Educating Educators

This just in from the NY Post; the DOE has just devised another management gimmick designed to help city schools become better at educating our kids: "The Department of Education is assembling a million-dollar team charged with getting schools to learn from one another how best to educate their students, The Post has learned. The 10-person team will have a budget of more than $1 million and will be headed by a "director of knowledge management." The initiative will create a computerized "warehouse" that will allow schools to share ideas about organization, scheduling and other aspects of educating kids."

Oh, good grief! Another whiz kid style management approach from an unaccountable agency that hasn't really figured out how to do simple teaching with any degree of efficiency. But the innovations, unexamined by any one without an axe to grind, just keep coming-shining examples no doubt, that will soon be on Power Point display before the bribed and the bought.

And check this management team concept out: "One will help about 20 schools learn how to pinpoint concepts students are struggling with, and the other will show teachers at 25 middle schools how to tailor their lessons for each student." This is simply the marriage of an old educating dowager with a young management stud. More smoke and mirrors from a department whose time may be about to come to a deserved end.