Joel Klein, NYC schools chancellor, is eagerly pontificating about big changes to the school system. He's even hired someone from Edison, perhaps hoping to emulate their hollow record of trying to privatize public schools. Their failures are irrelevant, apparently, when there are still teachers and unions to be blamed.
Everyone knows what makes good schools, and it's been affirmed by the NY State Supreme Court. That's good teachers, small classes, and decent facilities. Klein's boss, Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with pouty billionaires needing stadiums, has repeatedly expressed an unwillingness to devote any city money to any such enterprise. He will, however, accept money if it's provided by others. How magnanamous of him.
Klein, despite a record of multiplying school bureaucracy, now talks of trying to reduce it. When you put non-educators in charge of education, and make it a point to never, ever consult those who actually work in classrooms, results are predictable.
A total breakdown of the education system would not only please the extreme right wing, to which Mayor Bloomberg has donated millions, but also ease Steve Forbes' tax bill, the most cherished goal of our current national government.
Folks like Bloomberg and Klein, endlessly spinning their wheels while assiduously avoiding real issues, play right into their hands.
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