From the Indypendent:The drama that unfolded at the PEP meeting was the product of years of simmering frustration in communities across the city. When Bloomberg plucked Klein, a lawyer, out the corporate world in 2002 to oversee over a school system that educates 1.1 million children in more than 1,500 schools, he promised a new era of mayoral accountability.
Instead, critics say the two men have exercised their power in an arbitrary and reckless manner — reorganizing the system’s administrative structures to be more remote from parents, spending millions on high-priced consultants and no-bid contracts, pushing high-stakes testing regimes that lack a sound pedagogical basis and closing scores of neighborhood schools.
From the Daily News:
Mayor Bloomberg has ignited a firestorm among parents and teachers with his latest move to shut down 19 more low-performing schools - including many of the city's biggest high schools.
The hundreds who filled Brooklyn Technical High School Tuesday night to protest a vote on the closings by the mayor's Panel for Educational Policy sent a clear signal: The tide of public sentiment has turned against Bloomberg's dictatorial school reforms.
Schools Chancellor Joel Klein, those parents say, stacked their schools in recent years with huge numbers of special needs kids - especially English language learners and special education students.
Here's NYC schools by the numbers and Bloomberg’s 12-Step Method to Close Down Public Schools.
From the Daily News:
Fewer than six months after the vast majority of elementary and middle schools received A's on school report cards, the city announced plans Friday to overhaul the grading system.
First off, officials said, they'll be grading on a curve: only 25% of schools can get A's the next time around.
Last fall, 84% of elementary and middle schools got the top grade after state test scores skyrocketed.
State officials have vowed to make the tests tougher, although the city did not blame the tests for the skewed report card results.
In fact, they said at the time, they didn't see a problem at all.
"There's nothing wrong with anything," Schools Chancellor Joel Klein said in September.
8 comments:
i recall that now Chancellor Joel Klein was a high official in the Bill and Hillary Clinton democratic administration. that would be from 1992 to 2000.
i recall that now Chancellor Joel Klein was a high official in the Bill and Hillary Clinton democratic administration. that would be from 1992 to 2000.
Just like the articles say...
The true masterminds behind the BloomKlein school "reforms" are billionaires like Eli Broad, who actually has an Academy to "train" superintendents and Bill Gates who throw a LOT of money at a city so long as though as they open a charter school.
Eli Broad was quoted as saying that he didn't understand about teaching but he did understand how to run a business and that's how schools should be run.
Very nice.
Diane Ravitch has a book coming out..
"The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education"
It explains all about Broad, Gates,etc in a chapter called "The Billionaire Boys Club."
Thanks for the articles Crappy.
There's no democracy whatsoever in mayoral control. There are public hearings in which not one person supports the mayor's initiatives that are ignored utterly. There are sham votes, opposed by four of five boroughs, that are meaningless because the mayor's appointees must vote lockstep or be dismissed before the voting takes place.
It is amazing that the public has been utterly shut out of education in its own city. I hope more people read Juan Gonzalez and blogs like this one--because this is most certainly nothing resembling democracy.
is there a n.y.c. cable channel,similar to C-span, that can inform the public as to what is taking place weekly in our city government?
although the City Council and Mayor could censor the
procedures,as obama did with the democrat obamacare meetings in Congress recently,with the union leaders.
Bloomberg and Klein are now beginning to wage their war against the UFT by hitting the large schools in Queens. After rampaging Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Manhattan ... the large Queens schools are now under BloonKlein's target scope. The trickle down effect with hit the entire borough of Queens. The same students who caused the closings of these Queens schools will eventually cause the closings of the top district 26 high schools as well ... Bayside, Cardozo, Francis Lewis, Martin Van Buren. These top schools will be closed within 5 years.
You forgot John Bowne.
This is part of Bloomberg's strategy to hollow out minority neighborhoods...replace those uppity "bad" folks with the right kind of people...white yuppies!
NYC real estate is far too valuable for i.e. Latinos, Blacks, etc.
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