The most popular guessing game in New York City these days is Who Will The New Mayor Choose as Chancellor?
Many names have been floated, including some who currently work in the Bloomberg DOE. Seems unlikely.
Some have suggested J.C. Brizard, who was disliked by teachers in Rochester and booted out by Rahm Emanuel in Chicago. Unlikely.
Another name floated is former Baltimore superintendent Andres Alonso. Here the New York City Parent blog reviews the good and the bad about his record. He seems too close to the Klein ideology to survive scrutiny.
The guessing game goes on.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Josh Starr from Montgomery County, MD?
@mathcs… after reading about Alonso (career reads like a “how to” manual straight out of Broad Academy)… you would be wise to read up on Starr. He does have some teaching experience prior to going into administration (initial degree in special education in NYC, I think??) … worked in NYC and was in Stamford CT before coming to Montgomery County. One thing he had been vocal about in MD is peer evaluations and I don’t think he buys into the whole common core and FFT evaluation stuff even if forced to follow it. For the first time this year, student math scores in Montgomery County took a nose dive and this has been attributed to the roll out of common core curriculum.
Here is an earlier article posted on this blog worth a look…
Starr was the first superintendent to call for a 2-year moratorium on testing. He is completely invested in Peer Review over VAM. The only setback is that he contracted with a company (maybe Gates) to measure “happiness” or some other emotion.
If however de Blasio chooses from the Reform list, it will be up to the teachers and parents in NYC to rebel because it means he lied. When a pol says he will put an educator in the lead position, that may be code for TFA.
If it does – god forbid – turn out to be Brizard, that will settle the question quite decisively about whether de Blasio means what he says. Just like the Vallas pick told us everything we need to know about Quinn.
The discussion of Alonso as a potential Chancellor shows the dangers of simply calling for an “experienced educator” in the job. Given that there are so many opportunists who’ve gone along with so-called education reform, the job requirements need to be far higher, starting with demonstrated support for public education.
They’ve had a head start and are reaping healthy harvests, and “think tanks” have fertilized the fields. We need to recall who we are and where we come from. The recent election of a self-styled Whig is an interesting development. Whigs like John Trenchard & Thomas Gordon were more widely read and believed in the colonies than English aristocrats like John Locke, but you won’t learn that in US history classes.