Yet Another Reorganization From Tweed

....in Tech

I was actively involved in instuctional technology issues in NYC schools from the school level to the district to the citywide level from roughly 1985 to 2004. You could say that under the BloomKlein system of management, the state of technology in NYC schools, as measured by the degree of knowledge and skills the kids are getting, is at a lower state than it was when they took over. (This is corroborated by many of the people I know who are still involved.) That's an amazing "achievment" in a time of explosion of technology.

I mean, how many things can you mess up and never be held accountable?

Speaking of accountability, or the lack thereof, Jim Liebman's accountability office will now be taking over much of - get this gang - instructional technology. Hee, haw, what a joke this is turning out to be. And they are putting the former head of OIT as grant manager in charge of all the Federal Title IID grants, pretty much an impossible task.

Tech is going through its 3rd - or is it a 4th - reorganization. You can't keep the reorganizations straight without a scorecard.

Let's see. When I left, we supported schools at district level. In my district we did not do a bad job, considering most of the teachers were not computer literate. Like, we had to teach them how to set up and use an email account and navigate the web. And try to get as many kids as we could reach to learn word processing and internet skills at a time when less than 5% had home computers.

There was a central office of instructional technology (OIT) that brought us together a few times a year to share and a citywide tech support structure was being built. They provided some money and teacher training. This was from the late 90's through 2003.

But then came the destroyers from Tweed. Regions, with sometimes hundreds of schools. They made 11 tech instruction heads, one for each region, plus District 75 (special ed.) It took 2 years to write, grants, hire people, get them out to schools, start projects, etc. I mean doing this was hard enough on a district level ( I used to cover 7-9 schools a week) but doing it at the region level was pretty messy, yet beginning to have an impact - spotty - but an impact (I was working part-time for one region and we got robotics started in every middle school and a bunch of elementary schools.)

Then they ended regions and made borough heads. Can you imagine trying to get a handle on the entire borough? They focused instead on the schools involved in the federal Title II D grants, which by the way, required them to include parochial schools – another Bush legacy? (I also worked one year for Region 8, having been hired to do one job which they morphed into taking care of the 20 religious schools in the region that were part of the grant. I didn't last long.)

Well, the latest came on the heels of an internal announcement of a $1 billion cut and they are folding the boroughs into Liebman's Office of Accountability. Eric Nadelstern gets all the LSO's reporting to him. Marcia Lyles will probably be given a Do Now.

There's an emergency meeting tomorrow with Leibman. His droning on should make it a fun event.