Well, that’s the question raised by Michael Powell, a political reporter for the New York Times.
There are bigger problems than this that will mar the mayor’s legacy.
He has closed dozens of schools, opened hundreds of schools, destabilized communities, handed out hundreds of millions in no-bid contracts, had a huge technology scandal (Citytime, which cost the city $600 million or so), and public support for mayoral control is about 18%.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Dear Diane,
Your thread is proving to be more about progressive solutions than education.
Can you say anything positive about how to educate kids and how to deal with kids who don’t want to learn because of their home environments? If you can’t, we (you and I) should cease communicating because you have no content, in my opinion.
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Do you read this blog daily? There have been many many posts dedicated to educating all kinds of kids, in my opinion. Teachers are here and we teach.
Why don’t you create your own blog and teach us all how to “deal with kids who don’t want to learn”?
We will continue to communicate here on this valuable blog…you can cease. I can even show you how to unsubscribe.
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I read as much as I can. I’m in a classroom and have seen nothing.
What have I missed?
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You may not have noticed, but this blog deals primarily with policy-related issues in education, befitting Ms. Ravitch’s role as a historian. If it’s classroom management skills you’re looking for, look elsewhere.
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Yes, here you go Ed….SLANT up!
This chapter focuses on the necessity of creating a strong classroom culture in order to sustain and drive excellence. These fives principles: discipline, management, control, influence, and engagement are synergistic and a positive classroom culture won’t sustain itself without all of them.
http://msmslearningcommunity.blogspot.com/2010/08/teach-like-champion-doug-lemov-chapter_10.html?m=1
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OK,
Diane’s profile says:
“I am a historian of education and Research Professor of Education at New York University.”
How does Mayor Bloomberg’s views on gun control relate to the history of education?
Also, if Diane is a historian of education,
What has changed since I went to public schools? (1950’s & 1960’s)
Dear Diane,
Can you say something on that, please?
Why has American education not improved over the past 50 years
even with $1T of federal money?
Ed
PS: I am a bit confrontational, I will admit that. However, when
given facts and evidence I readily admit any wrong I might have suggested. Here, I have suggested nothing, but only seek ways to improve inner city education for at-risk kids. You must go there and see them to love them.
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Egbegb, ,
Are you kidding? American education has improved vastly since the 1950s and 1960s. We got rid of legal segregation. We welcome children with disabilities. We have programs for kids who don’t speak English.
I graduated high school in 1956. Not a single person of color in my graduating class of 400.
Test scores are the highest now than at any time in past 40 years (that is when federal testing began).
Dropout rates are lowest ever.
High school graduation rates are highest ever.
We are now doing better on international tests than in mid1960s.
Read all about it when my new book comes out in the fall.
Diane
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I graduated a few years later. One black in High School. Deaf were in my HS in class of 330. My understanding is SAT’s are down not up. Graduation rates are up, I agree and that is good, but social promotion is also up also. Therefore, how do you evaluate improvement? Integration is a serious improvement but has nothing to do with teachers or actual education; only access to education.
I don’t think the greater availability of education to the minorities is what we are talking about. Some are saying that the education they got in the 50’s nd 60’s was {Better|Worse} than now. I have seen no evidence one way of the other. I know teachers from then and now. All that I have met like kids and work hard at their jobs.
Why would someone want to send their kid to a contemporary school rather than transport the kid in time back the the early 1960’s to go to school? Why is one era’s education better or worse than another’s? I just don’t see it unless you examine actual content. Then it become political.
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Thank you, Linda and Michael Fiorillo. To further clarify…
This is “A site to discuss better education for all.” Not “A site on which Diane Ravitch posts book-length answers to all the questions that could ever be asked by anyone about anything even remotely related to education.” [Whew!]
Diane provides us a place in cyberspace to ask, suggest, complain, and then respond and clarify. Once Diane has done all the time consuming work of setting up and managing a day’s blog, it is up to us posters to do the rest of the heavy lifting. If someone feels a need to pursue a certain topic and doesn’t violate Diane’s quite sensible ‘rules of the road’ then s/he takes a chance on whether or not it resonates with some of the folks who view this blog. Sometimes a poster generates hits, sometimes misses.
Just like life. Or education. It’s messy and complicated and demands constant attention and effort and, in truth, just never seems to end. And there are no guarantees that everyone who visits this website will feel satisfied with what is posted. It’s called democracy.
If anyone feels stifled by what it takes to achieve a certain measure of cooperation, collaboration and consensus, then this is the wrong website for you. Go to Michelle Rhee’s $tudent$Fir$t.I am sure she will welcome you with open “arms.”
Just like a venus flytrap.
🙂
🙂
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Ed Bradford,
This blog is only for people who want to read it. People who don’t want to read it are under no compulsion to continue doing so. Feel free to read or not. If it is not worth your while, find a blog that is.
Diane
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Diane, I heard Rhee on a local Detroit radio spouting her usual stale propaganda (more testing, get rid of seniority and tenure, etc. etc. This was a radio station that traditionally serves African Americans. I was wondering what she is up to. I’ve read that the feds are coming to investigate title VI violations involving DPS schools and the EAA. Also, I heard Snyder toured some of the EAA with legislators touting how great it was. I’ve heard from people working in these schools it is awful. I just wondered why Rhee was pushing her agenda here again. It’s funny. None of the radio people came close to asking her about her cheating scandal.
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It will catch up with her.
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I have read all your blogs and I pay special attention to Bloomberg esp since he and Gina Raimondo are hotsy totsy…. I have to admit Bloomberg is one of the biggest A***H**** I have ever seen in politics…This is what happens when you have mayoral control or in this case, lunatic control… The power of this one man is frightening….
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How is it that this slop continues? There is no sense to it unless we are a fascist country where the corporations run the place. Then it does not matter what you think only what the puppetmasters want done matters and that is what is going on now at all levels of government. It is not now for and by the people but for and by the corporations and wealthiest of us.
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Mayor Bloomberg’s advice has been much sought by Pres. Obama. Gov. Cuomo is cut in Bllomberg’s pro-corporate mode(refusing to raise taxes on the rich). Bloomberg is a great mayor for his class, the 1%. While starving public schools, parks, mass transit, public hospitals, playgrounds, etc., he has subsidized pvt development lavishly, $3.1BILLION in public moneys just announced for the planned Hudson Yards in Manhattan; $563mil in public subsidies from NYC and NYS to build new Yankee Stadium in 07, similar amt to build new Mets stadium. Mayor B is the agent of Wall St and the Real Estate Bd of NY running the govt of NYC for the benefit of the super-rich. The 1% are deeply in his debt for enhancing their extraction of wealth from this abused city and people.
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Linda
I read your URL. I am a volunteer in just such a class. The teacher there (Jones) is excellent.
Your URL doesn’t address why there are so many at-risk kids in America. The home environment is what has changed in the past 50 years, not teachers. Every teacher I have ever met loved their kids and did whatever they could to make their kids successful (all those sex crazed selfish criminals notwithstanding). Newtown is an obvious example (they died for their kids).
If America cannot focus on the “home”, our society will die, in my opinion.
Two parent kids with parents who are actively and hourly involved in their kids
lives produce excellent citizens. That should be America’s goal, in my opinion.
Arm chair Liberals and Conservatives have no clue, in my opinion.
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Approximately 23% of our children are living in poverty. If you manage to maintain a reasonably stable home in those circumstances, you are eligible for sainthood. Poverty is not conducive to stable, two parent homes that can be “actively and hourly involved in their kids lives.” I think you are having a Mayberry fantasy, but even Opie didn’t have a mother. I had a pretty good ’50s childhood with two parents who loved me and my siblings, but, hey, I grew up to realize that what I saw and understood as a child was the reality of a child.
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Is there an example anywhere, in any major metropolitan area, of mayoral control that has not been a disaster? Anytime I see “autonomous leadership” of schools being pushed by the corporate side I know it can’t be good
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Diane — I am questioning the legality of the mayor handing out no bid contracts. For example the waste management company that was awarded the contract to shred the NYS standardized tests — what is the cost for shredding ?? Was the contract awarded to a company that is owned by friends and/ or family? What a waste of tax payer money!!! I would rather have seen that money poured in to the public schools. I also have questions about the awarding of a contract to Pearson Publishing– was that contract open to bid?? How many years does that contract run?? Any attorneys out there willing to make a name for themselves??? Shame on the Governor if he thinks no one will be watching if Pearson Publishing donates to his presidential campaign in 2016. Ethics anyone??
Marge
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All I want to know is was that poor dolphin that was trapped in a New York canal ever rescued?
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begtodiffer — The dolphin that was found in the polluted filthy waters of Gowanus canal tragically did not survive.
Marge
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Ed B.and edbegb,
You guys must be silverbacks…stop pounding your chests and grab your favorite leaves for dinner. If you just want to find fault and criticise , start with your mirror.
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Peg — You Go Girl!!!! Right now , you have me hearing the lyrics of Michael Jackson’s hit: The Man In The Mirror!!!
Marge
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What did that comment mean….”If” Diane is an historian??? If??????
The real question is….What has Bloomberg done to improve education??? The answer is simple…NOTHING!! He hired an attorney who while chancellor gave hefty contributions to charter organizations. He also instituted no-bid contracts that have cost the city millions. And some of these vendors have been stealing or were just incompetent. He started a small-school initiative that did not include ELL or students with learning disabilities and then claimed these schools did well. He then dismantled neighborhood kindergartens and soon parents were struggling to get their child into their local school. He did the same with middle school and high schools. Klein put forth a curriculum that were not successful–especially in math. He got rid of excellent programs and cut funds to after-school. He then changed the budget that made it difficult for schools to hire experienced teachers. You may think that teachers hate him, but according to many polls, it’s the parents that don’t think he improved education in NYC, and that says a great deal.
I could go on, but it would take up pages of this blog.
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School gal — Is the awarding of no bid contracts legal?? Is Bloomberg above the law and ethics??
I’d like to see someone pursue investigation of the state law on the awarding of contracts. In my school district if our purchase exceeds a specified dollar amount it must go out to bid. Does the NYS Department of Education need to follow this also or not?? Does Bloomberg need to follow this or not?? Is he exempt from these rules?? Where is a forensic auditor when you need one ?? Is there a RETIRED auditor out there that can shed some light. Or should we all just bury our heads in the sand and not ask questions unless we are at the very least a millionaire??
Marge
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Pre-Bloomberg, it was very unusual for the central Board of Education to award a no-bid contract.
The mayor’s DOE has awarded scores of no-bid contracts for many millions of dollars, always with a statement of necessity.
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That Bloomberg is an idiot was clear from the 16oz max regulation, but my deeper question is WHY he would do such pointless things to the NYC school system? Is he some sort of power mad despot who cannot bear opposition? Oh, I forgot, that’s Obama. But still, why would so rich a man make such bad decisions? Eh? (That’s Canadian for WTF)
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Marge,
If all of the principals were as active as you are, we would be well on our way to cleaning up this RTtT and NCLB mess. You fit right in with the other great bloggers here. You keep “goin’ as well. 🙂
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