The Mayor and the Chancellor: Compare and Contrast [Updated]

When the news of the dramatic increases in the scores of New York City public school students on state Math exams came, Mayor Michael Bloomberg responded with fulsome praise for the teachers whose diligence made it possible. “I’m happy, thrilled — ecstatic, I think, is a better word,” Mr. Bloomberg said during a news conference at City Hall. “The hard work going on in our schools is really paying off.”

Chancellor Joel Klein was not in New York City to hear the Mayor’s words. He had gone to Washington DC to support the candidacy of his protégé Michelle Rhee for Chancellor of the Washington D.C. public schools, and did not return in time for the press conference. And if that action did not speak volumes in and of itself, consider what he actually said in the nation’s capitol, as reported by the Washington Examiner.

In New York, which this week announced dramatic gains on standardized tests of its students, Rhee helped to root out 3,000 ineffective teachers. Rhee’s analysis of the city’s teachers gave New York the muscle it needed to change collective-bargaining agreements with its teacher’s union, making it possible to reassign teachers to improve results, Klein said.

Now, as best as we can figure, these claims were made up out of whole cloth. For example, there is simply nothing in any collective bargaining agreement that allows DOE administration to involuntary transfer a teacher to a new assignment — that was one of the DOE’s demands for the 2005 contract that the fact-finders expressly rejected.

But that is not the point we want to make. What is more significant is that even on this occasion of significant gains for New York City public school students, the Chancellor — in stark contrast to the Mayor — could not find it in himself to praise the teachers who made it possible. His passion was reserved for teachers who were, in his view, not making the grade.

UPDATE:

The Chancellor has been in contact with the UFT, and told us that the Washington Examiner article did not accurately reflect his comments, which were directed at the replacement of the seniority transfer system with the open market transfer system. He also said that he was prevented from being at the Mayor’s announcement by the weather, which kept his plane grounded in Washington DC for several hours. In all fairness to him, we thought it was important for Edwize readers to have this information.

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