Mayor Bloomberg’s selection of Cathleen Black as the next Schools Chancellor will require that she receive a waiver from Education Commissioner David Steiner.
Our current Chancellor, Joel Klein also required a waiver due to his failure to meet the Law’s requirements. During his reign, school organizations changed four times in an effort to prevent the Department of Education from being held accountable, standard test scores and graduation rates were manipulated, principals were held accountable for things they had little control over, teachers were blamed for every problem in the education system, parents were prevented from being meaningful participants in their children’s education and students continued to suffer with crowded classrooms, evaluations that obsessively rely on standardized tests, doing too much standard test preparation work and learning by rote about a narrowed curriculum.
To prevent this corruption of the education system, we must have a Chancellor who is not only a good manager, but an educator.
Robert I. Caloras
Little Neck
