Cathie Black is prima facie an amazingly insulting choice to lead the NYC public schools.

[BurtWorm]

Maybe she'll live up to Bloomberg's expectations, but I can't see anything in the NYTimes' profile of her today that makes me any more optimistic and any less insulted, as the parent of a child in the NYC Public School System, than this choice. It's as though Bloomberg is saying all the complexities of the system can be treated as nothing more than bottom-line business problems. You don't have to have any passion for educating young people. You don't have to have any experience with or knowledge of the types of people who work or have children in NYC schools. You don't have to know anything about unions and union politics or any politics at all. You just have to be a "quick study" and a "superstar manager." What a crock of shit! A public school system is not a business, is it?

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/19/nyregion/19black.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss

She grew up sheltered and privileged, in a middle-class Irish enclave of Chicago at midcentury, attending Catholic schools and riding horses at a country club where blacks and Jews were not allowed. Yet from age 28, she blazed a trail for working women, persuading male-dominated Madison Avenue to get behind an upstart magazine called Ms.

...

If the state education commissioner grants Ms. Black a waiver from the law requiring leaders of school districts to have substantial education credentials and experience, she would take over a system whose size, demographics and challenges are like nothing else she has tried to manage.

Its one million students — two-thirds of them poor enough to qualify for free lunch; 85 percent of them black, Hispanic or Asian — bear little resemblance to the middle-class, middle American consumers she has spent her career appealing to.

Its more than 80,000 unionized teachers and principals cannot be easily fired if they fail to meet expectations, the way she replaced editors and publishers who did not make their numbers.

And many of its 1,600 schools have challenges far beyond that of any printed product or company whose brand Ms. Black has tried to “refresh and reinvent,” to use one of her catchphrases.

...

[philly_bob]

1. Bloomberg, Perot, Romney: All U need is business expertise. (nt)

[robcon]

2. You're easily insulted, IMO.

She's an accomplished manager, but with no experience in schools. Bloomberg had no public service experience, and he's done fine.

Surprising? Yes. Insulting? Not a bit.

[BurtWorm]

4. She has no experience with public schools.

Has never been in one. Never had her children in one. She lives in the Connecticut suburbs.

This choice is more about Bloomberg's choice of "successor" than about NYC's public school children.

[Smarmie Doofus]

3. Smoke and mirrors.

More of the same.