Tales Out of School.

• Author: Foley, Brendan

The media devoted most if its page-one stories about the memoirs of Joe Fernandez, the ex-chancellor of education for the New York City school system, to the juicy tidbits that sell newspapers: The revelation that Fernandez nearly overdosed 40 years ago as a teenager and his political snub of Mario Cuomo. The soap opera was revived in early February when the school board ousted Fernandez after feuding with the chancellor over his stands on gay rights and condom distribution. But the most significant story about Fernandez was still ignored by the press: He had, through his memoirs, offered the public its first hard tour inside the beleaguered New York City school system.

Here Fernandez provides lessons on why janitors in New York City are paid $58,000 annually but don't do windows. Or why the Board of Education can't fire principals with tenure no matter how badly they screw up. The real scandal, as Fernandez aptly demonstrates in his book, occurs silently every day.

The story begins with Fernandez as a troubled teenager in Harlem. A nearly fatal drug overdose at age 18 convinced him to change course and join the Air Force, leading to his college degree at age 27. His early story drifts between seminal moments and the obligatory nostalgia better stored in a diary. But it was as a math teacher in Florida's Dade County that his philosophy on education really began to take shape--a philosophy that centered on parental and teacher involvement in each school's decision-making process. Why not involve those who battle with the system the most--and who understand its problems the best? "My feeling was that you gain more by bringing people in than by trying to keep them out," Fernandez writes.

From this he derived a solution to education bureaucracy called "School-based Management," which he implemented with some success in Dade County as superintendent in the late eighties. The concept is both simple and elegant: Have each school run by a cadre of parents, teachers, and the principal, all working to set school policies in areas from budget to curriculum to personnel. Eliminate needless middle-men who waste resources in their fights for territory between the school and the school board. Finally, create a system of performance feedback so that the effectiveness of strategy introduced at the top can be judged by results rather than politics.

The organizational theory of creative, proactive involvement at all levels is not new. The great statistics...