The Los Angeles School District, 2nd largest in the country has just picked a Superintendent, a recently retired US Navy Admiral, an Afro American who currently resides in Washington, DC. The school district will come under a form of mayoral control on January 1, 2007, however, the LA School Board excluded the mayor from the process and made their selection before its powers are sharply diminished.
The trend around the country is to select businessmen, lawyers and military folk. In NYC we haven’t seen a Chancellor from within the system for almost twenty years.Lately knowledgeable educators have been cast aside as potential superintendents. Retired military leaders have been chosen in a number of cities. The real “plot” is a plan to “federalize” teachers, chose a military type as school system leader, make teachers wear uniforms, “salute” their principals and send “disloyal teachers,” aka union leaders to the equivalent of Guantanemo. Am I too paranoid?
Other cities have chosen corporate types, after all if you could run a major corporation you can run a school district. Right? The Walmart managers might be available. Instead of the corporate path to profits–sending jobs off shore, our schools face the reverse problem, “off shore” workers are flocking to our shores.
Talk radio, blogs and folks in bars love discussing “what if?” If Steinbrenner fired Torre who would be the next Yankee manager? and on and on.
If Klein left who would be the next Chancellor?
NYC has never had a female Chancellor. Two Afro American Chancellors, three Hispanic and a number of Jewish Chancellors, but no women.
Kathy Cashin is the Regional honcho in Region 5 (School District 19,23,27) which has lead the city in both ELA and Math score growth in each of the last three years. Michelle Cahill was a leader at the Carnegie Foundation before joining Klein, she’s a Deputy Chancellor and a top policy advisor at Tweed. Barbara Byrd Bennett was a Community Superintendent in NYC, the founder of the Chancellor’s District and just retired as Superintendent in Cleveland.
On the business side you can point to Richard Parsons, the CEO at Time Warner and an Afro American.Ken Lay is no longer available and neither is Bernie Ebbers, unless it’s part of a work release program.
On the military side we have our Morris High School, CCNY graduate: Colin Powell.
And, of course, there’s this guy from Arkansas who seems to have a lot of time on his hands.
On the serious side, in what other field would a leader be chosen who has no experience in that field? Of course, the predecessors to Joel Klein and Harold Levy were all career educators, but did they do wonderful jobs?
Steinbrenner didn’t fire Torre and Bloomberg is not firing Klein … idyl speculation on a crisp fall day.
1 Comment:
1 institutional memory
· Oct 25, 2006 at 8:47 am
KLEIN: MORE HYPE THAN SUBSTANCE
Tony Alvarado, Ray Cortines, and Rudy Crew are three former chancellors who did well, despite the bizarre and contentious system of governance under which they served.
At the risk of damning them with faint praise: given the degree of mayoral support the current administration has enjoyed, any one of them would easily have outdone Joel Klein’s over-hyped achievements. The true motto of his administration should be “Spin First.”
It would be nice to see an educator in the job when the hypocritical Klein finally achieves his dream of moving over to the private sector.
I’m still predicting that he winds up working for Bill Gates or the Broad Foundation, or maybe starts a consulting firm with Rod (Turn the) Paige and Margaret (Mis)spellings.
There’s one more possibility: maybe he’ll become a “second career” teacher, and grab that generous housing allowance Tweed is offering.