Lynnell Hancock has written a terrific piece for the Nation laying out the way in which this administration has autocratically ignored the views of parents and other stakeholders in our public schools, leading to the failures of the small schools initiative, the bus route fiasco, the obsession with testing, the lack of financial accountability and more.It is the most comprehensive look yet at Bloomberg's education record. The article is called "School's Out"; but it's only available to subscribers. It was also radically shortened for publication.
Thankfully, Lynnell has sent us the original unedited version -- which we've posted here. It is well worth reading.
An excerpt:
Another parent shut out from the meeting that night had waited outside the Hostos Annex for a chance to ask the exiting chancellor a question. The mother emigrated from Mexico more than a dozen years earlier. She had come so her kids could get a decent education. "But there are 32 kids in my son's classroom," said Esperanza Vasquez. She never got a chance to ask Klein about the overcrowding. He left the Bronx that evening in a hurry, without giving an email address.
Far from "terrific," this piece strikes me as a bunch of recycled reporting from someone who hasn't actually been following education in NYC closely. It's also incredibly biased - even if you're against mayoral control, you have to concede there are people who support it, but none appear to be quoted in the article. I guess this is just the latest evidence that the extremes of the political spectrum on both ends are becoming increasingly irrelevant.
ReplyDeleteI actually do not know any parents or teachers who support the continuation of mayoral control, at least in its present incarnation. These guys have no friends, at least among the advocacy/stakeholder community.
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