Education: Tough Guy for a Tough Town

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The tall man in the dark double-breasted suit stood ramrod straight while Edward Koch introduced him at a city hall press conference. Then Richard R. Green, freshly appointed chancellor of the New York City school system, biggest (939,142 students) and arguably the baddest in all the land, said to the mayor, "Why don't you be seated?" Koch complied, like a schoolboy whom the principal has put in his place. And when His Honor tried later to rise, the Big Apple's new headmaster froze him with a turn of the hand.

That's how things tend to be when Richard Green, the first black to hold the New York chancellorship, steps forward. Green, 51, has ruled for the past eight years over the 55-school Minneapolis system, where 40% of the 40,000 students are minority youngsters and where the quality of education had sagged badly through the '70s. After first putting in 16 months of planning, Green moved so firmly that in Minneapolis, B.C. also means "before the change."

He shut down 18 underused schools, imposed a citywide curriculum and instituted achievement tests for kindergarten through ninth grade. Those who failed were held back, including almost 10,000 kindergartners over five years. Green negotiated millions in corporate gifts to the school system. And he broke segregation patterns with busing, magnet schools and careful (some thought rigid) monitoring of racial balance. To halt white flight, he organized tours of a turned-around school for real estate agents. They were impressed. So are education observers, who now rate the system among the nation's best. Even his critics, who consider him arrogant and closed-minded, are grudgingly admiring. Says Len Biernat, a law professor who ran unsuccessfully for the school board as a Green opponent: "He's a strong, strong person and can stand up to the heat."

New Yorkers figure he will get plenty of that. Minneapolis is one thing, they snort, New York City is something else. Despite islands of excellence maintained by devoted principals and teachers, the system is a Balkanized wasteland that destroys rulers who would grapple with 32 autonomous districts and a $5.2 billion budget that evaporates with few observable results. "The dimensions of the system can be overwhelming," admits former Chancellor Nathan Quinones, who decided to give up last August. Says a high school teacher: "The three best things about the job are June, July and August."

Consider, as Green must, the realities of the other nine months. Dropout rates approach 90% in some ghetto schools and -- depending on who is counting -- 30% to 55% citywide. A surfeit of aging buildings crumble in disrepair. Desks occasionally spill out of overcrowded classrooms into hallways prowled by student hoodlums who "have been bringing weapons to school for years," says one principal. An overpowerful custodian's union, whose president was killed last year in what police described as a gangland-style rubout, dictates the hours schools will be open. Tenured high school principals cannot be fired without interminable hearings. Under a 19-year-old decentralization plan, elementary and junior high schools enjoy wide latitude in curriculum and administrative matters -- which has resulted in a chaotic absence of accountability. Nevertheless, the central bureaucracy keeps a stranglehold on orders for such bedrock necessities as textbooks and Xerox paper.