I found Joe’s comments provocative as well. However, I took a different meaning from them. I think the “charade” he is referring to is the incredible amount and detail of regulations that govern how we teach our kids. These regulations lead to seemingly odd situations like the one Joe writes about.

You write: “There are those who question the need for such explicit language in our agreements, but they have obviously never attempted to work with school management such as that at Tweed.” Parents find arguments like this really frustrating. They don’t like it when Tweed blames the UFT or UFT blames Tweed — they just want good schools. Meanwhile, I rarely hear a charter school operator complain about Tweed, likely because they are given more independence in how they operate their schools. I hope the UFT opens more charter schools — great ones — and finds themselves arguing about Kafkaesque scenarios like this one much less often.

Finally, in a voucher system, the “master” is not management, it is the parents. The parents would choose where to send their kids, just like the wealthier “masters” in our city do. I am guessing that these new “masters” wouldn’t appreciate much of the fighting between Tweed and the UFT.

Ken

We’ve had an engineer (Mayor Mike) and a prosecutor (you know who) in charge of education for long enough to see how that plays out. Not well.

When our current chancellor moves on to greener pastures (I still think he’ll go to work for Bill Gates), wouldn’t it be nice if his successor is an actual educator?

Or is that too much to ask?