Chancellor Cathie Black’s dismissal yes terday jolted education in New York, but news that State Education Commissioner David Steiner is also stepping down is of equal, if not greater, significance, to the state’s schools.
Steiner, a respected academic, had a fish-out-of-water look to him when Regents Chancellor Merryl Tisch persuaded him to take the job two years ago. Whether he realized then what a snake-pit he was jumping into isn’t clear — but we’re sure he figured it out quickly enough.
Tisch owes her position to the benevolence of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver — and nobody in Albany ever doubted that Steiner was intended to work the speaker’s will also.
That is to say, to work the will of New York’s corrupt — and corrupting — teachers unions.
Thus the commissioner lately found himself micromanaging such issues as the amount of space allotted to gyms and libraries in a single school in Brooklyn — an arcane issue to most people, but of critical importance to union leaders and others fighting against school reform.
It takes a special kind of person to undertake those battles — we certainly hope Schools Chancellor-designate Dennis Walcott is one of those — but Steiner’s background is in philosophy, where degrees don’t come with brass knuckles.
We don’t pretend to know all the details behind Steiner’s decision.
And we certainly didn’t agree with his every position on policy issues.
His biggest accomplishment: throwing cold water on the preposterous myth that student scores on state tests reflected real and marked gains in educational achievement prior to his arrival.
Turned out — as we had suspected — the whole thing was a chimera: Tests had been dumbed down; almost anyone with a pulse could pass.
And Steiner, to his credit, said so.
Steiner also presided over key changes in state law — like the raising of Albany’s charter-school cap and the use of student tests in evaluating teachers.
At other times, such as in the fight to scrap the disastrous “Last in, first out” teacher-layoff law, he was on the wrong side: He’s been pushing a new teacher-evaluation plan that leaves the law in place and that (as his agency admitted in a report this week) won’t be ready to deal with layoffs this year in any case.
But now he’s leaving. And if that’s because he’s finally recognized the untenability of his laudable goals, well . . . he’s doing the honorable thing.
The question now is: Can anyone hold that job — and actually help kids?
That’s to be determined.