THE CHALLENGE
The problems facing new elected NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio are known to everyone paying attention to New York. It’s a big list that includes budget deficits, salary demands of all the municipal unions who’ve been without an increase for four years (though the teachers have received annual increases based on past contracts), public safety, affordable housing, new jobs and the need to improve city public schools – to name the most obvious.
DeBlasio is clearly a liberal though he likes to use the word ‘progressive’ as do most liberals still afraid of the word so successfully demonized by Karl Rove and his like. When DeBlasio’s successful TV campaign ads prominently featured “giving everyone a shot”, he could easily have used the Liberal Party’s tenet: level the playing field of opportunity. They clearly mean the same thing.
But for political realities too complex and lengthy to detail here, the Liberal Party could easily have backed DeBlasio over all the other Democratic contenders. We think the man means well in every sense of the term. What he clearly lacks, as our candidate John Catsimatidis would have stressed if he’d won the Republican primary, is experience in many important areas.
He has never managed anything. His experience in government is limited to a City Council tenure and a few years as Public Advocate – a job many feel is unimportant and unnecessary. He has managed just a handful of people. Never had a job that wasn’t a political job. Has no experience in business per se. Now he is running a $70 billion dollar business called New York with 250,000 employees.
So what are his intentions for New York?
We know he’ll change the approach to stop and frisk (which have already changed) following court-instructed guidelines and bring in a new Police Commissioner. And we know he will sit down with the unions (few supported him through the campaign until he’d all but won it) and be as fair and realistic as he can be given the reality of budget deficits. He won’t have the money to “give the city away” as some fear. And he truly knows better than that.
And someday there will be more affordable apartments and maybe he will really do something important about the operation of the New York City Housing Authority.
Jobs? He said very little specific about them. No one did.
And then there are the schools. What about them?
CAMPAIGN CLUES
His win was a surprise especially a win without a runoff. He was barely hanging on during the Summer of Forums. His main line of offense seemed to be about education. He was going to do something different: he was going to tax the One Percent and use that additional income to fund pre-school education for the city’s four years olds.
We never heard a thing about what that money would buy. Whether there were enough eligible children if pre-school was not full day; whether there were enough available classrooms and whether there were trained teachers for that pre-school, early-education effort.
We know that early childhood education when properly delivered is a big advantage for all children. But Bill gave us no details. Just that he was going to tax the super-rich and ‘give everybody a shot’.
Then he took another step towards education. He would charge rent to Charter Schools who were sharing space with traditional schools (co-location it is called): Why should those making money on Charter Schools not pay rent? was the operative question. Nothing much about the quality of Charter Schools though he did seem aware of the dismal performance of them…only 17% of them did better than traditional schools in the city. And he promised no new ones until he could study the matter.
So once again money was involved: more taxes on the rich; rent for those making money on Charter School. Was the campaign issue about taxing wealthy people or fixing education?
So what does he know about the genuine problems of public schools in New York and America?
No one knows. And how will he know enough to pick the right Schools Chancellor? No one knows but we have a suggestion – one we understand he has been rumored to have heard: Teacher Union Chief – Randi Weingarten.
Are we serious? Yes.
No one in New York or in the nation for that matter, understands the true nature of the increasing failure of America’s public schools better than Randi Weingarten. She knows about the quality of those students who enter the field of teaching. She knows about the quality of the training they receive – or more properly – don’t receive.
She has dealt with every problem for years. Randi is everywhere.
She sits among the hierarchy of educators.
She is on major Blue Ribbon panels revealing the true nature of the problems.
She was on the committee which recommended an entirely new approach to teaching teachers. She accepted those recommendations that teachers-in-training begin working in public schools at least two years before graduation and certification…much the same as doctors begin very early internships while still in medical school. Nothing like that happens in America today.
She accepted and supported the introduction of the now controversial Common Core curriculum knowing full well that whatever its goals, it is a test-based curriculum which was NEVER TESTED in a school system; it was introduced quickly without the proper preparation of teachers who are supposed to teach it; it was a major expenditure of monies within the education industry and if it takes years to get it right who cares…because who knows if this is no more than another magic bullet.
If it fails because it has gotten off to such a rotten start that’s too bad… there will be another magic bullet by another Secretary of Education who doesn’t blame parents for thinking their kids are smart as they fail Core Curriculum tests all over the country.
Does Randi know about all of this? Randi knows.
And hasn’t done a damn thing about any of it.
Because she knows this: the heart and soul of the problem is not the education of children but the education – or lack of education – of teachers.
And because it is the job of union leaders to protect their membership, enlarge their membership, enrich the union with more dues payments, they will do nothing to question the performance of that membership or put it in a defensive position.
There is no real choice for a union leader of teachers to help the children involved.
If helping children means in anyway tearing down the reputation of teachers…it is teachers first.” And as her hand-picked successor in NYC, Micheal Mulgrew put it “ it’s the 200,000 union dues checks we receive every month that counts…”
That’s been Randi’s job for years and she has performed it very well. At least so it seems.
But what Randi knows is the truth: that our teachers now come from the lowest third of SAT scores going into college. That teachers are not properly prepared to teach by the nation’s 1,132 Schools of Education.
That new teachers are given the toughest assignments in the lowest performing schools with no help and no hope because new teachers walk into their classrooms not really knowing what to do.
If Randi Weingarten were the new Chancellor of Schools in New York City could she make a difference? Would she know what to do?
Yes. And for that reason she would refuse the job if she was asked because she’d have to admit what has been wrong for years and what she did to compound that wrong.
Too bad.
There’s also been a rumor, Mayor DeBlasio was considering Bill Thompson for the job. We hope not. We doubt it. That would really be an indication of what he doesn’t know about our public schools and that would be too big a disappointment so early in his tenure.