So you already have heard about the new survey, haven't you? Mayor Bloomberg and Joseph Klein, surrounded by a cornucopia of Department of Education status quoers, unveiled the City's first-ever Learning Environment Survey, a tool (as in not another instance of paper-pushing) that is meant to gather the opinions of principals, teachers, parents and students about how wonderful or terrible it is to be in a NYC middle and high school. Which is why they will ask about whether schools are:

1. setting high expectations
2. safe
3. creating effective environments for learning

The whole press release sounds like an unprecedented exercise in open government :

"Today, we are giving parents, students, and teachers an unprecedented opportunity: the chance to tell us if our schools are set up to help students learn and the chance to help us grade our schools," said Chancellor Klein. "Our ads say, 'When one parent speaks, schools listen; when one million parents speak, schools change,' and it's true. I'm looking forward to learning from our parents, teachers, and students."

Oh my blog! Klein and Bloomberg sooooooo want to know what I have to say. I am, like, so  impressed!

Then, I got to the bottom of the page :

Survey responses are being collected by an external vendor, assuring the confidentiality of answers.

And there is nary a peep about who this vendor is.

Don't you think that anybody espousing platitudes about transparency and open government would at least have the clarity of mind to say who is the external vendor we are to hold accountable for such work?

Don't you want to know how much are these "external vendors" are being paid? Because, you know, accountability and accounting have the same latin root.

Well, I do.