Andrew Wolf reports in the New York Sun that the New York City department of education has "overspent its budget for professional service contracts by more than $200 million" over the past year, in pursuit of the elusive and unproven "professional development." According to Wolf, the Big Apple's schools are essentially trying to make up for the failings of their chosen "progressive" math and reading curricula by spending vast sums to train the teachers to properly use the programs, above and beyond the $150 million already allocated. "By subjecting the teachers to an endless program of professional development," Wolf quips, "maybe those dullards will finally 'get it' and be able to implement the failed pedagogy like whole language and fuzzy math correctly." Worse, the recipients of this largesse are not nationally known education experts or teacher trainers but obscure progressives and anti-testing activists. Take, for example, Diane Snowball, a native Australian whose company, AUSSIE (Australian and United States Services in Education), has taken in some $10 million this year for professional development services. After an extensive media search, Wolf was able to uncover precisely four mentions of Diane Snowball - none of which help to explain why her company (owned by her and her husband) was given "enough money to put a[n additional] teacher in every New York City public school."
"Beware the flying pigs," by Andrew Wolf, New York Sun, December 5, 2003