Bloomberg used secrecy in hiring new school chief to replace Joel Klein.

[madfloridian]

That is the advantage of having mayoral control of the school system. There is no one to argue with you, there are no checks and balances.

In fact it appears he simply contacted the chairwoman of Hearst Magazines and offered her the job. No experience needed in education at all, apparently a business decision.

For Black, a Cold Call from the Mayor, and a Job Offer

Here’s how her selection went down, the new chancellor confides to Ms. Adams:

Couple of weeks ago on a Monday the mayor called. We know each other a long time. I didn’t know what he wanted.

He only told me this was a personal call and he wanted to meet. I couldn’t exactly say, “Sorry, Mr. Mayor, but I’m busy,” but the fact is I had back-to-back meetings at Hearst, so I said I couldn’t today but could tomorrow.

He said, “How’s 7 a.m. tomorrow?” I said, ‘Fine.’ We met in his foundation offices. The offer came out of left field, and my stomach did a flip-flop. The opportunity made me feel fantastic. It’s a great thing when, at a certain stage in life, you can be able to deal up … not down.

That was easy. No vetting, no consideration of her education experience (there is none).
Just a phone call from the mayor to her.

More from the New York Times about just how secret this process really was.

Bloomberg Took Secret Path to a New Schools Chief


Ruth Fremson/The New York Times Cathleen P. Black, chairwoman of Hearst Magazines, was named chancellor of New York City’s public schools.

To a degree unusual even for an administration that relishes keeping its deliberations as private as possible, hardly anyone knew of Mr. Klein’s departure or Ms. Black’s arrival until minutes before the official announcement. While such posts are typically filled after highly publicized national searches that can last months or even a year, there is little evidence that anyone else was seriously vetted or considered — and few of the usual suspects, including members of the mayor’s inner circle, were even consulted.

Inexplicable as it may have seemed to outsiders, the secrecy around the search for someone to run the schools crystallized two tenets of the Bloomberg era: the mayor’s faith in the ability of business leaders to fix the ills of government, and his keen dislike of drawn-out public debates that might derail his agenda.

And, in what has become a Bloomberg hallmark, the mayor relied on someone he knew through business and social networks, someone squarely in his comfort zone of wealthy and socially prominent Upper East Side residents, someone with whom he has shared many friends and colleagues, dinners and drinks.

In fact in 2004 Mayor Bloomberg had this to say about mayors controlling school systems.

Bloomberg's lesson for schoolchildren

In 2004, for instance, he had his way on testing by firing and replacing three members of the dissenting members of his appointed Panel for Educational Policy, which replaced publicly-elected Boards. Then his crowing could be heard all the way across the river in Jersey:

"This is what mayoral control is all about," Mr. Bloomberg said last night. "In the olden days, we had a board that was answerable to nobody. And the Legislature said it was just not working, and they gave the mayor control. Mayoral control means mayoral control, thank you very much. They are my representatives, and they are going to vote for things that I believe in."

He further said that any public search would have been damaging.

There is a rather humorous column at the NYT City Room.

O.K., Seriously — Who Was Interviewed for Chancellor’s Job?

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said he searched for the best possible schools chancellor before picking Cathleen P. Black, the chairwoman of Hearst Magazines. But so far, we haven’t heard the names of any others who were in contention. Indeed, The Times has been unable to turn up any evidence that the mayor considered anyone besides Ms. Black, a complete outsider to the world of education, to replace Joel I. Klein.

So, on Thursday, City Room started a search of its own, asking readers — were you interviewed for the job? The post gathered quite a few comments, some kind of witty though most likely not true — “I was interviewed. However my job as a fork lift operator in a cargo facility is more personally gratifying,” said a reader who goes by Patrick — and others neither witty nor plausible.

We don’t really think Patrick was interviewed. Ms. Black told Cindy Adams in The New York Post that she wasn’t either: Mayor Bloomberg just offered her the job, stone cold. But surely someone was approached by the mayor or his team about taking control of the nation’s largest public school system, without actually being handed the reins.

The nation's largest school system has a person in charge now who was picked secretly and without any consideration of the fact that she has no education experience.

In fact she said she wasn't even interviewed.

I like the way this situation was phrased by the Perdido Street School blogger.

Layoffs are coming. Firings are coming. More school closings are coming. More charter schools are coming. More turf battles between charters and traditional public schools are coming. More chaos and destabilization of the system is coming. Thanks to Obama and RttT, more standardized tests in every subject at every level are coming. More top-down management and standardized curricula are coming.

It doesn't matter who Bloomberg chooses to replace Klein. This will be the policy. Sure, it would be nice to have someone with education experience to replace Klein, but does anyone really think that whomever Bloomberg chooses to replace Klein, even a so-called educator, wouldn't be on the same privatization policy page as Bloomberg and wouldn't carry out those same policies that Klein has carried out?

Yes, it would have been nice to have a more public process to fill the chancellor's position. But as Adam Lisberg points out in today's Daily News, the third term Bloomberg thinks he knows better than everybody else about governance. And after state lawmakers in Albany reauthorized mayoral control of the system without putting any real checks on the mayor's power, there is little that can be done to mitigate the damage Bloomberg wants to do to the system.

He has total control. The problem, then, is not Cathie Black or whoever inhabits the chancellor's chair. The problem is mayoral control.

[FarCenter]

1. Leaders of major organizations aren't usually selected via an open process

Anybody really good wouldn't want their name made public, only to be passed over for someone else.

[madfloridian]

2. This is a public school system.

Our superintendents have always been vetted and approved by the school board.

Leaders of school systems, public schools, are supposed to be joint decisions.

[FarCenter]

4. The school boards haven't been doing a good job

US students are something like 25th in math and 21st in science among the developed countries.

[madfloridian]

7. Whoa! They are defunding public schools.

Giving money to private companies to run charters. Guess what? The money doesn't go back to the public school if the student is expelled from the charter for grades.

That is a specious argument.

[ThomCat]

12. It is very hard to do a good job when,

Your budget per student keeps dropping, but you have to compete with private schools who get essentially unlimited amounts of money per student.

The privatized schools get to poach space and resources from your school

The privatized school can take your best students, give you back their worst ones, but keep the money for those worst students

The mayor and chancellor are publicly hostile to the teachers unions, want to drive them out, implement rules to make life hostile and difficult for unionized teachers, expect all principals to implement these rules, and all of your teachers are in teachers unions.

The rules for determining which schools are "good" schools and which are "bad" schools are so blatantly biased that any school that gets "stuck" with disabled students, non-English speaking students, and homeless students is guaranteed to be a bad school just because of the special needs of the students no matter how hard the students work or how much they improve. The public schools were deliberately loaded down with all of these students, while the privatized schools get none of them.

[sulphurdunn]

25. These statistics are misleading

on so many counts I don't know where to begin. Try this. US scores on the Program for International Student Achievement (PISA) tests, which measure achievement in math and science for 15 year old students are averaged by ethnicity. Remember, that with few exceptions all the other countries have much smaller, more homogeneous populations with national educational systems.

The average score internationally on the PISA in 2003 was 500. The average score for white students on the PISA in 2003 was 512 which put them in the top third ahead of France, Germany, Denmark and Sweden, but behind Canada, Japan and Finland, Korea and the Netherlands. For Asian Americans, the average score was 506. Our other ethnic groups fell into the lower 400s, giving the US an average international score of 483 which placed it in the bottom third.

This kind of data says more about the state of inequality in American society than it says about the microcosms of that inequality called public schools or their teachers or their unions or their school boards.

[msanthrope]

19. But the teacher's union, and Democrats and Republicans alike supported Mayoral Control.

It may be a public school system, but Bloomberg was empowered to make such changes, with union help.

And I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts that the teacher's union won't make too big a stink about Cathie Black, either....you know why????

Contracts. There's more money to be had....

"The city’s powerful teachers’ union, which has criticized many of Mr. Bloomberg’s changes but whose members have been the recipients of hefty pay raises, eventually provided key support in his bid to renew control over the schools. And that support comes in the same year that the city prepares to negotiate contract renewal with the union, the United Federation of Teachers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/nyregion/07control.html

[Me.]

3. Tough

Secrecy and unlimited control is not in the best interests of the citizens and though that concern should be paramount, here in NYC, it isn't. This is what comes from allowing him to rig a third term.

[proud2BlibKansan]

5. That's not how school superintendents are hired

Ours was brought in for a series of interviews and the public was invited to participate. All the candidates were profiled in the local paper as well. It's a very transparent process. As it should be since tax dollars are involved.

[madfloridian]

6. When local papers profiled candidates here, one got cut by public demand.

His remarks were just outrageous.

[ThomCat]

9. Are you kidding? This is the largest school system in the world!

And it is a PUBLIC school system, paid for entirely with public taxpayer money. There sure as hell should have been an open process.

The public should have known who was being considered, and what the qualifications were of the people being considered.

The people who were contenders should have been interviewed extensively.

And the candidates should have been required to present an outline of some kind of strategy or preliminary plan for how they would like to guide the school system in coming years so interviews and the public could assess whether or not the candidate has those necessary but hard to classify characteristics a chancellor should have, like Vision, Drive, Ambition, Dedication, Empathy, and Cultural Awareness and Sensitivity.

Instead, we have a dictator Mayor who hires his friends by whim as he sees fit. So the new Chancellor's primary qualifications are

1. loyalty to the mayor, not to the teachers, students or school system.
2. experience running a massive non-union corporation, and almost certainly shares the belief that unions are bad.
3. privatization and investment is good. Bottom line is necessary. Schools do not exist as a public service, but as a business opportunity.
4. has no professional education experience to get in the way of corporate plans
5. teachers are just employees, not the core of the business or anything special.
6. students are just replaceable clients, not the purpose for existence or anything vital or special.
7. top down culture is everything. All order, all rights, all power comes from the top. That's the way business works, and that's the way schools should work. Get used to it.


This fucking Sucks. It makes a bad situation even worse. Parents have no input. Voters have no input. Teachers have no input. Principals have no input. The Mayor is the one person with the LEAST expertise to decide who is qualified to run the worlds largest school system. He just appointed a close friend to this job because it consolidates his power, and by doing so he thumbed his nose at teachers unions, principals, and what remains of the public school system. He told them all that they're days are numbered. They're toast. :(

This asshole has been a disaster for education here in NYC. He has been a disaster for NYC is many, many ways. Underlying all of it is the fact that he is an autocratic bastard who gets away with owning the city and giving it away piece by piece to his friends at bargain prices. x(

I really hope that a future mayor makes his career undoing Bloomberg's entire legacy, dragging Bloomberg into court countless times until Bloomberg ends up owning a prison cell, becomes a pariah, and spends his the end of his life broke.

[madfloridian]

10. Yes, it should have been an open process.

And an educator should have been chosen.

[msanthrope]

18. But the teacher's union supported this.

Not for anything, but the teacher's union supported the renewal of mayoral control last year...

How can Bloomberg be blamed for what was given to him with support by the union?

[ThomCat]

22. I would need to see proof of that.

All I have seen is unions fighting mayoral control tooth and nail and criticizing it constantly. Civil rights abuses because of mayoral control. Funding abuses because of mayoral control. Abuses of due process when teachers have disputes. Etc. I have never, ever seen or heard that unions approved of the mayor having dictator control and authority over the schools.

[msanthrope]

23. See the link provided in post 17

The union in NYC supported mayoral control because under Bloomie, they got 43% raises....

And the new contract is being negotiated. Easier to negotiate with a mayor than a board.

The NYC teacher's union knows how to get itself paid.

[ThomCat]

27. The union contract would be up for renewal regardless.

It's not easier to negotiate with a mayor than with a board. Unless you've aligned yourself with that mayor. That seems to be what that vote was about, after all their prior criticisms.

I won't use that as an excuse to ignore what the mayor does. If you choose to do so, that's up to you.

I don't give any politician a free pass for their actions because someone else was arm-twisted into voting for him once. If you do, that says more about you than me.

[madfloridian]

8. Opposition to his pick is growing.

http://www.schoolsmatter.info/2010/11/opposition-to-bloomberg-pick-growing.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/14/nyregion/14black.html

[Starry Messenger]

11. k&r

[Smarmie Doofus]

13. The Black appointment is an inside joke.

I really think think they... the NYC economic elite.... sit around and laugh about the whole thing in their Park Avenue penthouses.

We got a little inkling of what goes on at that level with Caroline Kennedy's appt. as " director of fundraising" a few years back. According to the Village Voice, that appt. came about as a result of a walk along the beach in Hyannis Port with Mr. Klein's wife, Caroline's college roommate and upper east side neighbor, Ms. Seligman . Literally, Caroline complained she had nothing to do , and Seligman said... well, maybe Joel can find you something, yada yada yada.

According to VV, once installed, CK spent little actual time at "the office"; nonetheless she parlayed ( nearly successfully) that gig into a springboard for running for the US senate appointment to replace Ms. Clinton. Apparently CK was not interested in the chancellors post when it opened up earlier this year. Or perhaps the chemistry is just better between Bloomberg and Black.


I kind of like the Black appointment in a way. It's a dramatic demonstration that corporate school "reform" is about the wealthy and privileged corporate "reformers", their politics and prerogatives... and has nothing at all to do with the families and kids that they CLAIM they are trying to help.

Even the densest of the dense would have a hard time not seeing this now.

[madfloridian]

14. "school "reform" is about the wealthy and privileged corporate "reformers"

Good point. However many still do not understand.

I dread for my state with Scott as governor and no checks on the GOP. Scott is for privatizing schools and makes no bones about it.

[UTUSN]

15. K&R #4. Connecting the dots: 1) He's best friends with MURDOCH, 2) He fixed the terms limits

just for himself a la Hugo. 3) He said OBAMA "is the most arrogant man I have ever met."

There are probably other dots.

[cjbgreen]

16. A pattern

Michelle Rhee former Chancellor of DC selection was also made in secrecy. As Bill Moyers said "“Secrecy is the freedom tyrants dream of”.

[msanthrope]

17. Mayoral Control renewal was passed with strong Teacher's union support---which you failed to mention

I mean, if the union supports mayoral control, why do you have a problem with it?

Of course, the reason the union had no problem with it is because of the pay raises they got under Bloomie....

"The city’s powerful teachers’ union, which has criticized many of Mr. Bloomberg’s changes but whose members have been the recipients of hefty pay raises, eventually provided key support in his bid to renew control over the schools. And that support comes in the same year that the city prepares to negotiate contract renewal with the union, the United Federation of Teachers."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/07/nyregion/07control.html

Heck, the last Democratic mayoral challenger supported it.


That's how bad the School Board was....



But kudos for the most ironic link ever---seriously, the New York Times, home to Ross Douthat, is questioning how people get hired?

[proud2BlibKansan]

20. So it's okay because the union said so?

I'm one of the first ones here to defend the unions but if they make a stupid decision, it's still a stupid decision. Blind allegiance is for Stepford Wife republicans.

I also don't care HOW the NY Times chooses its executives, since it is not a public institution funded with tax dollars. Stupid analogy.

[msanthrope]

21. Isn't it? One can't have it both ways. n/t

[ThomCat]

26. Hardly "strong" support.

sounds more like qualified support after arm twisting.

And it certainly does not negate all the criticism the unions have had of everything the Mayor and Chancellor have done with that dictatorship authority over the school system.

It certainly seems like you're trying really hard to bury any possible criticism of Bloomberg because he managed to buy off one vote. Why is that?

[radhika]

24. The IDEA of the Public Commons is so DEAD! n/t