New York's City Hall. Only SOB's need apply.
It takes a true prick to govern New York. It also takes the truly prickless to remove the pricks that are needed to run things.
Our best leaders have been insufferable bastards. Peter Stuyvesant, Alexander Hamilton, DeWitt Clinton, Fiorello La Guardia, Rudy Giuliani, and Michael Bloomberg—all effective leaders, all of them assholes. These men probably warrant a swift kick in the nuts, yet our city couldn’t run without them. You cannot govern America’s greatest city by being a nice guy.
Yet what happens when that control goes away?
We may see firsthand as the legislation to maintain mayoral control of New York City public schools is set to expire July 1. With the New York State Senate in a circus-like deadlock over leadership, many important bills (the schools bill among them) have not been considered. Let’s thank Hiram Monserrate and Pedro Espada, Jr., for making New York government the butt of even more jokes for years to come.
Forget the whores of Albany for a moment. Once mayoral control—which was approved verbally by almost all city agencies and legislators, including the teachers union—were to extinguish, the school system would revert to the elected New York City Board of Education. This board has not even been in existence in 7 years. When will elections be held? Will there be a new chancellor? How will policies change? Can this happen before the start of school in September?
Would we allow this with any other system than the schools? During the constitutional convention of 1787, the Founders didn’t just say “We’re scrapping the Articles of Confederation, so everybody just sit tight and be good while we come up with something else. Madison, write down the names of everyone not behaving.”
However, dwelling on the transfer of power masks an important point. Did we need to scrap mayoral control completely in the first place? I’m not so sure—and this isn’t because I’m in love with our Mayor Napoleon (also Mayor Cromwell, Mayor Torquemada…insert moralistic blowhard here).
History has shown that the ills of New York require strong medicine. On the other hand, New Yorkers have the distinct inability to swallow the medicine that is best for them.
At the beginnings of the settlement, a crippled soldier, a minister’s son from the hinterlands of the Netherlands, was sent to save a colony on the brink of disaster. Colonists in New Netherland hated Peter Stuyvesant—and were quick to shove him off once the English arrived in 1664—but his tyrannical rule was necessary. New Netherland, later New York, became an orderly, thriving commercial enterprise.
The New York of 1783, after the Revolution, was a burnt-out mess. While the patriot hot-heads were busy expropriating Tory lands faster than a Cuban workers’ committee, Alexander Hamilton was secretly working with both former Tories and Patriots to get the New York economy moving again. Many local Sons of Liberty hated Hamilton’s “sleeping with the enemy,” but this compromise ensured that the city could recover financially and institutionally.
During the Great Depression, New York reached unemployment rates nearing 40-50 percent. Fiorello La Guardia, a little “Republican” congressman who sounded more like Lenin than Reagan, pushed to sweep away all the vestiges of the old patronage system created by New York’s longtime political machine, Tammany Hall. Many immigrant neighborhoods, especially the Irish wards that still benefited from Tammany largesse, chafed at the imperious little “Eye”-talian with the bluster of Mussolini. Yet the city government became a strong, more efficient entity thanks to La Guardia’s ham-fisted rule.
Now Michael Bloomberg follows in the irritating footsteps of other tyrants. He took up the unfinished business left from New York’s last great dictator, Rudy Giuliani. From 1994 to 2001, Giuliani managed an iron grip on the city. He reorganized the police force, making it a force of both effectiveness and terror—depending on your skin color. He cleaned up “seedy” neighborhoods so that tourists can come and gape in comfort at the tall buildings. And, of course, 9/11 made him a hero.
Yet for all these accomplishments, Giuliani could never subdue the many-headed Hydra that is the Board of Education. Bloomy was happy to oblige. With a pliant City Council (thanks to a re-written charter) and Albany on his side, Bloomberg crushed the old Board, replacing it with a rubber-stamp body called the Council for Educational Policy. In short, the mayor now ran the schools, and he placed a Wall Street lawyer, Joel Klein, as his chancellor, with orders to clean the place up and make the kids learn again.
To be fair, something had to be done about the school system. Graduation rates were abysmal. Schools were dilapidated and dangerous. The individual Community Boards could only agree on enriching themselves, and the elected Board of Education could only agree on making sure they got a taste of the spoils. The system was a Byzantine mess where directives from one department were countered by directives from another. Due to the elected nature of the Board of Ed, the mayor and schools chancellor were nearly powerless to correct the situation.
Begrudgingly, the Bloomberg era has achieved some notable successes. Crime rates have continued their trends from the Giuliani era. Smoking bans have made public places much more livable. The school system has been reorganized as a more centralized structure, as more and more schools are added to the system. Children are achieving higher and higher scores on standardized tests, and graduation rates show significant improvement.
This does not mean all is rosy in the Tweed building. Bloomberg still believes that standardized test scores alone are an indicator of success. Many think otherwise, me included. He has too many consultants, “experts” and bean counters that obviously have never set foot inside a classroom. Parents and community leaders clamor for their voices to be heard, or at least acknowledged, while our Lilliputian Caesar issues commands like an Eastern potentate.
In short, the guy is not only an insufferable prick, but an unashamedly insufferable prick. Yet can we do without his control of schools, especially in the near future? No, largely because there never was, nor will there ever be, a viable alternative.
The original proposal before the Albany robber barons involved slight modifications on mayoral control, which would allow the input of parents and community leaders in decision making—the INPUT, not the control itself. The centralization of power in schools requires the mayor make the ultimate decisions. Yet checks on his power are necessary. I, for one, would like a reworking of the city charter to reinstitute the Board of Estimate, the committee responsible for budgetary matters. It’s a pipe dream, but it serves as an important check on Bloomberg’s power.
The complete dismantling of the system, though, is unfeasible and unworkable. We cannot go back to a system that did not work in the first place. It’s unfair to the students, irresponsible to teachers and administrators, and a slap in the face to a city that—like it or not—needs strong governance.
The only people acting in control, funny enough is the new Board of Education. They voted to retain Klein as chancellor and almost-unanimously maintain mayoral control of schools.
Let’s hope the senate, too, comes to its senses and passes the mayoral control legislation. It may need another hardheaded bastard to get things moving.
Governor Paterson, are you willing to be that bastard?
Mr. D's Neighborhood 
How’s this for “Full Disclosure”? A Counterproposal for Publishing Teacher Data
Last year, like so many others, I sounded the alarm on the so-called “rotisserie league” system of teacher evaluation, using stats like baseball cards to determine effectiveness. At the moment, I thought my lesson had been learned, at least when using Alex Rodriguez as an example.
(By the way, he again is a failure this season, according to NCLB standards)
The recent release of teacher data by the Los Angeles Times has shown the ghastly effects of such unscrupulous shaming. Morale is at a new low. Attrition is rampant. Few would want to enter a school system where taking the courageous stand of teaching children with special needs could land you on the front page with a noose over your head. Most shockingly, one teacher committed suicide over perceived low scores, even though colleagues and administrators alike touted him as an exemplary teacher.
Now, the grand poobahs in New York City want the same thing.
Last week, the UFT went to court to stop the New York City Department of Education from publishing Teacher Data Report scores for 4-8th Grade teachers in the city. The TDRs, as they were called, were a program designed to show teachers—and only teachers—how their students have done over time via standardized testing and other assessments.
The move is so controversial that even the CSA, the principals’ union, broke ranks with the DOE and sided with the teachers. When the TDRs were implemented last year, principals explicitly told their teachers that the data would be for their eyes only. Publishing these scores would not only undermine teacher morale, but also the integrity of administrators citywide.
Yet even with the injunctions, motions, stoppages, etc. teachers may probably still face the prospect of public data reports.
Harping about the validity (or lack thereof) of the data or the data collection will do little good. Nor will the constant chirping of union reps and teacher advocates, since the education reform crowd has already labeled teachers as the enemy.
What’s needed now is a counter-proposal.
If the city is going to publish teacher data, it must publish student and parent records alongside each teacher’s evaluation.
If the city wants to make everyone accountable in education, then all the cards should be face-up on the table. Let’s make data evaluation truly public—after all, we know all the intangibles and background that surround the stats in baseball, basketball, football, etc. There’s the differences in field surfaces, in flooring, in wind directions, fan attendance: all of which add up to some effect on the overall performance of the individual athletes.
The same could be said for teachers. If a teacher has a class that cannot read at their grade level, show the records that indicate their improvement, as well as any individual needs, problems, situations that help or hinder the classroom experience. If a teacher misses some phony cutoff in test scores for bonuses or whatnot, make sure the record shows the anecdotals of the little bastards who never do squat in the room.
Parents shouldn’t be off the hook, either. Alongside the data reports should be the page upon page of meeting notes with parents—parents who never show up for meetings, parents who get belligerent, parents who “yes” the teacher to death in order to get her off their back. Yet also show that parents who genuinely try to help, but are often frustrated with the curriculum themselves. The problem rarely just stops at teacher and student.
Thanks to privacy laws, this proposal will probably never see the light of day. Yet what makes teachers so worthy of exemption from professional courtesy?
It can’t be because of our status as public employees: no other public agency would allow such open pillorying of their staff. Nor is it because of our special relationship with children: parents have an even more intense bond, yet their results are hardly scrutinized in public.
Perhaps it’s because the inhuman, artificial nature of data allows administrators to show that they care about children without ever being involved with children. It’s like the old line about the imperious city planner Robert Moses, “He loves the public, but he hates people.”
Publishing student and parent data, while a pipe dream, can be an even better way to evaluate a teacher’s performance. It provides a holistic, broad-based picture of the circumstances each teacher must deal with. Then, and only then, should test data be considered.
After all, how can you score a baseball game if you haven’t watched a single inning of it?
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Tagged as Alex Rodriguez, Comedy, Commentary, Curriculum, education reform, Educational leadership, Humor, Humour, Joel Klein, Los Angeles Times, Michael Bloomberg, Michael Mulgrew, NCLB, New York City, New York City Department of Education, Opinion, Robert Moses, Standardized test, Teachers, Teaching, United Federation of Teachers