Two stories that appeared side by side in the New York Times this week should send an important message to people who haven't gotten it already. Public officials are getting more and more willing to prescribe desperate remedies for "failing" school systems.
According to the first, the state of New Jersey, which has been trying to take over the Jersey City schools for more than a year, has finally gotten a go-ahead from the courts. The state has argued that the Jersey City schools are in a state of "educational bankruptcy." The question here is not whether the schools are in bad shape. It's whether anyone coming in from the outside will be able to do a better job of managing the schools and whether when he or she finally walks away, the system will be better able to manage itself.
The second story describes New York State Commissioner Thomas Sobol's desperate remedy for the New York City school system: break it up into 60 or more districts. This isn't a new idea -- it's been kicking around for at least 20 years. But Sobol will undoubtedly get lots of praise because of hostility to the NYC Board of Education. That doesn't make the idea a good one. Sandra Feldman, president of the United Federation of Teachers, reacted strongly against it, and I agree with her.
According to Sobol's theory, 60 school districts will be more manageable and successful than 32 because parents and citizens will be more involved in them. Closer to home will mean more accountable - more like the small-town and suburban school districts that don't seem to make headlines the way big-city school districts do.
But these 60 smaller districts are not going to be accountable. Accountability means the public is able to keep an eye on what's happening. We can see what the president or the governor does because they get daily coverage in the press. And in a small town, everybody knows what's going on. The local newspaper sends a reporter to school board meetings, and cable TV probably televises them. Anyone who's missed the latest school board doings can catch up at a chamber of commerce meeting or at church.
But this is NYC we're talking about -- the place where 150 to 300 families live in a high-rise apartment building and no one knows anyone else unless kids from one family babysit for another family.
You can't have community without communication. But Sobol doesn't understand that you don't create systems of communication just by breaking up NYC into 60 pieces and calling them community boards. Does anybody really think that the four big newspapers -- the ones New Yorkers read every day -- will send reporters to cover the bi-monthly or weekly meetings of 60 community school boards?
Does anybody think the TV channels will cover them? (When' s the last time you read any community school board news in a newspaper or saw any on TV - except for news of indictments?) And does anybody think the members of 60 community school boards (540 people) are going to get any kind of name recognition (unless a couple of them get escorted away by the police)?
The fact is that these boards will be almost invisible to the public. That's not a prescription for participation and accountability; it's an invitation to corruption and abuse of power. Sobol is trying to find an answer to the problem of bigness. His mistake is in assuming that bigness is necessarily fatal to an organization. Many big organizations are successful partly because they are big PepsiCo, Inc. and IBM are both examples.
Sobol is also wrong in assuming that being small means being effective. Some small school districts are doing a poor job (a couple have also been threatened with educational bankruptcy proceedings), and some small businesses fail. So why assume that if a big organization is in trouble, the answer is to break it up? Instead of breaking up NYC, it would seem smarter to go to organizations that have learned to manage bigness. Ask the advice of businesses that are both large and effective because they have learned how to provide leadership and the resources of a large organization at the same time as they delegate responsibility.
NYC is now looking for this kind ofleadership in its search for a new chancellor. But Sobol' s threat will undoubtedly make candidates think twice before signing with a district about to dissolve into chaos.
It's surprising that a man as intelligent and sensitive as Sobol would publish a plan like this without first talking to the people of NYC who will have to live under the system and who will be responsible for carrying it out. And it's ironic that he recommends the dismantling of NYC's school bureaucracy from his position at the top of a huge bureaucracy in Albany.
We can't predict whether New Jersey's takeover of the Jersey City schools will do what the state education people say they want -- substantially improve the quality of education for Jersey City's students. It is clear that NYC schools will not be any better if Commissioner Sobol's plan goes into effect. But this tale of two cities should send a message to school boards everywhere: When people get desperate, they do foolish things. It can't be business as usual anymore.