Mayor Bloomberg's Department of Education seems to be having a problem with numbers.
According to the Daily News, the head count -- that is, the employees working at the central headquarters -- has gone up by 70 percent in the last seven years. Thus, there were 1,332 employees in 2003 and today there are 2,268. In the same period, the salaries at the central office have soared, going up by 70 percent.
And all this is happening as the school system prepares to cut budgets and reduce the number of teachers. The Education Department says that, although the staff at the central office has increased, the number of non-school staffers in field offices has decreased.
No one disputes the need to have good supervisors in the educational system. But it makes one uneasy to contemplate a two-tier system, where the bosses get treated to salary increases and the serfs have to struggle along on what they make or may even get laid off.
At the Tweed Courthouse, headquarters of the Education Department, there’s another problem -- test scores.
The Board of Regents and state educational officials, we understand, are studying the disparity between the math tests the city gives children and the scores they achieve on federal exams. In New York State, an analysis showed, fourth and eighth graders are making no progress.
Top state educational officials tell me that a thorough review of the testing process is underway. One key factor, obviously, is whether or not schools are teaching youngsters how to pass tests rather than concentrating on basic education.
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We have a mayor to whom numbers are important. It’s the lifeblood of big business and that’s where he comes from. This centralized school system, created in a sense in his image, is bound to rely heavily on numbers. But the question is: are numbers enough to evaluate how well the educational process is operating?
The basic issue is not whether the system looks good. It’s what benefits the kids and their parents.
