General principles

1. No matter what you say or do, finish with “for the children.” Children come first. Always be on the side of children. You are the children's champion. Everything you do is “for the children.” (Hundreds of millions for outside consultants? “For the children.” Swollen class sizes? “For the children.” Bloated bureaucracy while schools scrimp? All “for the children.”) Everybody else who has an opinion about your schools is a “special interest.” They don't care about the children the way you do.
2. Take credit for everything good that happens. (Test scores up? It's your instructional program.) Blame someone else (preferably the union) for everything bad that happens.( Test scores down? The union won't let you fire the bad teachers.)
3. Data must drive all decisions. Do everything by the numbers. You can always avoid responsibility by citing (or spinning) the data. (The school had to close. Its progress report demanded it.)

Action plan

First, spend a half-billion dollars on a data collection system without asking those who are supposed to use it what they need. Explain it's what the children need most of all — more than smaller classes, more than support services, more than better curricula — and you are doing it “for the children.”

Then, show you mean business! Use the test score data to start closing “low-performing” schools. No matter if the school is struggling with large numbers of recent immigrants or kids from a local homeless shelter, who all present special educational challenges. Don't concern yourself if some of the schools you are closing have great arts and science programs or supportive environments, or if the students really enjoy learning. Say you can't argue with the data. And ignore the parents' and teachers' protests because they are “special interests” who don't care about the children the way you do.

Next, tell the teachers from the closed schools to find jobs on their own. Agree to manage the staffing system responsibly so that there will be jobs for everyone, and then proceed to hire more new staff than you can possibly use. Ignore the union's warning that such a plan is unsustainable; then pretend they never said it, so you can blame them later. If they don't like it, shake your finger at them for objecting to the plan, which is, after all, “for the children.”

Change the school funding formula so that each school's budget is charged with the full actual salaries their teachers earn. This will encourage principals to hire based on cost rather than experience. And don't forget to explain how this is all “for the children.”

The new funding method will make it harder for senior teachers to find new positions. So will your public musings implying that these teachers are less than competent. As the Absent Teacher Reserve pool (where the unassigned teachers are placed) grows and costs spiral, deflect responsibility for your mismanagement by blaming the union for protecting their jobs.

And, when even hard-to-staff schools —those whose students most need highly qualified teachers — cannot afford experienced teachers, it's not your fault; it's the union's fault for negotiating such good salaries.

To demonstrate your concern for children, open several smaller selective district and charter schools to replace the closed schools. Televise the admission lotteries to show how happy everybody is. Talk about how the new schools — unlike most — will have smaller classes and much-needed supports “for the children.”

Meanwhile, disperse the rest of the students into the remaining area schools, which may quickly become more overcrowded and severely stressed. Tell the public that larger classes and lack of services don't matter since they aren't in the data; only test scores matter “for the children.”

Give these large crowded schools inadequate resources to serve the influx of new students — many with special needs — who are sent there because the small schools say they can't serve them. Then measure those schools' performance on standardized tests of questionable validity and compare it with that of the small, better-resourced schools that you've opened “for the children” — or at least some of the children.

When students in the large schools — not surprisingly — don't score well, put those schools on the endangered list. This will ensure that they will find it even harder to improve as highly qualified teachers avoid applying there for fear of being consigned to the ATR pool when the school closes.

Meanwhile, delay the cases of the teachers languishing in the rubber rooms, and relish the tabloid stories about how the union protects incompetent teachers. Whenever possible, wait months or years just to charge them and then complain about the length of time it takes to remove a teacher — on behalf of the children.

Finally, announce that teachers will be judged according to the test scores of their students — a purpose for which the tests are not designed. (Use obscure statistical formulas of unproven validity to cloak this evaluation method with the illusion of data-based fairness.) This will further ensure that highly qualified teachers will shun schools with the neediest students. And this, too, is “for the children.”

Then, when your vaunted data show that the achievement gap is widening, blame it on “union rules” that deprive students of the good teachers they need.

Continue this process until the neediest students are warehoused in a few struggling schools or transfer schools, which you created especially “for the children.” Meanwhile, make sure the rest of the schools confine their curriculum to tested subjects only and direct that the entire spring semester be devoted to nothing but test prep. The resulting test scores will prove the success of your “reforms” and all you do “for the children.”

Warning: National exams are harder to prep for. When the results of these tests do not show the same progress, blame the tests. (And put your spin machine into high gear! )

Here's the best part. If students know little of the arts and sciences or history and civics, if they never read a book for pleasure or exhibit a love for learning, you can still insist they are well-educated. Just point to their test scores.

Now sit back and enjoy the kudos — “for the children,” of course.

Michael Mulgrew,
President of The United Federation of Teachers