Why I Have Decided To Support Cathie Black For Chancellor

Everywhere I look - from the education blogs to the newspapers (except for the Murdoch Post, of course) to the City Council to the State Senate - I hear calls for Mayor Bloomberg to pull back the appointment of Hearst publisher Cathie Black to replace Joel Klein as New York City schools chancellor.

The rationale is that Ms. Black has no prior education experience, has never taught in schools or studied education issues, knows nothing of education policy matters and indeed, didn't even attend public schools herself (as Klein famously did) or send her own children to them.

That rationale is a good one and makes lots of sense. It assumes that the leader of the New York City public schools ought to be able to discuss education policy, curriculum, teaching matters and student issues as well as deal with the more managerial problems a chancellor faces, like budgeting, personnel, etc.

On the face of it, I agree with that rationale, and ordinarily I would be signing those CAN CATHIE BLACK petitions like everybody else.

Here is why I have decided not to:

No matter who the autocratic Bloomberg picks to be the new schools chancellor, the policies are going to be the same.

Cathie Black, Shirley Temple-Black, the members of Black Sabbath - it doesn't really matter who Bloomberg hires to run the school system so long as it is Bloomberg doing the hiring and calling the shots on policy.

Bloomberg has three more years to completely destroy the school system as it was constituted before he took over in 2002.

So far, he's done a pretty good job of that.

Four reorganizations, several different curriculum shifts (remember RAMP UP? Oh, those were the days!!!), "fair financing" of the school budgets so that it is now in the interest of individual schools to rid themselves of expensive veteran teachers for cheaper newbies, hundreds of schools closed over the past eight years (with 57 more to go this year), the creation of many new charter schools sited in traditional public school buildings, and the emphasis on data and test scores over anything else in education have made the system nearly unrecognizable from what it was before Bloomerg took control.

The old BOE is a distant memory, even for those of us who worked under that system.

These days, even the BOE headquarters building on Livingston Street has become emblematic of Bloomberg's New York - it was sold off to become condos.

None of this is to suggest that we should mourn for the passing of the old BOE. But if Bloomberg has brought anything to the schools system, it is destabilization, chaos and constant change. This is what Klein liked to call "creative destruction" and the rationale behind it was less to create something good than to destroy what they considered bad.

Bloomberg and Klein considered the old system bad. It wasn't market-friendly, it wasn't run with business sense and principles, it wasn't efficient and accountability-based.

At least that's how they saw it (and continue to see it.) So they spent eight years blowing everything up more than once in attempt to instill fear, "accountability" and efficiency into the system. Never mind that business principles and efficiency brought us the Tech Bubble of 2000, the Housing Bubble of 2007, and the financial crisis of 2008 - Klein and Bloomberg value ONLY a business and corporate mindset in running a school system, human beings be damned.

So in replacing Klein, Bloomberg has ALWAYS intended to continue with this agenda. And the agenda has been to remake the school system to look like a corporation - top-down management, "accountability" principles, punitive measures for those who aren't making the grade according to those prevailing accountability principles, employees who constantly fear downsizings and layoffs, and the breaking of the teachers union.

Indeed, with the help of President Obama's Race to the Top program that brought teacher evaluations tied to test scores and the ability to fire teachers after two consecutive years of "inefficiency" ratings based upon those test scores, Bloomberg's dream of breaking the union is almost complete.

One of his main goals as head of the schools has been to destabilize the teaching corps. and push expensive veteran teachers out and replace them with cheaper newbies. Fair financing of schools has made that the goal of principals as well, and now he is using the economic crisis that the state and city are facing as another opportunity to argue that "bad teachers" (i.e., expensive vets) have to go.

Doesn't matter if these vets are good teachers or not. In Bloomberg's eyes, ANY IDIOT can teach. Or at least he has plenty of people to choose from now that the economy is bad and people are dying for jobs. So he has plenty of cheaper alternatives to the expensive teaching corps. he has now. It is true that the current UFT contract protects teachers from layoffs, but the zeitgeist these days makes me think that job protections like tenure and seniority will either be soon gone completely or rendered meaningless by the new teacher evaluation law.

Layoffs are coming. Firings are coming. More school closings are coming. More charter schools are coming. More turf battles between charters and traditional public schools are coming. More chaos and destabilization of the system is coming. Thanks to Obama and RttT, more standardized tests in every subject at every level are coming. More top-down management and standardized curricula are coming.

It doesn't matter who Bloomberg chooses to replace Klein. This will be the policy. Sure, it would be nice to have someone with education experience to replace Klein, but does anyone really think that whomever Bloomberg chooses to replace Klein, even a so-called educator, wouldn't be on the same privatization policy page as Bloomberg and wouldn't carry out those same policies that Klein has carried out?

Yes, it would have been nice to have a more public process to fill the chancellor's position. But as Adam Lisberg points out in today's Daily News, the third term Bloomberg thinks he knows better than everybody else about governance. And after state lawmakers in Albany reauthorized mayoral control of the system without putting any real checks on the mayor's power, there is little that can be done to mitigate the damage Bloomberg wants to do to the system.

He has total control. The problem, then, is not Cathie Black or whoever inhabits the chancellor's chair. The problem is mayoral control.

So I say, let him have Cathie Black. She is the devil we know. Layoffs and downsizings are her specialty, so we know why Bloomberg brought her in. Klein was sour, but Black can do the downsizing with a smile. But every move she makes as chancellor, those opposed to Bloomberg's agenda can use her lack of education experience and knowledge to our advantage. Both the public and the usually compliant corporate media have been skeptical of her. We can use that skepticism against her when she makes her first moves to close schools and fire teachers, as will undoubtedly be done later in the school year. That may be the best way to push back against the union-busting Bloombergian agenda as well as put a check on some of the more chaotic destabilizing efforts of Bloomberg and the school privatizers.

It's not much, I know. And that's because the problem is not Cathie Black or indeed, Joel Klein. The problem is Michael Bloomberg.

So long as he has autocratic control of the system, he can pretty much do whatever he wants. Sure, he has had to delay some moves - the UFT won a temporary battle on the school closures. But he mostly gets his way on everything eventually. And whether he gets Cathie Black or is forced to pick some "educator" because the state denies Black a waiver, you can be sure he will STILL try and get his way on pushing his destabilization and privatization agenda.

With Cathie Black as head of the system, Bloomberg has very nakedly signaled his intentions to teachers, city residents, and state lawmakers. The final corporatization of the system is coming. That was going to happen anyway, no matter who he chose. But now that it is out in the open, we can call his CHILDREN FIRST reforms exactly what they are - PRIVATIZATION FIRST.

And we can work to undermine mayoral control by pointing out how absurd it is that one man, one little autocratic egomaniac, gets to make all these decisions that affect a million children, their parents and the educators in the system, in secret, without any outside input

That ought to be the battle we fight next - to wrest total control of the school system from the mayor, any mayor, and return some semblance of democratic control and public accountability to the people who run the school system.

It's a long ways away to the next mayoral control reauthorization, but it is important to start that fight now.

The battle against Cathie Black, while well-meant and one that I am sympathetic to, even if it is victorious, will be a hollow one, just as the UFT court victory on schools closures was.

Bloomberg is STILL closing those schools.

And he can do that because he has complete control.

It is time to end that control.