How The NYPD And The NYCDOE Suffer From The Same Bloombergian Disease

It's called checklistitis - as in, the corporate managers of the NYPD and the NYCDOE, people with little to no actual experience in the jobs they're now managing other people for, demand accountability of underlings through endless checklists on which every category of data must get checked or else there is hell to pay.

In the end, the only thing that matters in such a system is the checklist and making sure that you can tell top-down management that no check box has gone unchecked.

Here's a retired sergeant from the NYPD writing about how checklistitis stripped cops of autonomy and created a CYA environment where nothing mattered more than the data:

Under Bratton, NYPD executives were subject to Compstat meetings, where they were challenged, often reprimanded regarding crime statistics in their commands and compelled to develop strategies to correct these conditions. But ultimately, the focus was on having well-trained and effective line-level enforcers.

A lot of that changed under Commissioner Raymond Kelly, when a harsher, more corporate management ethos took over.

Units previously run by lieutenants were now managed by an executive. These commanders were less concerned with allowing detectives to run their investigations than with trying to anticipate and generate answers to the questions they expected to be asked when called on the Compstat carpet or briefing the commissioner on high-profile cases.

And most of the new bosses had very little hands-on experience. Detectives who spent their careers investigating serious offenses were being told at every step to check in first with an executive who typically never worked as a detective.

The sharp decline in detectives’ case clearance rates is strong evidence that this management style has outlived its usefulness.

Under Kelly, the NYPD has become top-heavy, with more executives than ever micromanaging minutiae barely worthy of a sergeant’s attention.

Now, when a situation challenges a patrol officer, he calls a sergeant, who calls the lieutenant, who notifies the captain.

Many of my former colleagues are dubious that Bratton’s proactive, cop-friendly tactics will be met with approval by Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio. But the incoming commissioner’s adaptability should not be underestimated.

The challenge Bratton faces on his return, which may be more perplexing than the out-of-control crime he faced in 1994, is how to get detectives who have been trained to follow checklists rather than investigative leads — and supervisors with years of seniority who have never made a significant decision — onboard with his agenda, which depends on intelligence and autonomy, rather than automatons.

Sounds eerily familiar to those of us in the DOE who have seen the same micromanaging of minutiae barely worth anybody's attention but under Bloomberg, God forbid that minutiae remains unchecked on the checklist, or there is hell to pay.

This is Bloomberg's top-down management style, which stems from his arrogant conviction that everybody outside of himself and his crop of cronies is an idiot who cannot be allowed to handle any decisions on their own.

A commenter at the News story wrote:

The Mayor believes that the people of New York are incapable of making petty decisions as well. Great point and it would seem that their like-mindedness has made them (Mayor & PC) inseparable all these years.

Indeed, it really comes down to that.

 

Bloomberg believes nobody can make decisions on their own.

 

That's why he isn't going away, even though he's leaving office.

 

As the Times revealed today, he plans on bringing all the wonders of his governance of NYC to the world at large - including the overreliance on data.

 

The Times describes this coteria of Bloomberg cronies thusly:

 

The organization, to be called Bloomberg Associates, will act as an urban SWAT team, deployed at the invitation of local governments to solve knotty, long-term challenges, like turning a blighted waterfront into a gleaming public space, or building subway-friendly residential neighborhoods.

In a twist on the traditional business model of consulting, clients will not be charged.

Much about the new group is still unknown. But as with most of Mr. Bloomberg’s undertakings over the past decade, it will involve spending eye-popping sums of money with no expectation of earning a profit. (The annual budget will run in the tens of millions.)

The group resembles a government in exile. Mr. Bloomberg has recruited at least half a dozen top aides from his administration, including Janette Sadik-Khan, the transportation commissioner; Katherine Oliver, the commissioner of media and entertainment; and Kate D. Levin, the cultural affairs commissioner.

Bloomberg Associates will be run by George A. Fertitta, who as chief executive of the city’s tourism agency oversaw a record increase in annual visitors to New York, to 54 million this year. Mr. Fertitta said in an interview that the group would eventually expand to about 20 to 25 employees, most of them drawn from the mayor’s office, who will work closely with Mr. Bloomberg’s sprawling charitable foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies. (Like the foundation, the consultancy will be housed inside a giant townhouse on the Upper East Side, around the corner from the mayor’s home.)

 

God help the rest of the world.

Bad Filmmaker Thinks He Has Solutions For Public Schools

M. Night Shyamalan is one of the worst filmmakers in contemporary movie making.

He had one successful film about 15 years ago and hasn't made a decent film since.

Ha has managed to win a "Worst Director" award in 2006 for Lady in the Water, however, and a "Worst Screenplay" award in 2010 for The Last Airbender.

Shyamalan's name is so tarnished these days that Sony didn't want to publicize his involvement in the Will Smith film, After Earth, for fear that Shyamalan's name would turn film goers off.

No fear there - the film was such a disaster that film goers avoided it even though they didn't know Shyamalan directed it.

Given all the disasters Shyamalan has been involved with over the last decade, you'd think he might turn his attention to his own film making craft and, you know, maybe learn how to make a decent film again.

But you'd be wrong.

Instead this paragon of bad film direction has decided he's going to solve the problems in the public school system.

No, seriously, he's actually written a book about education reform and the Wall Street Journal has a story about it.

He says he approached his research to education reform the same way he approaches directing a film, so you know that his solutions are just going to go over like a Shyamalan review at Rotten Tomatoes.

So what are his solutions for fixing education problems?

Fire teachers, put principals in charge of school culture rather than operations, make schools smaller, extend school time and give teachers and principals regular feedback.

Gee, we've never heard this stuff before, M. Night.

Thanks so much for deigning to give us your wisdom on schools and teaching.

Too bad you don't know any more about teaching and running a school than you do about movie making.

Apparently you are unfamiliar with a position in the school system called the assistant principal in charge of operations who actually handles the operational side of schools.

Strike one.

Apparently you also are unfamiliar with the small schools movement already tried by Bill Gates that did not bring about the seismic shift in school performance you think it's going to.

Strike two.

And apparently you don't know that teachers and principals are getting regular feedback via the new teacher evaluation systems put into place that will require administrators to observe teachers six times a year.

In fact, between the monthly learning community meetings, the monthly classroom rounds, the bi-weekly curriculum meetings, the weekly subject focus groups for every preparation, and the half dozen observations a year, we get more feedback over our teaching than you seem to over your film making.

Strike three. 

Time to go back to learning how to make movies, M. Night, and leave the education policy and teaching to people who know what they're doing.

On second thought, given how bad your movies are, it's probably time to give that up too.

Maybe you can go back to film school so you can a) learn how to make a decent film and b) study how teaching and learning really works.