School for scandal

Can hi-tech principles be applied successfully and fairly to the education system?

By PEGGY CIDOR
High tech students 521 (photo credit: Tracy Cox/MCT)
High tech students 521
(photo credit: Tracy Cox/MCT)
It is well known that the road to you-knowwhere is paved with good intentions. But thanks to human nature, we are never short of new examples. Here’s one, this time from the city’s education system.
Upon entering office, Mayor Nir Barkat announced that he would give a lot of attention to the education system. To make his point even clearer, he decided to assume the education portfolio himself – something that no mayor before him had ever done. There is no question that Barkat’s intentions were sincere: what he called the “computerization revolution” for students and teachers, the widening of the catchment areas, the construction of hundreds of classrooms in east Jerusalem (still not enough, but certainly better than until two years ago), the introduction of modern programs in various schools, such as conservation and the environment.
To promote his plans to empower and improve the education system, Barkat imported New York’s pedagogical model to assess achievements in various aspects of the schools. The model is based on three tracks – a social and values track, a management and teaching track and an academic success track, such as the number of matriculation prizes and awards. The model was conceived and applied as an interim tool to monitor the functioning of schools and their staff to lead them to the best achievements possible. At no point was it supposed to become public knowledge. It was to remain an important means to promote the larger plans for the education system.
Recently, following an instance where the model indicated several acute problems in a certain high school, the principal was asked to resign. To make matters worse, information was leaked to the local press about the school and the principal. Besides the fact that quite a few teachers had expressed concern about the model, or at least such serious decisions based exclusively on this tool, the leak of the model’s indictment of the school – the Sieff High School in Beit Hakerem – and the municipality’s request that the principal, Lea Klachko, resign have become a typical hellish wellintentioned road.
No one knows exactly how the results of the Sieff school reached one of the Hebrew newspapers, but there is no argument that it did. Eti Binyamin, president of the Parents’ Association, believes that the leak was deliberate.
“Otherwise,” she points out, “why only Sieff? All the schools go through this model, and yet only one school’s results made their way to the media. Isn’t it strange, considering that this particular principal was not especially popular at the Municipal Education Department?” Whether it was done on purpose or not, the release of the Sieff results, which indicated a serious problem on the management track, ended with Klachko’s resignation two days before the school year started, something that didn’t make things easy for the school’s staff or the students.
But there’s more. Binyamin and some of the teachers complain that the model is too narrow to judge educational achievements. “It is a typical hi-tech tool which, when transferred to the education field, fails to take into consideration additional factors, which are no less important,” she says.
Now, what’s wrong with hi-tech criteria? Nothing, of course. By now, most of us admit that our world has become a sort of hi-tech reality, very different from our parents’ generation.
But not entirely. There are still quite a few considerations that matter, such as not publicizing some less successful aspects of a teacher’s career.
According to many of the Sieff teachers, Klachko has dedicated her life to education and teaching. “The fact that this school has a waiting list of students speaks for itself, so she deserved better treatment. But that’s education, not a hitech frame of mind,” says one of the teachers.
A municipal spokesman praised Sieff’s level of academic studies and facilities and thanked Klachko for her years of service.
“School assessment is carried out in a number of ways and using a number of tools with the cooperation of the school principals. [The model under discussion] was developed together with the principals to provide them with a management aide to improve the school’s achievements using several pedagogic, organizational and valuerelated scales,” he added.