Politics on the Hudson

Rochester school superintendent Manuel Rivera, appointed today as Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s new top education adviser, is no stranger to efforts to reform school systems.

Rivera was working in the Rochester system, although not as the superintendent, in the mid-1980s when a sweeping “reform’‘’ plan was adopted that called for higher salaries for teachers and other steps to raise pupil performance.

But in the end little happened beyond the salary hikes and student achievement didn’t improve.

“I did a major study on reform and accountability’’ in Rochester, Rivera said today, when asked about the failed reform effort there. He referred a reporter to a thesis he wrote for his education Ph.D. from Harvard University on the subject. “There any real never a common agreement about accountability and what it meant,’’ he said.

Presumably he will push this time for a more explicit agreement as Spitzer tries to promote his education-reform agenda statewide.