Learning Beats Testing To The Editor:

The Department of Education is expanding its so-called Empowerment Zone to include roughly one-fourth of the city's public schools. This means that the principals of these schools, rather than the regional or central bureaucracies, will have new authority over key educational policies. In exchange for this they accept greater accountability for outcomes.

This initiative covers not only professional development and program support, but also the option of either implementing the DOE's core curriculum, which critics contend it has in effect abandoned long ago in favor of test preparation, or proposing alternatives. The same choice theoretically applies to systems of assessment.

Participating principals have been given new discretion over funding sources, prioritization, and spending. Restrictions on their existing budgets are relaxed as well. They must consult, but don't require the consent of teachers and parents. Union contracts stay in force.

Eric Nadelstern, the former principal of a charter school, is the Chief Executive of the Empowerment Zones schools.

How will these schools, formerly known as "autonomous", be evaluated? Basically they will live or die based on test data and measures that the Department of Education continues to select from non-bid contractors. There is typically no independent oversight from researchers or experts from outside the tightly controlled system.

This lack of transparency is a stubborn problem under [Schools] Chancellor [Joel] Klein. It has been identified as such by thinkers on all sides of the ideological spectrum.

Careers will sink or swim based on doubtful tests and dubious statistics gathering. Certainly tests can be a logical way to judge whether things work. But it is more urgent that students learn than that they be tested, especially since learning is for the sake of children and the view of most educators is that testing, as it has been morbidly imposed under Chancellor Klein, is for the sake of his public relations team.

Test preparation has already usurped instruction as the activity of record in the classroom.

Tests are a valid tool when they are the right test given the right way for the right reason, not when they fail to measure what is relevant or measure what is not.

Principals who seek some professional liberty and relief from some of the massive micromanagement that has enslaved them in recent years, have no choice but to sign the Empowerment School Performance Agreement. This spells out "leadership changes" that result from two consecutive ratings of "undeveloped", a highly inexact category, on their school's annual "progress report".

A principal stands to lose his job if the flow chart doesn't look pretty. Imagine the pressure on them and, realistically, the trickle-down stress on children. Perhaps that is the cost that must be paid to achieve a significant educational purpose. But is it?

Interestingly, the answer may have come more than once from Mr. Nadelstern himself.

Just a few years before he parlayed an earlier passion into a career move made possible by adopting a contradictory conviction, he wrote to the New York Times on February 7, 2000: " Replacing the joy of learning with test anxiety simply hastens the premature end of childhood. That is too high a price to pay in the service of questionable assessment practices and misguided educational policies."

Back to the future, Mr. Nadelstern? Ron Isaac Fresh Meadows

Responds To Code Reply To The Editor:

Mr. John Giordano reacted with such outrage (June 1) to my take on The Da Vinci Code (da book), that you'd think I'd put the knock on the Church of Sacred Darwinism or something (gratuitous shot here).

Speaking of shots, Mr. Giordano took my non-original criticism of Dan Brown's work (as containing many errors and falsifications) as an opportunity to put down the very religion misrepresented by Brown.

Mr. Giordano refers to my "religious interpretation of fact" (as opposed to interpretations made by skeptics and atheists, I suppose). The fact of the matter, however, is that nobody has to make any kind of interpretation to find the numerous errors of fact in Brown's book. All anyone has to do is to compare key statements put into the mouths of his characters with what is the fact in each case. You just have to be able to look or count (to only 13, actually) or read books by genuine scholars, books based on verified- as opposed to forged-documents. No spin necessary.

"Da Book" aside, I must admit that Mr. Giordano made at least one correct assertion in his letter: "One man's miracle [can be] another man's malarkey." Our everyday, ordinary experience validates that. (Funny, though, I didn't bring up miracles in my letter.) He also declares certain views "unacceptable" to him. Fair enough. But he also scoffs at the miracles (that I didn't bring up, mind you) as mere "parlor tricks." (Incidentally, there's a prof named Nof out in La La Land who recently suggested that the Apostles might have been fooled into believing that Jesus walked on water because (maybe) the lake was frozen over. Apparently, they wouldn't have noticed all the ice on the oars.)

Look, the statement that "miracles exist" is either true or false. Miracles exist or they don't. I couldn't prove their existence to Mr. Giordano's satisfaction; he can't prove his opinion that their existence is impossible. Sincerely, (Mr.) B. Ceruti Elmhurst

The G Shall Ride Again To The Editor:

Removing G service from the Queens Plaza station was myopic, to say the least, especially when you consider the reason, to make room for the V train, the highly touted solution to rush hour congestion in Manhattan. The demand for the creation of a new local train and the bureaucratic rerouting of an existing one didn't come out of Queens. It certainly didn't come from the Brooklyn bound passengers fortunate enough to bypass a timely detour through Manhattan, via the G, to get to a borough contiguous to their own. The MTA's replacing of the G with the V for thirteen of fifteen stops in Queens was baffling, if inconsequential, to many who see any local train as a means of reaching an express. For Queens residents (particularly those in Astoria and Flushing) who needed to get to Brooklyn, it was disastrous. The last stop on the G in Queens, now is Court Square, one [stop] short of Queens Plaza, a major junct[ion] uniting the E,F,R, and, previously, G. Queens Plaza, like 74th StBroadway and 71st Ave before it, is a crucial stop because the trains run on parallel tracks, making transfers relatively painless, none of the shuffling or mad dashing through circuitous tunnels. The same cannot be said about 23rd StEly, now the only way of reaching the G, where you indeed have to go up and around, through a tunnel, then back down again. This is hardly an adequate substitute and the cause of much commuter hostility toward the MTA. Why the MTA viewed the G train, and the needs of the Queens and Brooklyn residents that depended on it, as negligible is worth examining-as is why they'll have to restore service to the G.

The first fun fact the MTA is quick to point out is that the G train still goes to the aforementioned stops. This is then followed-in quick, hushed tones-with the pertinent, "on weeknights and weekends". What isn't mentioned is that the tentative schedule of the G is subject to any neighboring station, pipe, or sidewalk undergoing repair, of which there have been many, resulting in an even more irregular service. Proponents of the train aren't as quick as the MTA to dismiss this as mere coincidence, more like a convenient way to validate their decision to curtail the line on the basis of low ridership.

The MTAhas always maintained that the reason for choosing the G was a logistical one: The line had the lowest ridership; therefore, the fewest number of people would be inconvenienced by the attempt to alleviate Manhattan traffic. This argument loses some of its merit when it's considered that the method of census taking involves assessing congestion at specific points throughout Manhattan, leaving the G line well out of reach of any extensive or thorough analyses. Their assessment was just, in fact, supposition, the result of cosmopolitan egoism: since the train doesn't go through Manhattan, then it isn't really necessary.

If an accurate analysis of G ridership before truncation was inconclusive, post truncation, the MTA could salvage its basic premise by ensuring the numbers they needed. How? By burdening the line with enough obstacles so that only individuals with no other recourse would ride it. The MTA insults the public's intelligence by pretending to be oblivious to how straphangers would react to changes on the G, such as the reduction of cars from six to four, tenuous weeknight/ weekend schedules and absurdly winding [sic] transfers. Does the MTA entertain that commuters feel loyalty toward a given subway line that extends beyond its convenience and efficiency, a loyalty that overrides the pervasive New York disdain for the unreliable? No, of course not. So the MTA's numbers are finally adding up. Whether low ridership was the reason for or the result of its rerouting is of little consequence; what matters is that low ridership on the G is, now, an irrefutable fact.

What is also fact is that the sleepy, nondescript town across the river from the United Nations, known misleadingly as Long Island City, is experiencing both a residential and commercial boom. Every other corner is undergoing either renovation of old or construction of entirely new buildings. Some bear signs indicating their intended status on the real estate food chain, "Luxury Condos". Others are more modest, 1 and 2 bedroom Condos for sale. On the business side of things, Investors are sinking a lot of capital into renovating the surrounding area of the CitiCorp building with the intention of creating a business district. Since Court Square is the station directly below the skyscraper, reliable train service to and from [it] is crucial. The attempt to satisfy the increasing need for better and varied transportation can be seen in the creation of the water-taxi that connects E. 34th Street in Manhattan to Hunters Point, Long Island City, which was launched the first of May 2006.

For lovers of art and diversion, Long Island City offers destinations such as P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, Isamu Noguchi Garden Museum, and the Astoria pier, comprised of four docks stretching out into the water, each offering a different assortment of furniture to rest on and enjoy the Manhattan skyline - one of the piers is even reserved for fishing. Long Island City's attractions have already brought many intrepid visitors, but it should not be fixed so that only the bravest dare venture into a neighborhood so maligned by the MTA.

Central Brooklyn has long established itself as what Long Island City is on the verge of becoming, a creatively vibrant community. If the G was considered the train to nowhere, it was because Queens offered nothing for the leisurely or business oriented masses, meaning the part Queens played in the campaign against the Gs rerouting carried little clout. Brooklyn took the brunt of the fight. Imagine Queens and Brooklyn as two fists belonging to the same boxer. In the first round with the MTA, the boxer went in with one hand tied behind his back. He swung deftly, fought valiantly but lost, as was to be expected. But now the fetter is off, and the freed hand is warming up, admiring its own reach and speed and itching for a crack at the opponent that summarily dismissed it, shackled as it had been.

The MTA maintains that any changes it makes to the current schedule will be one based on facts, not politics. Queens and Brooklyn residents should make it a point to hold them to their word, because the numbers are adding up and it's not going to be in the MTA's favor. New Yorkers know that stat[istic]s always lag a few years behind the pulse of the city; all the time spent tabulating rough data blinds analysts to what is patently clear to any person living through the issue of debate. So in short, the MTAwill restore the G to six cars, Queens Plaza will be made its last stop, the V will start at 23rdEly and continue to be viewed indifferently, and the MTA will never admit that it was wrong, though it'll know deep down inside that it was. Mario K. Norea Elmhurst