Research


Scope and Content Note

This series consists of audio and video recordings of Commissioner of Education Gordon M. Ambach.

Audio recordings are of speeches and addresses given at Nazareth College and State University of New York at Geneseo, as well as meetings of education-related organizations. These organizations include the New York State School Boards Association, the New York State Council of School District Administrators, the American Association of Museums, and the New York State Retired Teachers Association. Also recorded are two appearances on call-in radio programs in Albany and Schenectady, as well as a Christmas Eve 1979 recording of a bell-ringing ceremony at the State Education Department in solidarity with the American hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Iran.

Video recordings include a number of television programs and portions of television programs intended for broadcast on New York public television stations, and for distribution via videotape through the communications networks of school districts and BOCES. These include appearances by Commissioner Ambach in videos on reading comprehension testing, the selection of district superintendents, school breakfast programs, and the importance of instructional television. Ambach also made a number of videotaped addresses shown at meetings of education organizations, designed to show the potential of video recordings for communication and instruction. Also included are segments and interviews from Albany-area television news programs, including those reporting on Ambach's appointment to the post of Commissioner of Education, and on a 1980 scandal involving the illegal sale of questions from that year's Regents examinations. The series also contains television programs in which in-studio and telephone audiences ask Commissioner Ambach questions about educational issues and NYSED policies. Also included are public service announcements for American Education Week, in which Commissioner Ambach encourages parents to visit their children's schools, and for the Parent Reading Partners program, which advise parents to read to their children for at least 15 minutes a day.