Randi Weingarten, president of the AFT, and Michael Mulgrew, president of the UFT (New York City local of AFT), have some good advice for Mayor Bloomberg: Help schools that struggle, don’t close them.
Interesting that this opinion piece appears, no doubt by coincidence, in the New York Daily News on the same day that a news story reports the failure of Bloomberg’s closing schools strategy. According to the news story, Bloomberg’s new schools did worse on the state reading tests than the “old” schools that he hasn’t closed yet.
Weingarten and Mulgrrew call the Mayor’s attention to the Chancellor’s District created by Rudy Crew when he ran the school system. He created a non-contiguous district of the city’s lowest performing schools and then saturated them with support and resources. Some (though not all) of the schools showed impressive progress.
Will the Mayor take the suggestion from Weingarten and Mulgrew? Hmm. It would mean turning his back on ten years of school closings. It would mean admitting error. 140 schools closed and replaced by schools that mostly did no better. It would mean that the Federal Government’s turnaround (close schools and fire teachers) strategy is wrong.
The data don’t support more of the same. Is the Mayor listening? Is Arne Duncan listening?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I was part of that “chancellor’s district” although we were allowed to keep our own superintendent. The changes included extra time for small group instruction and most important reduced class size, it worked, but was not continued. The initial reforms of the Bloomberg/Klein were not as bad as what followed. The reorganization into regions with accountability up to the mayor and the centrally imposed curriculum from Teachers College was much better than what followed-schools as part of networks to provide support and districts to provide leadership? It is a more confused system now than when mayoral control started, in my opinion.
Mayor Bloomberg’s policy of closing school is much the same as an ostrich sticking his head in the sand. It does not address the problem with the school, if there actually is one, but hopes by closing it the problem will go away. Closing schools abdicates the Department of Education’s responsibility to assist is curing problems. Weingarten and Mulgrew are suggesting going back to a time when troubled schools got resources and additional training and were able to cure what ailed them. The proposal should be applauded. Mayor Bloomberg you could learn something here.
Is the tide turning? The Editorial Board of the Philadelphia Inquirer is having second thoughts about the course of the state School Reform Commission’s expansion of charter schools. See there Editorial in today’s Inquirer:
Charter gamble is no sure bet
http://www.philly.com/philly/opinion/20120722_Charter_gamble_is_no_sure_bet.html
“there” should be “their” (I DO need an edit function) in the previous comment
The Philadelphia Inquirer is questioning the Philadelphia School Reform Commission’s expansion of corporate charters in eastern Pennsylvania. In western Pennsylvania the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is doing the same:
Cyber excess: Taxpayers should not over-fund charter schools
http://tinyurl.com/bm3coaf
Do you really think that a person,who keeps his car air conditioned 24/7 on our tax dollars during a heat wave so that he does not have to be hot for the 3 minutes that it takes to cool it off, while special needs children with IEP’s and Doctor notes for air conditioned buses are being picked up in overcrowded mini buses that are not air conditioned during those same heat waves, really “CARES” one bit for our children!! He cannot be TAUGHT anything! His ego is what drives him, no matter what HE can never be WRONG!
Not only do I agree with what you said, Margaret, but admitting failure would result in what? Bloomberg would make Eve Moskowitz (sp.-?) close her schools & give back the money? K12Inc. would say, “We’re sorry we failed. We’re giving the public schools their money back.” No…”love means never having to say you’re sorry.”
Not love of children…love of the privatizers (your friends) and $$$$.
As Diane has said time & again–it is up to US to stop all of this.
Kudos to Leonie Haimson (sp. again-?) and everyone else who is working on it!
While the New York story played out differently because of the players. local and state politics the script for the wrong-headed school reformers is basically the same. In New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina we changed the criteria for failing schools thus declaring more than 100 public schools as failing and turned it over to the free market (charters). Just like New York the reforms created a failure, seven years later the New Orleans reformed school district ranked 69 out of 70 of all the school districts in the state taking mandated standardized tests last spring. Equally as disturbing, the high poverty schools in the reformed school district in New Orleans scored lower than the high poverty schools in several cities across Louisiana in 11 of 12 areas tested. The bottom line is that despite the billions of dollars from the federal government and foundations, firing of all those old bad teachers, no teacher union and no local elected school board the New Orleans reforms failed miserably.
But despite their failure, the Governor and the state department of education is taking its failed model to school districts across the state and have recently passed a ill fated voucher program that will take put more state funds in the private sector and fail more children.
Unbelievable but True!!!
The problem begins and ends with mayoral control. Why in the world is the AFT behind it? In reading all of Weingaten’s suggestions, I don’t see one item about teacher’s voices.
Mayoral control looked reasonable at its start, i.e. one person accountability. However it took Mayor Bloomberg to show what a disaster it could become. It should be repealed or reworked and the UFT/AFT should be leading the charge and not supporting the status quo.
Candance, you don’t see Weingarten against it, because she is for it. She is just as guilty of all that has happened in education as anyone, Duncan/Klein/Bloomberg/Obama/Rhee/Murdoch, you name it, she is just as responsible. She has been selling out public school teachers (the ones she claims to be a leader of) for the twenty years I have been in the NYC education system. And before anyone says anything, I know she has not been AFT president for the last 20 years, but between being Feldman’s right hand woman, and running the UFT, she has been selling teachers out for years.
FIRE DUNCAN! Hire Ravitch!
And she has worked with the Broad Foundation for ten years to promote their corporate agenda.
http://gothamschools.org/2009/03/11/eli-broad-describes-close-ties-to-klein-weingarten-duncan/
See the Broad 2009 Mission Statement. Do a search for “Randi Weingarten” in the document.
Click to access 101-2009.10%20annual%20report.pdf