The State University of New York announced the appointment of John King as chancellor of its large system of universities across the state. He will receive a salary of $750,000 plus a monthly stipend of $12,500 for renting a place in New York City, plus many other perks. King was previously state commissioner of education in New York, where he oversaw the implementation of the Common Core standards and tests, which led to widespread opting out from the tests. He was subsequently appointed U.S. Secretary of Education for the last year of the Obama administration. Most recently, he led Education Trust. He is a strong proponent of standardized testing.
The New York State Allies for Public Education issued this press release:
Parents and advocates speak out against appointment of John King as SUNY Chancellor
Parents and advocates from throughout the state criticized the appointment of John King as SUNY Chancellor based upon his dismal record as NY State Education Commissioner.
Said Jeanette Deutermann, founder of Long Island Opt Out, “As Education Commissioner, John King was a disaster, pushing the invalid Common Core standards and redesigning the state tests to be excessively long, with reading passages far above grade level, and full of ambiguous questions. He worked to ensure that the majority of kids would fail the state tests and be labelled not college-ready, including in many districts where nearly every student attends college and does well there. His actions led directly to massive opposition among parents and the largest testing opt out movement in the country. Many schools are still dealing with the destructive impact of his policies; I would be very sorry if SUNY students are faced with a similar fate.”
Lisa Rudley, the executive director of NY State Allies for Public Education, said, “SUNY Faculty and students should be forewarned! John King consistently ignored the legitimate concerns of parents and teachers regarding the policies he pursued as NY State Education Commissioner, by rewriting the standards, imposing an arduous high stakes testing regime, and basing teacher evaluation on student test scores, none of which had any research behind it and all of which undermined the quality of education in our public schools. This led to a no-confidence vote of the state teachers union, and if the state’s parents had been able to carry out such a vote, you can be sure they would have done so as well.“
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Diane Ravitch's blog 
Nice work if you can get it. The allowance for the housing in NYC is nice I guess and it must be necessary since until recently he was living enough in Maryland to run (and lose) for the Democratic nomination for governor. And raising plenty of money from all his education policy money-types no doubt….I betcha a nickel his new job pays way more than if he’d been elected Governor of Maryland so things are working out just fine for John King, and no one should worry about HIS well-being.
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All the evidence indicates that John King is a greedy, autocratic loving, neoliberal, power-hungry shill for corporations and billionaires.
Is there such a thing as a neoliberal fascist? If there is, he’s it.
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This guy is a corporate tool that as SUNY Chancellor will have the authority to approve new charter schools. This may result in a massive loss of public education funds in New York.
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For and in-depth description of the harm John King brought to New York’s k-12 system see the book that I co-authored with Lisa and Jeanette and two University of Rochester graduate students: Hursh, D., Deutermann, J. Rudley, L., Chen Z. and McGinnis, S. (2020). Opting out: The story of the parents’ grassroots movement to achieve whole-child public schools. Gorham, ME: Myers Education Press.
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Thanks, Mr. Hursh!
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Incompetence and failure are very lucrative.
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Indeed
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Incompetence, failure, willful ignorance
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He failed up! MD voters decided that he wasn’t the right fit for the position of Governor. With this cushy position, he will be making way more $$$ than if he were elected to be Gov of MD. I’m feeling sorry for SUNY students
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Oh noooooo….after everything he did wrong!!!
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Yep, and that “wrong” is what makes King so “right” for the edudeformers.
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It’s kind of outrageous that the SUNY Chancellors would give King a NYC housing allowance when King should be in Albany or in a less expensive region closer to a lot more major campuses in the SUNY system. There is no good reason to be in NYC. John King is NOT the Chancellor of CUNY, and he should find a place upstate that costs a fraction of $12,000/year and he doesn’t require a $750,000 salary, where he would be closer to more of SUNY’s larger universities..
But then again, the NYT education reporters who have never questioned the shocking favoritism and incompetent oversight of the SUNY Charter Institute Board trustees will no doubt find this to be perfectly acceptable. Since King is a charter cheerleader, too.
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^^^as per bertisdowns’ comment below, the stipend for housing is $12,000/MONTH, not a year, and there is no reason to spend that much in Albany and there is no reason at all for King to be living in NYC.
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Not yearly, it’s “a monthly stipend of $12,500 for renting a place in New York City” An extra $150-ish on top of the 3/4 extra-large for this public servant
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Could that money be applied to a mortgage or must it be rent? If the former, it would be philosophically consistent with the charter school dictum of transferring public funds to private gain, with no accountability. And I’m betting if it is rent, there’s a cushy place far below market available from a well-connected billionaire. Maybe they’ll even let him live on their row.
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I guess New Yorkers can kiss their community colleges goodbye. And Buffalo and Stony Brook Universities will hemorrhage funding too. They will become a joke. Students, prepare for pandemic-style online education for dummies to be your only option. King will streamline you, streamline being corporate speak for strangle.
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Devastating. And he’ll make major bank doing it, too.
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And it doesn’t really matter how much he’s getting paid or how many stipends he receives. It matters how much he is going to suck.
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He will be sucking on the public teat.
Like he has been doing his whole career.
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Coming soon to a campus near you: The Return of the Tisch Flunky.
Fill in the blanks– Sheldon Silver…. Merryl Tisch appointed to Board of Regents (1996) and elevated to Regents Chancellor by Silver (2009)…. Tisch and John King attend Teachers College…. Tisch pushes King to become NYS Education Commissioner…. Andrew Cuomo advocates implementation of Common Core with Tisch’s willing compliance…. Opt Out Movement strongly opposes CC…. King leaves SED for USDE (2014)…. Silver found guilty of corruption charges (2015), convicted and expelled from NYS Assembly…. Tisch steps down as Regents chancellor after 20 years…. Cuomo appoints Tisch to SUNY Board of Trustees (2017) and elevates her to SUNY chairman…. Cuomo uses Tisch to abandon “national search” for new CUNY chancellor in order to give his closest adviser, James Malatras the job…. Cuomo stench starts catching up to Malatras, and Kathy Hochul tells Tisch to dump him…. Tisch praises Malatras and gives him a golden parachute. King announced as the next SUNY chancellor with words of praise a huge salary and perqs from Tisch.
Yes, there was a national search to find him.
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It really, really pays to be a rapacious shill for the Education Deform industry.
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Once again, student data privacy was just ONE of the major issues with inBloom.
Because it was envisioned as becoming the nation’s gradebook, every online or print textbook would have to be linked to it–would have to pay to play with inBloom, and inBloom would have become the default gatekeeper for all American curricula. This is similar to the fact that makers of software have to pay to play with the Microsoft Windows operating system. It was a sneaky, monopolistic business plan. THIS EVIL ASPECT OF THE PLAN IS ALMOST NEVER REMARKED UPON.
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In other words, if you were a textbook publisher or online educational content provider, you would have had to go to inBloom, hat in hand, and paid them to be a partner and to hook into their system so that assessment–diagnostic, formative, summative–in your program could appear in the inBloom gradebook. That would basically have given inBloom the power to decide who could publish viable educational materials and who couldn’t. It would become America’s default curriculum gatekeeper. Sneaky AF, huh?
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We narrowly escaped having a de facto national curricular Thought Police. At the same time that inBloom was making its play, btw, to the cheers of people like King, folks from the Brookings Institution were writing articles suggesting that exactly what we needed was a national curriculum gatekeeper to review all educational products for alignment to the Common Core–for usability for CCSS criterion-based instruction and assessment. A national curriculum Thought Police.
And this was all happening with almost no mention anywhere in the national media OR from the resistance to Education Deform. It was THAT sneaky. It was happening without people being aware of it.
I wrote about this at the time on Diane’s blog, and almost no one ever even responded to my observations about the effects, the consequences, for curricula of what inBloom was planning on becoming. All this was happening under the radar. It was a REALLY BIG PLAY but took place out of sight because it wasn’t easy for people to understand.
Fortunately, inBloom was killed by the privacy issue. But this, the curriculum and pedagogy control issue, was BIGGER, even, I think, that the privacy issue was. This would have created a national educational thought gatekeeper and tollbooth. It would have been worth, over tiime, trillions of dollars.
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I have long despaired that I knew how this thing was going to work, seemed designed to work, and was trying to tell people about it, to warn them, and NO ONE, FREAKING NO ONE, was listening.
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Let me make one more stab at this.
Here is how inBloom was supposed to work: it was supposed to become the national gradebook, not only in K-12 but beyond that, throughout people’s careers. The vision was that ALL evaluations of any importance would go into it–state test scores, practice test scores, scores from online instructional programs, scores assigned by classroom teachers for work done, employer evaluations of employees, etc. This would provide “data” for teachers, administrators, and employers. It would be cradle to grave.
Now, suppose that you were a small educational publisher planning on publishing, say, a new writing program for Grades 1-6, with both print and online features. All your potential clients, schools, would be using inBloom as its default gradebook, its having been adopted by each state. So, in order to sell your product at all, you would have to hook up with inBloom. You would have to pay them for the privilege. You would have to pay to play. And inBloom would be able to decide whether to let you. Because the thing would be owned by Gates, who financed the creation of promulgation of the Common [sic] Core [sic], inBloom could refuse to accept your program if it were not organized as a criterion=based mastery instruction-style program based on the CCSS.
And since everyone would have to pay to play, even if the payments were fairly small, the thing would have, over time, made trillions of dollars due to its being an unavoidable (i.e., monopolistic) gatekeeper.
Sound familiar?
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I have tried, again and again, in my piece surveying the issues with standardized testing, and in the comments above and elsewhere about inBloom, to explain issues that are fairly complicated, a little more than what one can capture in a soundbite. But because that is the case–because you actually have to read carefully enough to follow the reasoning, most people, I think, just loose interest and focus and move on to something else.
There is a phrase falsely attributed to Einstein that is to the point: one should make matters as simple as possible BUT NOT SIMPLER. There are reasons why the standardized tests now given in ELA are invalid. (And before Duane jumps in, these aren’t because no measurement of intellectual attainment is ever possible.) There are reasons why inBloom was an extraordinarily dangerous concept, a business strategy with extremely dangerous potential consequences. But these reasons cannot be expressed soundbites. One actually has to understand some things and follow some reasoning about those. And so no one freaking pays attention. It’s too much trouble.
And when the Fascist takeover occurs, this is why it will happen. Because while the Fascists were making it happen, almost no one was paying attention, or they were paying attention to other, more minor stuff. It will have taken place while people were busy watching House of the Dragon on HBO or trying to get tickets to the latest Taylor Swift tour or, for the politically active ones, reading the latest articles about how it’s really going to catch up with Donald Trump ANY DAY NOW.
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For example, I have explained again and again and again ad freaking nauseam here on this blog how you cannot ask a single multiple-choice question about an extremely broad standard (The student will be able to make inferences about text) and then claim that the student’s answer to that one question is a valid test of the standard. But this is basically what the standardized tests in ELA do. They have FEWER questions than there are “standards” that they are supposed to cover.
But not once, not a single time, has ANYONE commented, “Wow. Gee. That’s a problem.”
It’s extraordinarily disheartening.
I have explained again and again, ad nauseam, how proficiency in ELA involves an enormous amount of specific procedural and declarative knowledge Not covered by the state ELA tests.
But not once, not a single time, has ANYONE commented, “Oh. Gosh. That’s a big issue.”
The tests do not validly test what they purport to test. Thinking about them carefully, even for a bit, ought to make this freaking obvious.
But thinking–it’s too much trouble for most people, and the John Kings of the world, they are paid NOT TO. They are paid A LOT NOT TO.
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“because no measurement of intellectual attainment is ever possible.”
Preach it Brother Bob, preach it!
O, and, yes some of us have been reading and listening to what you have been saying (not always necessarily agreeing all the time). . . it’s just that we don’t have the authority to do anything about the absurdities and insanities that pass for educational policies.
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Bob, this selfthread is as dark as Wednesday, the latest series about the Addams family. Not that I don’t understand your disposition well.
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Here’s hoping you and yours are well, Mate.
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Imagine my frustration, Mate. I worked for decades as a textbook writer and editor. Then, I watched as all curricular coherence went out the window in English Language Arts texts as they were redone to make them into compilations of random practice exercises in preparation for taking Common Core tests that were demonstrably invalid. Then, I explain to people why they are invalid and point out the dramatic consequences for our pedagogy and curricula–how these have devolved–and I do so, I think, quite clearly. But nothing happens. Billions continue to be spent each year on invalid testing. Major decisions about the lives of students and teachers and about schools keep being made based on these. And the problems with them are kinda obvious once someone points them out. It’s ridiculous. I’ve just about given up. My profession has been laid waste by idiots and amateurs funded by a clueless wealthy oligarch.
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Mate, I spent much of my life working for educational publishing companies. I’ve worked at or for most all of them, doing textbook development. It used to be that we would sit down and map out a coherent unit on, say, The Elements of the Short Story or How to Do Newspaper Writing. Then Gates decided he wanted a single bullet list to key educational software to so he could replace teachers and schools with online instruction (that didn’t exactly work out, did it). So he funded the Common [sic] Core [sic]. And everybody jumped on that bandwagon–even the freaking teachers’ unions. And the states all (almost all) started giving new common core tests and basing evaluations of teachers and administrators and schools on the test results, and the textbook publishers threw out all curricular coherence and replaced it with random instruction followed by practice exercises on the Gates bullet list, often in the form of the questions on the tests. And enormous resources poured into creating online CC$$ “instruction” that consisted of random stuff dealing items on the puerile list. The consequences for curricula and pedagogy in the US have been disastrous. And Gates has no clue that this is so. He basically took a wrecking ball to K-12 educational publishing. And what replaced it is absurd, nightmarish, stupid.
And the shocking thing is that the problems with the whole approach–with that ridiculous list of “standards” hacked together by the know-nothing Coleman and the invalid tests of those “standards” and the equally invalid evaluations based them, were OBVIOUSLY deeply flawed. The shocking thing is that they weren’t laughed off the national stage when Gates and his toadies foisted them on the country, as Clippy the Paperclip was.
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And Gates, the breathtakingly self-satisfied moron, has no clue, no clue at all, how much damage he as done.
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And people like King and Duncan and many, many more were the Vichy collaborators with the GatesColeman occupation of US education. These people disgust me. And yes, I’m furious about this.
They are so dishonest. Example: Soon, it became apparent that almost everyone hated the Common Core. So, the oh-so-reverend Mike Huckster-bee when to the annual ghouls’ convention known as CPAC and told everyone to go back to their states and give the same bs standards new, state-specific names. And that’s just what they did, all over the country.
So, all these years later, the disease persists. And educational publishing is at its all-time nadir. I only hope that some parts of the world haven’t caught this criterion-based bs infection. I know that Australia got a bad case of it. What Pasi Sahlberg calls GERM–the Global Educational Reform Movement.
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And decades later, I am still asking myself, how freaking stupid do you have to be to think that the puerile Gates/Coleman list is a set of “higher standards” or that the tests on these are at all valid or that curricula should be designed around that list? I am close to just saying it’s a complete lost cause. I am still shocked that our education leaders didn’t reject this stuff outright from the very beginning. Shocked, saddened, disgusted.
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Who would have thought, before the CC$$/testing occupation of US education that that many education leaders (e.g., Duncan, King) were that clueless about ELA education or that so many ELA administrators and teachers would also be–so many that they let this utter nonsense be foisted on our schools and kids.
But we just had an election in which more than 70 million people voted for the guy who thought we should send astronauts to the sun, that the Border Patrol should shoot unarmed asylum seekers, that it was a great idea to inject disinfectant, take babies from their parents at the border (babies!!!!), and “terminate the Constitution.”
A confederacy of dunces. And some of them, quite powerful and well remunerated, it seems.
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Here’s the thing that went so wrong: We always had ridiculous state standards very like the Common Core. And, in fact, Coleman and his crew hacked the CC$$ together based on a cursory review of those and threw a few idiocies in for giggles or whatever–based on Coleman’s know-nothing prejudices. But those STANDARDS didn’t matter, really. The mattered so little that every publisher in the US correlated every product it created to those standards (yeah, the correlations were bs). But after the CC$$, the tests on them became high stakes, so the stupid “standards” started actually to matter. They became the de facto, default curriculum outlines for Math and ELA. And that was a disaster. Now, every publisher of curricula starts every project with a spreadsheet. The list of “standards” in the left-most column and where those are covered in the program in the other columns. The tail wagging the dog. Curricular decoherence.
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“Major decisions about the lives of students and teachers and about schools keep being made based on these.”
Let’s see what Wilson has to say about that fact:
“”A Little Less than Valid: An Essay Review”
http://edrev.asu.edu/index.php/ER/article/view/1372/43
To the extent that these categorisations are accurate or valid at an individual level, these decisions may be both ethically acceptable to the decision makers, and rationally and emotionally acceptable to the test takers and their advocates. They accept the judgments of their society regarding their mental or emotional capabilities. But to the extent that such categorisations are invalid, they must be deemed unacceptable to all concerned.
Further, to the extent that this invalidity is hidden or denied, they are all involved in a culture of symbolic violence. This is violence related to the meaning of the categorisation event where, firstly, the real source of violation, the state or educational institution that controls the meanings of the categorisations, are disguised, and the authority appears to come from another source, in this case from professional opinion backed by scientific research. If you do not believe this, then consider that no matter how high the status of an educator, his voice is unheard unless he belongs to the relevant institution.
And finally a symbolically violent event is one in which what is manifestly unjust is asserted to be fair and just. In the case of testing, where massive errors and thus miscategorisations are suppressed, scores and categorisations are given with no hint of their large invalidity components. It is significant that in the chapter on Rights and responsibilities of test users, considerable attention is given to the responsibility of the test taker not to cheat. Fair enough. But where is the balancing responsibility of the test user not to cheat, not to pretend that a test event has accuracy vastly exceeding technical or social reality? Indeed where is the indication to the test taker of any inaccuracy at all, except possibly arithmetic additions?”
Also see:
“Educational Standards and the Problem of Error”
https://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/viewFile/577/700
or my free e-book, “Infidelity to Truth: Education Malpractice in America Public Education”
Email me at dswacker@centurytel.net put “book” in the subject line.
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If this is the best the Democrats have to offer…wow, we’re in trouble.
Things are unraveling in NYS. (See midterms)
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It took you a while to catch on! (Laughing/crying with, not at you.)
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I say this $750K is nothing compared to what presidents make at some Southern universities…
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I wonder how the previous SUNY Chancellor made.
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NYTimes – “Mr. Malatras, who received a $450,000 salary plus a $60,000-a-year housing allowance, became the first SUNY graduate to be named chancellor. He nonetheless drew scrutiny for his lack of academic leadership compared to past chancellors, many of whom had presided over large universities before taking over SUNY.”
Note: James Malatras, was promoted for the job by Andrew Cuomo–and his appointment was pushed through by SUNY Chairman, Merryl Tisch. She halted a “national search” to comply with the governor’s wishes. A year later, she engineered his resignation, when his misdeeds under Cuomo came to light–but gave him a golden parachute that included a year’s pay and a tenured position.
Poor Jim. Obviously worth a lot less than King.
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King also was named a full professor but he has no experience as an academic in higher Ed. What will he teach? Education, probably.
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It is fairly common to have people from outside the academy head these types of organizations. Janet Napolitano, for example, had no experience in post secondary education before being appointed President of the University of California system.
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If folks are interested here is a list of public college and university leader’s pay. Note that some could be unusually high because of longevity bonuses.
The list: https://www.chronicle.com/article/president-pay-public-colleges/
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Even for my seasoned eyes, the numbers are shocking.
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For me the base pays are the most outrageous since they are paid by the tax payers while bonuses might be paid from private sources (which are also bad since we can imagine what the presidents do for these private donors in return)
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Mate,
Most of the really big numbers typically have a story behind them. Randy Woodson at NC State got a $1.7 million bonus and donated $1.5 million back to NC State. Mark Kennedy, formerly the chancellor of the University of Colorado system, had his contract bought out because the board fired him (the board had changed from majority republican to majority democrat after Kennedy was hired). Micheal Good is interim president of the University of Utah. His regular job is as senior vice president for health sciences, dean of the school of medicine, and CEO of University of Utah health. Physician/administrators are typically paid much more than presidents. When Utah hires a permanent president I am sure that salary will drop.
Base pay does not have to come from state funds. My university pays for most things out of student tuition, but there could be some endowment accounts dedicated to paying the salary of university leaders.
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Not being from New York or up on this, who was responsible for hiring him? It seems to me that is where political consequences have to be focused at this point. Get rid of them, then you can get rid of King. Don’t get rid of him? Get behind Ohio in line to wait for public education to die in New York.
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The Board of Trustees does the appointing, but this handiwork has the sticky fingers of Wall St. all over it. Wall St. is a gigantic promoter of privatization in the state. They want more charter schools, and I hope they don’t have a scheme for gaining access to the state public pension fund which is one of the healthiest and best funded in the nation, although King would not have direct access.
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As Fred Smith expanded, John King was hired by the SUNY Board of Trustees. Chair of the board is Merryl Tisch, who was a classmate of King’s in an accelerated doctoral program at Teachers College. King founded a no-excuses charter school in Mass. that had the highest suspension rate of any school in the state. Tisch then was chair of the NY State Board of Regents. She promoted King’s candidacy to be state commissioner. He championed Common Core and CC testing and had a very bad relationship with parents. Tisch is now chair of the SUNY board, which picked King.
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GregB – Merryl Tisch.
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New York State played a key role in the bipartisan corporate education movement to privatize public education, from the writings of Kearns and Doyle to Louis Gerstner’s 1996 Education Summit held at the IBM facility in Palisades, New York. Merryl Tisch, as the Chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents originally hired John King as the number two man behind David Steiner, hired to be The Commissioner of Education. When Steiner resigned, King was promoted. Diane Ravitch reported on much of their administration in this Blog, search the archive. A colleague in the New York State Education Department, when informed that King was leaving to become Obama’s Acting Deputy Secretary of Education, screamed, Do you know how much damage he caused! Merryl Tisch is the Chair of the SUNY Board of Trustees, and now John King the new State University of New York Chancellor. Frequent refrains over the years, fail up and déjà vu all over again. A recent post here cited that Wall Street was to blame. In New York State just as important is real estate, looking to what Kathryn Wylde of REBNY and the Partnership for New York City was saying. The roll out of Common Core wasn’t the problem. Common Core was the problem. Race to the Top was the problem. Corporate Education was the problem. The Pineapple Fiasco was a highlight. The Regents have been back peddling ever since.
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I remember King’s “solution” for teachers regarding high absenteeism in Buffalo Public Schools: “Well, if you’re classroom is exciting enough, they will attend.”
This guy, whose children attended Montessori schools, is nothing more than a rep for neoliberalism in education. When his policies tanked with the public in New York State about a decade ago, he didn’t consult teachers or superintendents or anyone associated with public education; he consulted business leaders instead.
This guy is a maggoty slimeball with nothing good to offer anything remotely tied to education.
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John King leads a charmed life. Beats working, I suppose.
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lol
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Well, this is terrible news.
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All the way back up to Fred Smith’s comments (and some scattered about). In one essay he covers decades of “reform” and poorly conceived positions and actions.
Reading that saga also bring to light a strong narrative on “checks and balances”
The parent leaders Diane cites in the blog were on a mission! They had a significant effect keeping the microscope on the decision makers and decisions and raised awareness for parents across the state on issues spun by everyone in Mr. Smith’s saga.
These parents did not sit back on class size, common core, inBloom, test scores in teacher evaluation, assessment obsession to quantify teacher effectiveness, charters getting a pass on poor performance and actions and more.
The AFT kept the spotlight on “reforms” affecting kids and teachers.
This Blog’s readership probably skyrocketed and all readers got an education while the state policy makers got schooled.
Carol Burris and the (then newly formed) NPE scrutinized and spread the news of charter scandals and the other effects of policies.
No doubt those watchful eyes will magnify the lens on SUNY.
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Thank you, Wait. What?
I appreciate that you referenced my earlier comment up above, which was delayed pending review. For readers who missed it. allow me to immodestly post it again with slight revision. I think it remains instructive. ~Fred
Fill in the blanks– Sheldon Silver…. Merryl Tisch appointed to Board of Regents (1996) and elevated to Regents Chancellor by Silver (2009)…. Tisch and John King attend Teachers College…. Tisch pushes King to become NYS Education Commissioner (2011)…. Andrew Cuomo advocates implementation of Common Core with Tisch’s willing compliance (2013)…. Opt Out Movement strongly opposes CC…. King booed at townhalls, leaves SED for USDE (2014)…. Silver found guilty of corruption charges (2015), convicted and expelled from NYS Assembly…. Tisch steps down as Regents chancellor after 20 years…. Cuomo appoints Tisch to SUNY Board of Trustees (2017) and elevates her to SUNY chairman…. Cuomo uses Tisch to abandon “national search” for new CUNY chancellor in order to give his closest adviser, James Malatras the job (2020)…. Cuomo stench starts catching up to Malatras, and Kathy Hochul tells Tisch to dump him (2021)…. Tisch praises Malatras and gives him a golden parachute. King announced as the next SUNY chancellor with words of praise a huge salary and perqs from Tisch.
This time she presided over a “global” search in order to select King.
Tisch, a lavishly wealthy woman by marriage, in search of importance, continues to buy prominent roles within the establishment. She is the fulcrum for King and his re-make. After 26 years of protection by Silver and Cuomo, she needs to repair to her town house and find meaningful work in a soup kitchen.
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I hope this puts a spotlight on how the SUNY Board of Trustees is a rubber stamp for the powerful — putting their own personal interests ahead of what is good for the SUNY system and its students.
If there were any decent education reporters at the NYT, someone would have already found out why the SUNY Chancellor would demand to live in expensive NYC when it would be far more appropriate for him to be living in Albany or somewhere far less expensive.
Has there ever been a SUNY Chancellor in the recent past who expected the state university system to subsidize an extraordinarily expensive first class NYC lifestyle far away from where most SUNY universities are located?
A Chancellor who demands to live in NYC is putting his own selfish needs far ahead of the students. It makes sense that a SUNY board of trustees that puts billionaires’ desires ahead of what is best for students and faculty would do the same. It makes sense that the education reporters who are blind to anything that might make the powerful unhappy would not report on how inappropriate this contract is.
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I don’t think the Chancellor demands to live in NYC, it is just that it is far easier for campus presidents and others to travel from their campuses to NYC than Albany. The only nonstop flights going into Albany from the state of New York come from NYC.
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There is very good train service between NYC and Albany.
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Is there a saying that once crowned, a King remains King for life? Oy.
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Is there a saying that once crowned, a King remains King for life? Oy.
&–is there any chance that these advocates/parents can get him the hell out?
(Although, I must say, bad pennies keep turning up elsewhere.) We don’t want him in Illinois!!! We already have Arne & Paul Vallas!
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