Dear Mr. Mills:

You may recall your meeting with representatives of the grass- roots group, ESTEEM, last July. You may also recall that we had previously provided you with a document entitled A CURRICULUM ACCORDING TO "ESTEEM" FOR NEW YORK'S CHILDREN, AND FOR NEW YORK'S EDUCATION LEADERS. You acknowledged that you had read the proposal prior to our meeting. Part of our discussion centered on the proposal. At the end of our meeting you urged us to "keep the pressure on" you and your Department.

At the start of that meeting we informed you that our original reaction to your decision to raise standards in our school systems was very positive. The idea of using the Regents Exams to do this was a good one. However, we expressed the reservation that such exams should not be 'dumbed-down.' You assured us they wouldn't. A few weeks later, Charlie Richardson, the chair of ESTEEM's Curriculum Committee, sent you a study showing that the math Regents had clearly become less difficult between 1990 and 1995. You replied by assuring him that you would let your aides look into the matter. We have not heard from you since. We also referred you to a much longer and more comprehensive study by Rita Kramer appearing in the journal, Academic Questions [Spring, 1995, 61-71], which arrived at the same conclusion by examining actual questions in the exams since their start in 1867.

As you may realize, we are sincerely concerned about our educational system in New York state. While we think that you may be on the right track insofar as raising standards is concerned, we are starting to worry that, being as busy as you are, you may not have the time or energy to devote to a careful reading of the documents issuing from your Department. Our experience with Commissioner Sobol convinced us that many of your department heads and coordinators had uncritically bought into all aspects of current educational reforms, and, for the most part, still stand solidly behind the New Compact for Learning. Despite our position papers and criticisms by other groups, your Department has proceeded without any apparent regard for such criticisms. With your arrival we thought the situation would improve, but we are beginning to think otherwise. Examining the standards relating to the frameworks, as well as those applying to the program in Career Development and Occupation Studies, we are becoming increasingly worried about the direction of reforms in our state.

Our optimism over your arrival had also been increased by your early announcement that the use of portfolios would be put on hold. Your subsequent position regarding the Regents Exams had further strengthened it. But now, as we read about the committees that are revising the exams, about others that are proceeding with portfolios, and have learned that you intend to go full speed ahead with school-to-work, even before seeing how the Regents Exams initiative works out, we wonder whether the program is driving you or you are driving the program.

Under Commissioner Sobol we had become accustomed to his acknowledging grass-roots criticism by using the same bureaucratic techniques being used under the site-based management system: listen only to those who succumb to the "consensus" strategy, i.e. those who will always submit to ideas coming from "above." We assume you are aware of the central mantra of the Compact: top-down support for bottom-up reform. A group such as ESTEEM, which has always tried to base its criticisms on educational concerns rather than on religious or political convictions, can, and is ready, to serve as a counterbalance to those forces that seem to be driving current reforms from the top down with their utopian promises and endless funding. We think we can assist you in trying to provide New York students, parents, and taxpayers with the best possible education. It is up to you to decide whether our ideas have merit and whether we deserve to provide positive criticism to your iniatives. If, as we have been told, your Department holds regular round-table meetings with public groups, we would ask to be included in such meetings when warranted.

Please let us hear from you.

Sincerely yours,

Aldo S. Bernardo, PhD
Chair, ESTEEM

[Aldo Bernardo is Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Italian and Comparative Literature at Binghamton University]

Curriculum

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