Diana, we hardly knew ye. Or, apparently, what you were up to. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, schools chancellor Joel Klein, and their chosen deputy chancellor for teaching and learning, Diana Lam, brought their sordid New York story to a partial close with Lam's forced resignation after news broke that she had given her meagerly qualified husband a cushy administrative job and teaching position without seeking proper approval. In the city of Boss Tweed and honest graft, Bloomberg's and Klein's expressions of shock! shock! seem a bit overdone (apparently, Klein knew of the appointment since June, and the spouse in question never actually received a paycheck). So there is speculation that this was a convenient excuse to dump the deputy chancellor, who had become a political lightning rod. In fact, there seems to be an emerging Bloomberg-Klein pattern: enact a reform hastily, without concern about unintended consequences, the challenges of implementation, or the advice of experts; defend it vigorously even as evidence mounts that you hadn't done your homework; then find a reason to jettison it without admitting that insufficient thought had gone into the whole thing in the first place. Case in point, episode 1: Lam's chosen reading program, Month by Month Phonics. Lam chose the program; experts criticized it for not employing proven reading methods and warned that the city could lose millions in federal dollars if it was adopted; Bloomberg and Klein eventually sidelined it rather than risk losing the money, then criticized the feds for inflexibility. Now comes Lam's dismissal. Experts, education reformers, teachers, and school administrators have argued for months that she ought never have been hired (her record in Providence, San Antonio, and elsewhere was spotty, to say the least) and should have been sent packing over the phonics debacle. Yet Gotham's school leaders won't admit error; hizzoner even "defended the choice of Diana Lam, the educator who was supposed to turn around the nation's largest school system," just hours before Klein announced her resignation. What will the third example be? We don't know (though we'd guess either the social promotion or middle school reorganization plans), but Bloomberg and Klein ought to take advantage of the second chance - rare in politics and rarer in school superintendents' tenures - that Diana Lam's departure gives them.
"Lam's legacy," by Diane Ravitch, New York Post, March 10, 2004,
"Lam scandal sets off political scramble," by Ellen Yan and Glenn Thrush," New York Newsday, March 9, 2004
"Lam chopped," by David Seifman and Carl Campanile, New York Post, March 9, 2004