I Wish Cathie Black Was Still Chancellor

The corporate education reform rats have their knives out for Cathie Black now that she's gone.

The NY Post started the hack and slash yesterday and the Times piles on today.

Here is what some of the rats are saying:

“Anybody working on any plan for the last two and a half months had no assurance that it would ever get done rather than just having dust gather on top of it,” said Joe Williams, the executive director of Democrats for Education Reform, who works closely with schools and education officials. “Not having a leader there makes them wonder why they are showing up every day to this giant bureaucratic blob.

“They are trying to change the world, and they can’t do it when there’s no one steering the ship.”

Two top education aides complained that under Ms. Black, the lack of a clear agenda from on high had begun to create inefficiencies in the department. Her predecessor, Joel I. Klein, liked to make quick, forceful decisions. Under Ms. Black, proposals meandered through layers of review: Ms. Black, her two powerful deputies, and City Hall officials, including Mr. Walcott and another deputy mayor, Howard Wolfson.

Amid the confusion, several proposals were delayed, including the effort to secure grants for school improvement. The aides spoke under condition of anonymity because the mayor has asked that officials move past criticism of Ms. Black’s tenure. An effort to obtain a response from her on Friday night to their remarks was unsuccessful.

Some officials worried that the momentum of Mr. Klein’s reform agenda, including his push to rid the system of subpar teachers, was beginning to falter. Without the presence of Eric Nadelstern, a deputy chancellor who retired after Ms. Black’s appointment, the department seemed increasingly unfamiliar with the needs of individual schools.

Ms. Black often deferred to Shael Polakow-Suransky, the chief academic officer, and Sharon Greenberger, the chief operating officer, giving them so much power that education officials jokingly referred to them as “chancellor,” the two aides said.

Meetings were rife with jockeying as senior officials tried to steer Ms. Black toward their view, the aides said. Mr. Polakow-Suransky and Ms. Greenberger served as gatekeepers, deciding which proposals to endorse and which to scuttle.

Mr. Polakow-Suransky, the acting chancellor until Mr. Walcott receives a waiver, disagreed on Friday with those who complained that the department had lost its moorings. “There have been frustrating moments, and there have been ups and downs,” Mr. Polakow-Suransky said of the last few months. But there is also, he said, “real excitement and a sense of possibility.”

“People are working hard on a lot of different fronts,” he continued. “The fact that Dennis has taken over, that is only going to add to it.”

I'll be frank here - I wish she was still chancellor.

The ed deform agenda was stalled while Black was heading the system.

Teacher evaluation agenda stalled under Ms. Black?

Fantastic!

Teacher contract negotiations that add new tests to every subject in every grade stalled?

Fantastic!

School "improvement" agenda that closes schools and adds hundreds of teachers to the ATR pool stalled?

Fantastic!

DFER's Joe Williams sad that the Tweedies are no longer "changing the world"?

Fantastic!

I know that the opponents to the corporate education reform agenda and Bloomberg's Children First policies are glorying in having Ms. Black's scalp on their belts, and there is little doubt that Bloomberg's having to pull Black back from the chancellorship is a black eye for him and his administration.

That said, the chaos she brought to Tweed was a positive in a big way, since the overall corporate reform agenda no longer had a strong leader pushing it every day

When the Tweedies are too busy fighting amongst themselves for their own particular reform projects to get much done, the damage to the system is mitigated.

Sure, it's still a mess, but it's not as big a mess as under Klein.

Will Walcott change dynamic Black brought?

Surely his leadership will change it, perhaps not back to the anti-teacher, close schools and open charters juggernaut that it was under Klein (who never seemed to miss an opportunity to bash teachers, close schools or open charters and place them in direct conflict with traditional public schools), but nonetheless his competence will allow the DOE to get back to doing the kind of damage ed deform shills like DFER's Joe Williams wants - bashing the union, trying to fire teachers and undermine work protections, closing schools and underfunding traditional public schools and promoting charters.

Yes, they were still trying to do this stuff while Black was chancellor, but they weren't doing it too efficiently.

So I may be one of the lone voices on the blogosphere saying this, but I for one will miss Cathie Black now that she's gone.

Yes, I'll miss her because I won't be able to make the drunk jokes and Ambien jokes about her anymore, but mostly I'll miss her because the instability she brought to Tweed because it is also brought so much instability to the corporate education reform agenda.