Bob Lubetsky and Bill Stroud are veteran leaders of the New York City public schools. They have sound advice for incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The new Mayor will be sworn in on January 1. He promised, during his campaign, to eliminate the autocratic mayoral control imposed in 2002. Will he?

They wrote:

Zohran Mamdani’s election as Mayor of NYC represents a new way of thinking about New York City’s life and  its inhabitants, as well as the policies a candidate should represent to achieve office. In short, Mr. Mamdani has disrupted and dislocated all of the tried and true shibboleths of politics: a Muslim can’t be elected in a heavily populated Jewish city; a democratic socialist will be opposed by the monied interests who will  support other candidates and, most damning of all, the claim that he must be a closet communist. Zohran has proven his opponents wrong on all counts!  There is much to be learned – not only for politicians – but for all who must choose between continuity or disruption, between challenging orthodoxy and change. 

 The New York City Department of Education has been mired, for as long as anyone can remember, in a hierarchical framework that assumes greater intelligence and ability resides in those at the top of an organization. Although there was a period of improvement in high school graduation rates with the small schools movement, such a bureaucratic structure has demonstrated over and over again that it is incapable of igniting enthusiasm from teachers nor the continuous advancement of student achievement. 

Given Mayor Mamdani’s campaign focus on democracy, the appointment of a Chancellor will be an indication of commitment. The campaign of Mayor Mamdani has disrupted and challenged our beliefs about what can be accomplished. 

 It is time to disrupt the structure of the DoE and reinvest teaching with the excitement and energy that comes from schools dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and the development of students’ potential to be powerful citizens. The Department of Education can identify pockets of outstanding schools in every part of New York City. What it is not able to accomplish is to excite the public about what is happening in all of its 1800 schools, whether pre-K, elementary, junior high or high school. The time is right for a reorganization capitalizing on the era that has put to lie the beliefs and assumptions of those who believe improvement will occur when we get just the right individuals at the top to lead a fiercely bureaucratic organization – that what we need is the right kind of smart, capable people.

The mayoral election has both excited the voters and put to rest many of the tired ideas of what is possible (more than 2 million votes were cast in the Mayoral election, more than any time since 1969!) We believe that the time is now for creating a government that seeks to better meet the needs and desires that are different from past administrations.

Disruption and not continuity must become the modus operandi of the new administration.  It is time to dismantle the old bureaucracy and develop more democratic structures and methods of decision-making. Those closest to the work should have the ability to make decisions based on high quality evidence gleaned from accomplished educators and the research community. The command and control structure that dominates the NYCDOE needs to be put to rest.

 Both of us have worked as educators outside the US and have led schools in NYC and been central office administrators.  We have seen up close the consequences of a hierarchical educational structure and have supported schools within highly bureaucratized and closely monitored educational systems.  

It is clear to us that control is often illusory and always inimical to innovation.  In a school system that has achieved recognition not for its accomplishments but because it is among the most segregated school systems in the US, which currently has 150,000 homeless students, essentially flat NAEP scores over nearly 50 years, a disillusioned teaching staff, a host of alienated and disaffected students and parents, and a wide swath of special education students whose basic educational needs have not been addressed, NYC requires something new and different. A reinvigorated Department of Education whose disruption will help educators focus on the real work of education, which is, as Socrates wrote long ago—”the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”

Disruption aimed at reinvigorating teaching with the energy and enthusiasm that brought wide-eyed, devoted young people into the teaching profession can return excitement to the profession and to the classroom.  Once again education will echo the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.”  What disruptive framework will inform and guide the next Chancellor so as not to disappoint yet again? 

 Considering what recommendations we would offer to Mayor Mamdani as he considers whom to appoint as the new NYC public schools Chancellor, we would seek a candidate who believes in the following 5 Core Ideas and can begin the planning/implementation process on day one. These ideas and their implementation needs to be carefully planned and implemented so that they stimulate considered discussion within the Department focused on how to implement the five specific strategies identified below. 

1.   Deepening and Strengthening Democracy, one of the guiding principles of the Democratic Socialist Party of America, but also a foundational principle of countries that identify themselves as democratic.  If democracy is truly to guide our behavior, then democracy should be evident inside the central office and throughout the system, most especially in the institution in which students and their teachers spend most of their waking hours.  The specific structures and nature of these relationships and practices need to be worked out in each school, but the overall guiding principle must be the inclusion of all in the school community and the classroom, and the specific role that each will play in achieving the goal of deepening and strengthening democracy at the school level.  Democracy should also characterize relationships throughout the system and structure of the Department of Education.  The old command and control model of decision-making needs to be put to rest, finally.

2. Invert the Pyramid of decision-making so that decisions are made by those closest to the work. Classroom teachers must be at the core of decisions about what occurs in the classroom. No longer should institution-wide formulas apply to all classrooms and schools, as decision making regarding teaching methodologies and curriculum will reside with teachers. All resources must be directed towards supporting students and the classroom teacher. The goal of all those involved in supporting and assisting teachers must be to provide assistance and useful, timely research information to support classroom decisions, including recognizing state mandates, as well as learning about the latest research findings relevant to classroom instruction and school organization.

3. Decentralize the NYC Department of Education and establish a Zone of Innovation. The current central office staff of more than 2,000 needs to be reduced and repurposed to support school-level decisions. Schools should be organized into Zones of Innovation consisting of 20 schools. Membership would be by application, (with approval by the school community,) and would receive a financial incentive to support efforts at meeting the democratically developed goals for each school. Each 20 schools would continue to be supported by already existing structures, but over time, these structures would be modified so as to be more aligned with a vision of all schools becoming part of a Zone of Innovation. Membership in the Zone would be phased in over time with the specific determinants of membership to be determined.

4. Dissemination of Innovation through a new Division of Research & Innovation. A new Division of Research & Innovation would be formed for the purpose of identifying best practices and new research findings (preK-12) identified to support the work of schools. Learnings from these experiences would be disseminated through a system-wide structure that would advertise such innovations and seek feedback. The fact that the largest school system in the US does not have an effective research division is an embarrassment.

5. Portfolio Assessment would become the preferred assessment model. Assessment of students, in order to be valid, needs to be curriculum based. Such an approach would allow schools and teachers to recapture the original meaning of Assessment, a word derived from the Latin Assidere meaning to “sit beside.” Standardized tests need to be deprioritized to rethink curricula and testing as a form of pedagogy, thereby reducing the pressure that comes with these Assessments so that the original meaning can be recaptured as teachers sit with students to learn and explore together. The research findings on the impact of a student’s socio-economic background on paper and pencil test scores is clear (see for instance “The Pernicious Predictability of State Mandated Tests of Academic Achievement in the United States.” https//doi.org/19.3390/educsci14020129). Among the alternatives to test based accountability –The New York Performance Standards Consortium (https://performanceassessment.org ) has permission to administer only one Regents exam for its 38 member schools – English – and to use Performance Based assessment in all the other Regents tested areas; the assessment system used by the International Baccalaureate Schools is another performance based system. There are numerous other examples worth investigating.   

New York City’s embedded and seemingly intractable educational issues – the hyper segregation of schools, the embarrassingly awful services provided to students with special needs; the abandonment of child-centered teaching in favor of teacher dominated strategies that have little or no research basis; the decontextualized pursuit of facts rather than the more difficult and potentially contentious issue of promoting understanding; structures and pedagogy that better meets the needs of our other-than-English speaking students; the substitution of a narrow form of vocational education as a solution to our current economic crisis and rising youth unemployment, to name but a few – can successfully be addressed with the restructuring and repurposing of the DOE. 

What we have outlined is but a beginning. The dawning of a new day will begin when Mayor Mamdani takes office but must be reflected in how the institutions under his control are organized, how they interact with others, whether they promote change or tinkering at the edges, and whether they truly are democratic.  The early signs point to a very different way of organizing and thinking about the work of governing New York City.  We are hopeful that the ideas presented herein will stimulate discussion and reconsideration of how the NYC Department of Education can become a beacon of light and hope for all of New York City and perhaps beyond its borders.  

-Bob Lubetsky 

-Bill Stroud

Bob Lubetsky is a former teacher and high school principal who led a NYC alternative school that has been replicated throughout Europe.  He previously worked as a central office administrator for the NYC Department of Education and also has experience as a teacher and staff developer in Europe and Africa.  He has also worked at the NYC Leadership Academy and was previously Program Director of the Educational Leadership Program at CCNY.

Bill Stroud is a former teacher who founded two high schools in New York City and was a central office administrator.  He has been a staff developer in 6 countries outside the US where he is much sought after as a staff developer because of his experience.