Queens College Sponsors Discussion on
Educational
Reform
By Nazneen Malik
Recently, the Queens College Department of Elementary Education
and Early Childhood Education hosted a panel discussion on “Authentic
Educational Reform—What Does It Look Like and How Do
We Bring It About?” The panel consisted of seven speakers:
City Council Members Eva Moskowitz and John Liu; Dr. Bill Ayers
from the University of Illinois; Ms. Susan Ohanian, author
and New York City teacher; Robin Brown, President of United
Parents Association; Professor Richard Meyer from the University
of New Mexico; and Molly Hunter Council for The Campaign for
Fiscal Equity.
Eva Moskowitz, Chair of the New York City Council Education
Committee, spoke at length on non-authentic versus authentic
reform and challenges facing teachers today. Moskowitz defines
non-authentic reform as “tweaking the system,” or
incremental, transparent reform that fails to address the “resource
question” or any underlying issue like teachers' compensation
or improving working conditions and school environments. Authentic
reform, Moskowitz believes, is “fundamental change.” It
is introducing science into curriculums that concentrate heavily
on promoting literacy before anything else. Fundamental change
understands that to compete with schools that are “considered
high performance, like Scarsdale, which spends significantly
more per pupil than we do here,” there is a need for
more resources. The last type of authentic reform, according
to Moskowitz, “is changing the way we do business here.” She
encourages teachers to read their union contracts as she has
and invites them to come to City Council hearings. “We
do hearings every other week, We cover as many topics as is
humanly possible, both on the instructional side and on the
operational side,” Moskowitz explains, “We have
done everything from holding hearings on science instruction
to toilet paper, paper towels, and soap.”
A hearing on toilet paper may sound absurd, however, at a
Teacher's Speak-Out Moskowitz recently held, the lack of toilet
paper, paper towels and soap was the single largest complaint. “If
you look on websites like Craig's List, one of the items that
teachers ask for the most are vacuum cleaners to clean the
rugs in the new rug policy where the teachers are supposed
to be [sitting] on the rocking chair and surrounded by the
rugÉthere are much more profound issues that teacher's
can be engaged with, but the state of affairs is such that
they are asking for vacuum cleaners,” states a frustrated
Moskowitz.
In fact, almost all of the speakers seemed to agree that
there was some degree of transparency in educational “reforms” that
are being made. The fundamental problems remain, and not only
do schools have low budgets, they are in need of basic resources
as well. Other concerns were about the No Child Left Behind
Act. According to Ms. Ohanian, teachers are not being allowed
the flexibility to generate their own lesson plans, and this
could have an enormous impact on their effectiveness as teachers.
There was a general consensus that only an involved community
can achieve authentic reform of the New York City public education
system. Parents and teachers need to participate in city council
hearings and make their voices and objections heard. Reforming
the public education system is a long and arduous process and
it seems as though there needs to be a collaboration among government
policy-makers, teachers, and parents to move it forward.#