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Welcome to Wonderland
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Business New Haven
12/11/2000
By: BNH
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The Elm City was a fine and apt nickname for New Haven. But most of the elms are long gone now, so perhaps the nickname has outlived its usefulness.
Therefore, we propose an alternative: Wonderland. As is “Alice and…”
There is definitely an Alice-in-Wonderland, up-is-down-and-down-is-up quality to the awarding by a panel of arbitrators of 11.4-percent raises to administrators in the New Haven public schools. In 1999 (the 2000 scores aren't out yet), New Haven students scored worst-in-the-state on the Connecticut Mastery Test. Hooray! Let's sweeten administrators' wallets.
The facts about public education haven't changed much in the 1990s. And two facts stand out above the rest:
1. Student performance on standardized state tests far, far, far beneath acceptable; 2. No one is held accountable for this. Therefore, 3. Scores will never improve.
Who's to blame? The students? We don't think so. Youngsters in New Haven, as elsewhere, are sponges for information: They soak up what is placed before them with enthusiasm and wonder. We find excuses such as the argument, “Well, too many New Haven students come from disadvantaged backgrounds” to be preposterous and even racist?
Who's to blame? The teachers? We don't think so. From what we have observed, the majority of New Haven schoolteachers love kids and work hard to make a difference at the bottom of vast, top-heavy, Soviet-style bureaucracy that shuns accountability and thwarts change at every turn.
Who's to blame? The 126 members of the administrators union now earn between about $69,000 and $101,000. Under the new contract they will see the value of their sinecures rise to a range of $77,000 to $113,000 - for last-place performance.
How many NFL coaches get raises for going 0-16? How many executives get new contracts for performance at the bottom of their peer group?
After leading the National League in homers in back-to-back years for the woeful Pittsburgh Pirates, Ralph Kiner was in 1953 traded to the Chicago Cubs. Management's explanation? “We finished last with you; we can finish last without you.” Maybe we could send this group to Wrigley Field, where they would do less harm.
These newly flush union administrators aren't even top brass. That distinction belongs to el jefe Reggie Mayo and his merry hotshots, including the schools' chief operating officer, associate superintendent and assistant superintendent for curriculum and instruction, all of whom negotiated their swollen deals with a what-me-worry Board of Ed appointed by (and grateful to) the mayor.
Who's to blame? How about the Board of Aldermen, who at their December 4 meeting didn't even get an opportunity to rubber-stamp the new contract? That's because Willie Greene (D-21), who once fed at the Board of Ed trough and now somehow manages to remain employed as executive director of the financially mismanaged Dixwell Community (Q) House, prevented the solons from even considering the deal before the mandated December 12 deadline for action. Who says the only Slick Willie lives on Pennsylvania Avenue?
This much is clear: Education is the No. 1 priority issue not just for this community - but for this business community, starved as it is for skilled workers. Elsewhere in this issue we trumpet success stories from the nascent technology sector. These stories are encouraging, but without access to educated labor in years to come - we're not talking Ph.D. scientists here, but receptionists and clerical staff - those companies will wither on the vine as quickly as they sprang from the ground.
Moreover, when the new tech companies succeed in luring real tech talent here from points distant, where do you suppose those scientists will be sending their children to school?
Without drastic education reform in New Haven, the bioscience mini-boom is a chimera. Business owners and managers ought to be banging on the doors of City Hall and the Gateway Center, demanding change.
To start, maybe we could trade the school administrators to the Cubs.
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