school graduates earned diplomas certified by the state Board of Regents; in 1997, only 22 percent did.
In 1991, 51 percent of public high-school students received diplomas in four years; in ’97, only 48 percent did.
And so on.
All this raises questions:
*If classroom performance in New York is this shockingly bad – and, more to the point, getting even worse – why is everybody so upset with Gov. Pataki?
*Just what is it about the public-school status quo that has everybody in this town so flag-waving proud?
Over the weekend, Pataki launched a high-profile investigation of the School Construction Authority – which the city has used for a more than a decade to transmute money into muddy holes in the ground.
Plus, he wants to know whether all those billions Albany sends to the Board of Education are being used to educate real live kids, or to support phantoms – who never come to class, or who don’t exist.
And that’s probably just for starters.
The probe – commissioned under the state Moreland Act – could quickly migrate into other areas, like the steady decline in classroom performance and the possibility of widespread cheating to cover it up.
What’s so unreasonable about this?
Judging from the reaction, you’d think Pataki had torched the Little Red Schoolhouse.
Schools Chancellor Rudy Crew’s reaction is, predictably, silly: He says Pataki is a politician seeking higher office, not a professional educator.
Now, imagine that: A governor of New York state who maybe wants to become president. Whatever will they think of next?
Of course, if Crew – a professional educator – were to spend more time educating, there would be no need for politicians to engage themselves in Board of Ed affairs.
Would there?
Considerably more interesting was what Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver had to say in Albany yesterday.
Silver contends that Pataki isn’t the person to be investigating the SCA, because it was a former gubernatorial appointment to the authority, Paul Atanasio, who figured so prominently in the latest scandal to befall the agency.
Atanasio went on the hot seat after a falling brick killed a student at PS 131 in Brooklyn one year ago.
But the key word here is “former” – as in Atanasio isn’t on the SCA anymore.
Anyway, the authority has been cobbling one scandal to another since 1988 – without Silver saying much about it.
Now the speaker comes to life and proposes assigning an SCA probe to an allegedly neutral third party: Newly minted Attorney General Eliot Spitzer; who just hired as a principal brain-truster one Peter Pope; who until Dec. 31 was – ta da! – the construction authority’s inspector general.
And Silver says Pataki is conflicted.
Sheesh.
This is not to knock Spitzer; he’s an innocent bystander (so far, anyway).
But Silver’s not.
Neither is Comptroller H. Carl McCall, who yesterday fired a broadside at Pataki – but who should know better on several levels. He’s a former president of the Board of Ed – and, as much as anybody else, is responsible for the current mess.
All these folks fight public-school reform reflexively, in all its forms. So do the various teachers’ unions.
Most recently, they fought charter schools.
Now they’re gearing up to fight Pataki.
It’s change they fear.
Pataki’s plan may not be perfect, but it’ll do until somebody comes up with something better.