Looking back at the Klein years, researchers hold forth
A collection of independent research measuring the impact of Chancellor Joel Klein’s reforms on the city’s school system will be published next spring. But before that happens, you can listen to some of the researchers online.
Five of them are faculty at New York University’s Steinhardt School and Tim Farrell, a public affairs officer for NYU, has recorded conversations with them and posted them online.
In the first recording, Professors Leanna Stiefel and Amy Ellen Schwartz look at one of Klein’s major policy decisions: the implementation of a weighted funding formula. They find that the new formula only had a significant impact on high schools, but left little imprint on elementary and middle schools.
In 2007, Klein instituted Fair Student Funding: a program that would give schools money based on the needs of the students they serve.
“We looked at this from the 2002 to 2008 and we found that in the elementary and middle schools they wer