Peter Goodman writes about education policy in New York City and New York State.

In this post, he tries to figure out whether NYC is about to double down on a “test and punish” regime or to seek collaboration.

He covers the bizarre City Council hearing about over-testing, where a top official of the NYC Department of Education announced the city’s decision to add four new off-the-shelf standardized tests to the school year to track student progress and to create a data tracking program called EDUSTATS to monitor student scores citywide, class by class.

At the hearing, chaired by Mark Treyger, a high school teacher on leave, the city described its plan:

Laura Chin, the # 2 at the Department of Education testified at the hearing and mentioned Edustats, the new Department initiative; Treyger pressed her on the program. The Department will require periodic assessments, the Executive Superintendents will review the results with Superintendents, and Chin described the process as similar to the New York Police Department (NYPD) Comstat system. Borough commanders meet with precinct commanders and review data, detailed crime statistics, and grill the precinct commanders: what have they done to respond to statistical increases in the crime data? Why isn’t it working? The precinct commanders despise the process: public shaming with the threat of job removal. While the precinct commander can move patrol cops from one area to another schools can’t prevent evictions or provide food for families or more racially integrated schools.

The Police COMSTAT Program led to many complaints that officers were “juking the stats”—gaming the system— to improve ratings, for example, by classifying felonies as misdemeanors.