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In a speech that met alternatively with applause and silence from a standing-room-only crowd at Chancellor’s Hall in the historic State Education Building in Albany, Gov. Spitzer outlined an agenda for transforming public education in New York.

The established special interests represented in the room were much happier about Spitzer’s promise to increase school funding than they were about his call to pair this spending with much higher accountability.

Spitzer’s speech was strikingly unusual by Albany standards. Rather than offer the bland platitudes we’ve heard for years, he admitted that New York’s public schools offer "our children an education that is nowhere near the top."

Even more refreshing, he warned that, while "accountability without resources is a false promise, resources without accountability are a recipe for waste." He also spoke plainly about "poor performance" and "morally indefensible inequality."

Blunt, politically incorrect – and true.

What exactly did the governor propose?

• Billions of dollars in new aid for New York public schools.
• Abolition of New York’s convoluted school-aid formula.
• An increase in the number of charter schools statewide, with new state aid to help districts (such as Albany and Buffalo) that lose many students to charters handle the transition.
• A focus on driving more educational dollars to preschool and smaller class sizes.
• Support for parents who send their children to nonpublic schools.
• Holding districts to five-year performance contracts, with school closures and the dismissal of principals and school boards a consequence for persistent failure.

The speech was significant in five ways. First, Spitzer would finally resolve the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case. For two decades, Republicans and Democrats alike ducked a resolution of the issue, not for any philosophical reason but because any solution requires making very controversial political decisions.

I don’t think Spitzer’s answer – kicking in significantly more money for New York’s public schools – targets the real problem, but the governor nonetheless deserves credit for having the fortitude to back up what he believes with a specific statewide plan to meet and exceed the court’s mandates.

Second, Spitzer’s embrace of charter schools as a key to reform marks a politically significant transformation. Once closely associated with Republicans, charters now become a bipartisan – or even nonpartisan – issue. (Also strongly supporting charter schools are Lt.-Gov. David Paterson and Senate Democratic Leader Malcolm Smith.)

Third, Spitzer joined with Democrats like the Rev. Floyd Flake in favor of providing support to parents with children in private schools. Flake, a former congressman from Queens, often makes the point that our focus should be on educating the public, not just on "public education." Presumably, the governor intends to follow through on his campaign promise to back education tax credits, and to embrace constitutional forms of increased state aid to nonpublic schools.

Fourth, in embracing charters and support for private-school students, Spitzer is challenging teacher-union bosses in a way that no New York governor – Republican or Democrat – has dared since these unions rose to tremendous political power in the 1960s. This is an unprecedented act of political bravado.

Fifth, Spitzer paired his policy proposals with a commitment to real accountability. Embracing a relatively obscure but crucial reform, Spitzer proposed "a state-of-the-art value-added assessment system that tracks the individual performance of every student in our schools." Details are important, but in a broad sense what this means is that the state will be moving beyond today’s "dumb" testing system.

Right now, the system compares schools based on snapshots of how kids in a particular grade do each year; the "value-added" approach would compare the gains schools make over time with individual students. Based on those results, Spitzer would require school districts to sign charter-like five-year performance contracts.

If a school persistently falls short, the consequences could include dismissal of a principal or superintendent, closure of a school or replacement of a school board.

There are a thousand ways that special interests and their legislative allies could screw up Spitzer’s broad vision, but his speech was an inspiring start.

Thomas W. Carroll is president of the Albany-based Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability.  This article originally appeared in the New York Post on January 30, 2007.