Do you remember the “good old school days” of Michael Bloomberg and Joel Klein? Apparently the New York Times editorial team yearns for its return. School closings. Students and teachers displaced. Community wishes ignored. Data pushers in charge of policy. Inexperienced principals with authoritarian directives threatened with being replaced if they didn’t deliver higher test scores – immediately. Test prep curriculum with plenty of high-stakes testing. High-stakes tests were the only way to churn out the data for evaluating children and punishing and removing teachers – to hell with meaningful learning. The Bloomberg/Klein testing regime was a major reason for the emergence of the parent-led and teacher-supported opt-out movement in the New York metropolitan area.
Carmen Fariña, who recently announced her retirement, was a career educator, teacher, principal, district administration, assistant chancellor, and then school chancellor. We have had our disagreements, but she knew children, teachers, families, and schools. Learning and building school community, not testing and data collection, were her priorities. The Times editorial called her focus on learning and community a “vague agenda.” They want to close more schools, get rid of more teachers, and resume intensive data collection, which means more testing.
The Times editorial proposed successors to Fariña is basically a assemblage of anti-Fariñas. Their number one candidate is Shael Polakow-Suransky, the former chief of data collection for Bloomberg/Klein. Polakow-Suransky was a teacher once, at a failed Harlem middle school, and then got out of the classroom to become a school administrator, at the Bronx International School, a school the Great Schools website describes as “far below the state average in key measures of college and career readiness,” a school where students graduate “without the coursework and test scores they need to succeed.” With his record of achievement, Polakow-Suransky was primed to be an all-star in the Bloomberg/Klein Department of Data Collection.
Other Times promoted candidates are John King, former head of State Education in New York State and an advocate for high-stakes testing, Jaime Aquino, a former Deputy Superintendent in Los Angles where he was accused of improperly steering a major technology contract to Pearson Education (information left out of the Times editorial) and who now operates his own edu-company, Paymon Rouhanifard, who worked as a manager for Teach for America and an analyst for Goldman Sachs, before taking similar roles in New York and New Jersey Education Departments, John White, the Louisiana State Superintendent of Education, who also has ties to Teach for America and Bloomberg/Klein, and currently overseas a department that promotes charter schools and school vouchers, and Kaya Henderson, former Superintendent of “beleaguered” Washington DC schools, who was reprimanded by the DC Board of Ethics for giving preferential treatment to politically powerful individuals who wanted their children placed in top schools and censured for soliciting donations for a nonprofit organization (news mentioned in the Times editorial that endorsed her anyway). What a collection of people who should be allowed nowhere near schools and children.
The education website Chalkbeat offers some better choices, including career educators and New York State Education Regents Betty Rosa and Kathleen Cashin, and some current DOE second-tier officials. They also list retreads like former School Chancellor Rudy Crew and proven disappointments like New York State Education Commissioner Mary Ellen Elia.
I don’t believe there is no one available in the United States to become New York City School Chancellor who is committed to children, learning, teaching, and public schools. However, I need to make it clear that if nominated as New York City School Chancellor I will decline. If selected, I will not serve.
The Times editorial did call for “ending profound racial segregation” in New York City schools, a goal I also champion. But I don’t see a quick fix in a economically segregated city with a school system that is almost 70% Black and Latino, where 75% of the students live in poverty, almost 15% are English Language Learners, and 20% have registered disabilities. The Times, which generally promotes gentrification, which means the displacement of poorer families, avoided proposing any solutions that might alienate its affluent readers. I think their suggestion was a throwaway to draw support for the rest of their agenda from Black and Latino parents, not something they are prepared to work towards.
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