Politicians, Ugly Buildings, and Whores: Should Voters Accept Autocratic Leadership? What Price Democracy?

Politicians, ugly buildings and whores,

all get respect if they last long enough.

Clyde Haberman, quoting Noah Cross in Chinatown

 

Remember that school governance issue? It dominated the news: panels, workshops, ad hoc organizations, article after article, constant speculation and detailed reports … poof! wiped off the pages and blogs by the presidential election, a roller coaster stock market, predictions of the Great Depression or worse, and, oh yes, that term limits “thing.”

 

The Mayor averred that the coming fiscal debacle required his experience and skills, and, coincidentally, just before the City Council vote on term limits. Guess what? The NY Times reports that the City is not running a deficit, but is on target, so, why did the Mayor “predict” a fiscal abyss? Could it be politics?

 

Now that the Mayor is “on the road” to a third term he has laid out his plans for the economic revival of the city.

 

On the State level the fiscal crisis appears to be far more serious, maybe just leadership style on the part of Paterson and Bloomberg? The Governor predicts a staggering $47 billion deficit by 2011-2012 and, testifying before a Congressional committee, asked for substantial federal aid.

 

New York State government has a real live bi-cameral legislature. Laws require the approval of both houses, legislators from all over the fifty thousand square miles of New York State. That tired, old Madisonian tradition of  … Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.  From Niagara Falls to the Finger Lakes, from Montauk to the Adirondacks, from Buffalo to Brownsville, the competing interests of all New Yorkers must be addressed in the messy, and democratic creation of policies to address the state’s economic woes.

 

 On the city level Bloomberg disdains that “messy” give and take that we call democracy. The same is true for the education scene in New York City and Washington DC. The involvement of elected officials, (other than the Mayor) parents, communities, and, especially unions, are antithetical to running a school system.

 

The Atlantic Monthly cogently lays out the Rhee (and Bloomberg/Klein) views on education and school management.

 

To Rhee and her fellow reformers, schools can, by themselves, produce successful students. To her opponents (and they include liberals and conservatives), schools are not enough, however “successful” their students. They are an important, but hardly the only, means with which children are inculcated with the skills and mores of their community.

 It is to answer a basic question about the nature of urban governance, a question about two visions of big-city management. In one, city politics is a vibrant, messy, democratic exercise, in which both the process and the results have value. In the other, city politics is only a prelude, the way to install a technocratic elite that can carry out reforms in relative isolation from the give-and-take of city life. Rhee’s tenure will answer whether these two positions are mutually exclusive—and, if they are, whether public-school reform is even possible.

 

“Technocratic elitism” is both arrogant and dismissive of the electorate that government is supposed to serve. But, then again, what if it “works?” What if the Bloomberg regency does protect the City from the winds of depression and, in spite of their arrogance schools seem to get better? Is the “danger of autocracy” worse than the cure? Will the public, voters, express their wraith at the polls at their next opportunity?

 

Will the politicians aka whores of today gain respect tomorrow? 

” I Hold It That a Little Rebellion Now and Then Is A Good Thing:” Where Is Daniel Shays When We Need Him?

 

It was tough times in the fall of 1786: farmers and small businessman couldn’t pay back loans or pay their mortgages, creditors were going to court and foreclosing. Daniel Shays, a Massachusetts farmer and rabble rouser  collected up a thousand or so armed farmers and marched on the arsenal in Springfield. The Massachusetts governor easily routed the rebels, most were immediately pardoned, and, even Shays was pardoned after spending some time in jail. The Governor was defeated in the next election.

 

Abigail Adams reported the events to Thomas Jefferson, who was serving as the Ambassador in France.

 

…With regard to the Tumults in my Native state which you inquire about, I wish I could say that the report had exaggerated them. It is too true Sir that they have been carried to so alarming a height as to stop the Courts of Justice in several counties. Ignorant, wrestless desperados, without conscience or principles, have led a deluded multitude to follow their standard, under the pretense of grievances which have no existence but in their imaginations. Some of them were crying out for paper currency, some for an equal distribution of property, some were for annihilation of all debts ….

 

Luxury and extravagance both in furniture and dress had pervaded all orders of our Countryman and women, and was hastening fast to sap their independence by involving every class of citizen in distress, and accumulating debts upon them which they were unable to discharge. Vanity was becoming  a more powerful principle than patriotism.

 

Sound familiar? A truly eerie deja vu, again.

 

The following Spring, in June 1788 Alexander Hamilton, at a meeting of the Constitutional Convention arguing for lifetime appointment to the Congress,

 

What, for example will be he inducements for gentleman of fortune and abilities to leave their home and business to attend annually and long? … Will not the power, therefore, be thrown into the hands of the demagogue or middling politician, who, for the sake of a small stipend and the hopes of advancement, will offer himself as a candidate, and the real men of weight and influence, by remaining at home, add strengths to the state governments?

 

The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom change or determine right …

 

Can a democratic assembly, who annually revolve in the mass of the people, be supposed steadily to pursue the public good? Nothing but a permanent body can check the impudence of democracy, Their turbulent and uncontrolling disposition requires checks.

 

Alex and Mike sure would have been buddies.

 

Tom Jefferson, in spite of sexually abusing Sally Hemmings, his teenage slave, and selling slaves to buy wine, had confidence in the masses, the people.

 

The mass of mankind … enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has it’s evil too: the principle of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it become nothing. (“I prefer perilous liberty to quiet servitude”) Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and, as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions indeed generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them.  An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in their punishment of rebellion so as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.

 

Joel Klein and Mike Bloomberg are firmly rooted in the Federalist past … absolutely no belief or confidence in the knowledge of the average “Joe Six Pack” (or, perhaps Joe the plumber). Klein casts aside any role for parents or the community, it is Joel alone who should rule over the multi billion dollar edifice, the Department of Education. For Mike, the fear of the people has lead to his snatching the vote away from the public, and, gutting the City Charter.

 

In spite of their arrogance and disdain for the people it was the people who threw out the Federalists in 1800 - in an election far more “down and dirty” than any current election.

 

Maybe the local ancestors of Danny Shays still have that revolutionary DNA …? Never can tell.

Rothstein v Walcott: Will Strengthening Families Strengthen Schools, or, Is Accountability the Key to Closing the Achievement Gap?

 ”If you want to know about the corner murderers and their victims in Baltimore, don’t ask a cop, ask a teacher.”

The Wire, Year 4.

The Center for New York City Affairs (Milano) at the New School University has issued a Report and hosted a forum, Strengthening Schools by Strengthening Families: Community Strategies to Reverse Chronic Absenteeism in Early Grades and Improve Supports for Children and Families. 

 

The Report  is a “must read.”

 

Last year, more than 90,000 children in grades K through 5 (more than 20 percent of enrollment) missed at least one month of school. In high poverty neighborhoods, the number was far higher, approaching one-third of primary grade students.

 

Key findings of the attendance analysis include: 

• Last  year, in 12 of New York City’s 32 school districts, well over 25 percent of primary school children were chronically absent from school, missing more than 10 percent of the school year.

• In five of these districts, fully 30 percent of the primary school children, kindergarten through fifth grade, were chronically absent.

• In six of these districts, between 8 and 11 percent of primary school children missed 38 or more days of school during the 2007/2008 school year.

• And in 123 individual New York City primary schools at least 30 percent of the children were chronically absent.

The DOE has used “average daily attendance” as their metric, the Report shows us that “chronic absenteeism,” (defined as absent more than 10% of the school year) unearths a startling problem that the DOE has been lax in addressing.

 

Not surprisingly schools with the highest levels of “chronic absenteeism,” are schools in the poorest sections of the city. The charts and maps in the Report cover the entire city, and, has a number of recommendations

 

The report suggests an approach for targeting schools with the greatest need, describing a possible structure for supporting practical assessments of the problem, followed by effective working partnerships between principals and skilled community-based organizations.

 

The forum that accompanied the release of the Report featured Richard Rothstein and Deputy Mayor Dennis Walcott.

 

Rothstein, the author of Class and Schools, and a signer of the Broader, Bolder Agenda, avers, “social class differences can be narrowed, not eliminated by effective schools.”

 

He points to asthma rates four times higher in high poverty schools than in middle class schools, the availability of medical care to middle class parents and the difficultly in obtaining care for poor parents.

 

Rothstein concludes, “…it is a ‘fanciful notion’ that school reform alone can be used as a lever to narrow the achievement gap … in fact … it has had perverse consequences.”

 

Deputy Mayor Walcott suggested flipping the title to “Strengthening Families by Strengthening Schools” and lauded the Bloomberg/Klein policies. He praised the DOE and agreed that there must be a greater focus on “pockets,” and went on to cite a long list of Klein programs.

 

He emphasized that “…challenges cannot be excuses … we can never accept poverty as an excuse,” and concluded by referring the audience to the web  site Education Equality Project.

 

A panel, including a DOE official, a principal and two reps of organizations with wide experience in communities discussed the Report.

 

As Rothstein pointed out, signing both agendas is a political response. The Bush administration and their acolytes have no interest in addressing poverty, after all, the marketplace will resolve poverty. The current economic cataclysm destroys their deeply flawed, cynical model. Competition: vouchers and charter schools, and a cold, unfeeling accountability, a strict schools management agenda is as faulty as the mindless tools that have driven the world economy into chaos.

 

Schools are part of a larger community, a community that must seek a coordinated approach: health and medical services, housing, jobs and safe and secure neighborhoods are part of any education initiative. To do less is tragic, and criminal.

Archons at Tweed: Will the “Absolute and Unquestioned” Power of the Mayor Allow Drastic Cuts in the Classroom?

 

Teachers tell me, “I’m not buying or selling a house, trying to borrow money, the market swings are disturbing but they don’t impact me.” Au contraire!

 

The New York City economy is heavily dependent on the Wall Street, perhaps as much as twenty-five percent of city revenue is stock market based. It may seem like a long time ago but the Mayor announced a 2.5% cut for this fiscal year (the NYC fiscal year is from July 1 till June 30), and a 5% cut for the next fiscal year. These cuts were proposed before the market tumbled!!

 

Governor Patterson is calling the legislature back in session on November 18th to cut $2 billion from this year’s state budget (the NYS fiscal year is from April 1 til March 31), and, it looks like the cuts will impact schools immediately. The Governor implies cuts for the next fiscal year of at least 5% … 8-10 billion dollars.

 

Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty … how does it impact me, my classroom.

 

The DOE posts up-to-date school budgets on their web site.

 

Deduct 2.5% and 5% from your current school budget.

Assume the cuts will impact at the beginning of the next school term (Feb 1)

Divide dollars cut by six months of average teacher salary to determine number of teachers cut.

Multiply teachers lost by five classes each to determine number of classes lost in secondary schools.

 

 School Name Current Staff (Tching)/ 2.5% cut (1/31/09/ 5.0% cut (1/31/09 /Classes Eliminated

 

Stuyvesant HS           164                    10.7                    21.4                                    53

 Cardozo HS              167                    13.46                  26.9                                    67

Beacon HS                  53                      4                        8                                      20

J 104M                        60                     10                      20                                      50

PS 6M                        46                       4.3                     8.6

PS 41M                      49                       4.5                     9                       

 

Supervisory and Special Education positions are excluded.

 

A Principal will have to decide: cut the Advanced Placement classes with lower registration, electives, “exotic” foreign languages, or, maybe the Arts programs, a Guidance Counselor or two; in the elementary schools reduce the number of classes on a grade, i.e., reduce the sixth grade (120 kids) from four classes with 30 students each to three classes with 40 students each.

 

Of course the Department could absorb as much as possible from the caverns of Tweed, the Support Organizations, the Integrated Services Center, as well as the tens of millions in contracts supporting their initiatives and the suspending the Leadership Academy, etc.

 

The Chancellor prides himself on creating a “Schools Management Organization” and leaving the educational decisions to the principals at each school. These decisions include how to add positions in the “good times,” and, subtract positions during “bad times.”

 

Should this decision be left to the Chancellor alone?

 

The essence of the movement to re-jigger mayoral control deals with this very question. Shouldn’t leadership representing the voices of a wider constituency make this decision?

 Elizabeth Green, formerly of the NY Sun, and now residing at Gotham Schools quotes the former Chairman of the NYS Assembly Education Committee, and an architect of the current mayoral control law:

 

The original 2002 law authorizing mayoral control was not intended to give the Mayor absolute and unquestioned power over all education policy. Among its provisions was the creation of a high level citywide ‘Board of Education’ to provide a measure of oversight and checks and balances. The citywide Board was expected to exercise its own judgment and due diligence on policy matters of citywide and systemic importance and also be responsive to the views of the public. However, that Board has been rendered virtually irrelevant. This is absolutely contrary to the intent of the law. At the same time, many parents want reasonable input into how their schools are run.

 

Our schools are facing devastating cuts, will the current “absolute and unquestioned” power of the Mayor allow these cuts? Will the “legacy” of the Chancellor, the creation of a “management system,” allow these cuts to be visited upon the classrooms? Will the Chancellor use this fiscal crisis to try and change excessing and layoff rules/laws?

 

Teachers and parents face drastic reductions in basic services and increases in class size, and, these actions will have dramatic impacts on their lives.

 

The bottom line: will children become the pawns of the archons at Tweed?

Janus at Tweed: Sacrificing Children and Families for a National Career

Janus-faced - marked by deliberate deceptiveness especially by pretending one set of feelings and acting under the influence of another; “she was a deceitful scheming little thing”- Israel Zangwill; “a double-dealing double agent”; “a double-faced infernal traitor and schemer”- W.M.Thackeray

double-dealing, double-tongued, duplicitous, two-faced, double-faced, deceitful

dishonest, dishonorable – deceptive or fraudulent; disposed to cheat or defraud or deceive

 

The Stock Market “ping-pongs” up and down hundreds of points, world leaders huddle and create “fixes” involving trillions of dollars, yes, trillions, that’s twelve zeros! This “crisis” will not be over in days or weeks or months, it will takes years to recover, if we recover.

 

The fixes are so complex that they defy the understanding of ordinary mortals. Will they “work?” What does “work” mean? One sage warned of the laws of unintended consequences: “fixes” to one problem may create other problems. Does Chaos Theory apply to economics? We do know that cities and states will face staggering declines in revenue.

 

The Governor has called the legislature into session in mid November – to cut from one to two billion dollars from the budget, that means by March 31. The next session, beginning in January will be dominated by budget: cuts of at least 5% (in a $124 billion budget) for the next fiscal year beginning April 1. The State budget impacts directly on the City, whose revenues are heavily dependent on the stock market.

 

Mayor Bloomberg, Speaker Quinn and some of the City Council members argue for a third term: after all, they aver, only their experience will allow the City to survive. Guess they’ve been keeping that boundless off-shore pool of oil a secret, or, maybe Mike will open his coffers to fill the city’s vault …

 

With the school system facing huge cuts what is the Chancellor doing? Nothing … business as usual.

 

What should he be doing? How about a press release:

 

Chancellor Klein: I am inviting leaders of the UFT, the CSA and DC 37, the three major unions, representatives of school and parent advocacy groups, to participate in a Task Force to explore strategies to react to the fiscal crisis confronting the city and the schools. We hope to collaboratively approach these issues in a manner to minimize the impact on schools, familes and children.

 

Eduwonkette reports that Tweed is continuing to post new six digit jobs, pushing ahead with the $85 million ARIS data warehouse disaster, discredited School Report Cards and the remainder of the Education Equality Project agenda.

 

Instead it is the teacher union that joins a safety net coalition.

 

Almost 75 groups – including the UFT – joined together as the “One New York: Fighting for Fairness” coalition and kicked off a campaign on Oct. 10 to urge Mayor Bloomberg and the City Council to protect poor and middle-class New Yorkers from budget cuts to vital services and to close the budget gap in part through raising revenue.

 

Today Comptroller William Thompson predicts a loss of 165,000 jobs.

 

In spite of the universally dire predictions Klein absolutely refuses to address the problem, his ideology comes first, instead of halting, even temporarily, expensive, unproven initiatives, he pushes ahead.

 

How many dollars are being wasted?

 

* the ATR hiring pool continues to grow as Klein creates a conflict ridden future contract negotiating issue

* “rubber rooms” are filled with teachers who will never be charged with anything

* the $85 million ARIS data warehouse continues to stumble

* do we really need another crop of small high schools next year?

* do schools with grades of “A” and “B” require assistance from Empowerment/School Support Organizations? Shouldn’t these decisions be made by the schools?

 

Who will be injured by this crisis? The answer is clear: the parents and caregivers of the children we teach, that’s who will lose jobs? Who will default on their mortgages? Who will be unable to pay their rent?

 

The poorest and the most vulnerable will suffer from unimagined hardships, and, it will be the students we teach who will be impacted by this economic catastrophe.

 

We should be supporting the community school concept, instead the Janis at Tweed ignores the pain in the faces of the weakest and plans his next career on the national scene.

Hubris Is a Destructive Trait: Will Klein’s Intransigence Sink the School System?

Man is not born evil. Why then are some of them

infected with the plague of malevolence? It’s because

those who are their head have the malady

 and communicate it to the rest of mankind. 

Voltaire.

Will the financial system fall into the abyss?

 

Can the government afford to absorb the failing banks and financial institutions?

 

Are the Republicans and McCain the Herbert Hoovers of 2008?

 

Each morning as the stock market opens President Bush makes a brief upbeat speech and the market tumbles.

 

In New York City Mayor Bloomberg asks all city agencies to make an immediate 2.5% budget cut and to plan for a five percent cut next year, and perhaps much sharper cuts to come.

 

In the summer of 1975 I was a member of the UFT negotiating committee. We met with the Board of Ed every few days, agreed on a few issues, disagreed on most … it was an “ordinary” negotiation, until the waning days of August. Rumors spread that the city was in dire fiscal straits … was it a negotiating ploy?

 

Days before the opening of school “layoff” letters went out to over 10,000 teachers … all elementary school teacher with less then 5.5 years were laid off.  French teachers with fifteen years were laid off … for the third time in seven years the teacher union went on strike.

 

After a five day strike the union hammered out a contract that eliminated cluster teachers in elementary schools and shortened the school day a few days a week in elementary and middle schools. The City was still on the edge of total collapse.

 

Herman Badillo called for a default … all contracts would be voided.

 

As the clock ticked toward default Al Shanker agreed to commit $150 million dollars of teacher pension money to buy city obligations … and bail out the city. Most teachers were opposed to the loan.

 

All the loans were repaid, with substantial interest … Al Shanker bailed out the City. Richard Kahlenberg chronicles the story in his excellent Shanker biography.

 

The New York City schools are at risk … if the economy continues to falter the fiscal impact on the City will be substantial … the impact on schools will be devastating

 

In spite of the impending drastic cuts the Chancellor continues with a policy … the refusal to place excess teachers into schools … the Absent Teacher Reserve Pool, now over 1,000 teachers … costs the Department many tens of millions of dollars.

 

The President of the Teacher Union, Randi Weingarten has made a proposal that will, in the short run, protect the classroom from cuts.

 

The Chancellor has rejected the union plan.

 

Klein’s entire tenure as Chancellor may depend on how he deals with the current crisis. Will he stand by his position … excess teachers who are not absorbed/rehired within a year will put on “unpaid leave, effectively laying them off. …? Will he continue to defend his $85 million flawed ARIS computer scheme?  Will Mayor Bloomberg intervene?

 

These are perilous times … and history may remember Klein as a Chancellor who sank the school system.

 

Hubris is a destructive trait.

An Interview With Joel Klein (that, unfortunatly, will never happen)

 

Chancellor Klein, you are the leader of the largest school system in the nation, what is the educational philosophy of the NYC school system?

 

Under my leadership we have created a schools management system … we don’t advocate any educational program. In the first years in my job I hired and listened to advisors who all advocated for some program or other, whole language versus phonics, Everyday Math, etc., I realized that those decisions should be made by the educators closest to the children, the principals.

 

What is the role of parents and teachers in the school level decision-making process?

 

I would expect principals would discuss these issues at the school level, however, to quote Bill Ouchi, “School-Based Management Corrupts Accountability.” We hold principals accountable for the decisions they make … they cannot and should not be able to point to parents and teachers as excuses.

 

What do you mean by holding principals accountable?

 

We evaluate and grade schools based upon student progress, we provide each and every school with a host of readily accessible student achievement data, and if schools do not make progress, by which we mean receive grades of “D” or “F” we may remove the principal.

 

How are you going to use the new teacher progress reports? 

 

Ideally the teacher progress report would be the basis of determining teacher evaluations and teacher remuneration, unfortunately the teacher union opposes us.

 

You appear to have a conflict-ridden relationship with the teacher union, why?

 

The union represents teachers, we represent children. For almost fifty years the union negotiated contracts

that narrow the powers of principals and the school system. We are making every attempt to reverse decades of decisions that harm kids.

 

Give me some examples.

 

The contract relieves teachers of a host of duties, supervising kids at lunch, in the hallways, it requires the principal to give out assignments by seniority, it restricts how principals evaluate teachers, it establishes seniority excessing rules, over a hundred pages of ”the principal shall not …”

 

What changes would you make?

 

I would favor an extremely brief contract that basically give principals wide discretion.

 

What changes would you make in legislation?

 

I would eliminate defined benefit pensions and tenure.

 

Why?

 

Teachers improve at different rates, and achieve the “peak” of their growth at around ten years, and then their skills diminish. They hang on until they are able to retire, frequently the last 15 or twenty years of their tenure they are simply going through the motions. If we replaced the current system with a 401(k) plan teachers could leave at any time and move on to other employment. Tenure protects mediocre and/or incompetent teachers, it is harmful to children.  I really admire my friend Michelle Rhee in Washington, DC, she is well on her way to creating an entirely new model that is children based not teacher based.

 

If the Mayor serves another term and you serve with him what will be your major priorities?

 

The current teacher contract expires in November, 2009 and I want to negotiate many changes, this will be quite difficult, but, this is a window that may never reopen.

 

Can you give me some examples?

 

Sure, excess teachers that do not find jobs in a reasonable period of time should be placed on unpaid leaves. If no school wants to hire someone they shouldn’t be working. The current system is criminal, they can sit around, not seek employment and receive full pay.

 

The union argues that teachers are excessed due to school closings or reduction in students, the teacher is not at fault, and, that senior teachers are at greater risk due to their higher salaries.

 

All true, but, if no school wants to hire you should we have to pay you?

 

Other examples?

 

Ideally we would want to test kids in September and June and base teacher evaluations and teacher remuneration on pupil progress. The union’s role is to protect members who pay dues, my role is to protect child. We have diametrically opposite missions. On some issues we can work together, but others we are on opposite sides.

 

Critics accuse you of using flawed tools to evaluate schools and teachers, and, twisting data to make you look good.

 

I’m smiling … we are at war … we are overturning a system that has been entrenched for decades, we do what we have to do and our opponents do what they have to do.

 

Teachers and their unions are not my enemies, they simply are caught up in a paradigm that has destroyed the American labor movement. Protectionism, whether in the automobile unions, or in teachers unions, will lead to their demise. Unionized teachers impede student progress, and, they are doomed … I want to sit down with them and create a new role that works for kids and teachers.

 

You sound like the financial institutions that convinced us that they had discovered a path to endless profits, in reality they were morally and ethically corrupt and may have driven the world into a depression … are you leading us down this perilous path?

 

Mr Klein … the interview isn’t over … Mr Klein … why are you walking away? Can’t you answer us? What if you are totally wrong? Are you also morally and ethically corrupt?

Toxic Asset: How Will a Bloomberg/Klein Third Term Impact the Passage/Amending of the School Governance Law?

 

 

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way.” Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities.

A historic presidential election is pushed off the front page by a cataclysmic economic crisis that is pushed off the front page by the Bloomberg Term Limit/Third Term announcement that is pushed aside by the Biden-Palin debate.

 

Are we gazing at the sparkling future of an Obama/Biden presidency, or, a catastrophe paralleling the Great Depression?

 

Will the Bloomberg push for a third term succeed? Will there be a public outrage/backlash?

 

And, what about the chances of a Cubs/White Sox World Series?

 

As the vortex of news spins around us is there a black hole absorbing everything?

 

Interestingly in the midst of this whirlpool the union and the Department agree upon the release of individual teacher progress reports  … that will NOT be part of any teacher evaluations. Is this the beginning of a new era of union/Department collaboration, or, a pause?

 

There is no question that the push for a Bloomberg third term includes a push to retain the current iteration of mayoral control.

 

 Betsy Gotbaum generally supports mayoral control, with a few caveats,

 

 There are two areas where we see flaws most clearly: the wholesale disenfranchisement of and disregard for stakeholders, including parents; and the lack of real accountability and transparency.

 

A NY Times editorial leans toward the recommendations in the Gotbaum Report

 

 The report calls for greater transparency on test scores and other data. It wants the city comptroller to have the same audit powers over the Department of Education as over other municipal agencies. And it calls on the city to do a better job of including parents and community groups in policy discussions. These and other worthy suggestions need to be discussed in a civil climate as the reauthorization process gets under way. No reasonable person wants to turn back the clock on New York schools.

A range of other organizations have been exploring tweaks and, for some, more wide ranging changes. A committee of the City Council, the NYC Democratic member of the State Senate, and importantly, the teacher union.

 For six years the Department, especially Joel Klein, has stonewalled elected officials. Legislators have small pools of dollars that they dispense to organizations in their community. A legislator wanted to give dollars to a local school, he called the school, the principal refused to speak with him without the prior approval of the DOE Office of Communications.

 Principals know they can avoid parents, the only recourse for the parent is to call “311,” …

 Will legislators reauthorize the current school governance plan with Joel Klein continuing as chancellor?

 Are the moderate Betsy Gotbaum suggestions a path to a new plan? Will Bloomberg compromise, or, fight to the bitter end to retain each and every current item in the law?

 For some a Bloomberg third term, and four more years of Joel Klein is a “toxic asset,” and, legislators will insist on substantial changes. Or, maybe the just announced individual teacher report card plan augers new “gentler, kinder” Department of Ed …

 Stay tuned.