Wednesday, December 20, 2017

FARINA LEAVING; WAS SHE THE WORST CHANCELLOR?

The disastrous four year reign of Carmen Farina as Chancellor of the New York City schools will soon be ending.

From NBC News NY:
The head of the nation's largest school district is stepping down, city government sources tell News 4 New York.

New York City Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña plans to announce her departure from the city Department of Education after four years on the job on Thursday, according to the sources.

Fariña, 74, will leave the post after four years overseeing the school system that educates more than 1 million students a year and implementing several of Mayor de Blasio's educational policies and campaign promises, including universal pre-K for city kids.

Her departure is not a surprise to City Hall: Fariña had planned on retiring to Florida in 2013 but was coaxed into taking on the role by the then-newly elected mayor. City government sources said the mayor's office is already conducting a nationwide search for Fariña's replacement.

I have no confidence that the search will lead to a decent Chancellor who would need to expose the mess New York City schools are.

The last decent Chancellor was Rudy Crew who left back in 1999. Since then we have had viscous/incompetent Chancellors. I thought it might be fun if we rank the 1999-2017 Chancellors from bad to worse, to worst.

Here are my rankings:
Fifth From the Bottom: Cathy Black-At least we had some laughs during her incompetent 95 days.

Fourth Worst: Harold O Levy-Clueless Harold started the management knows all model at the Board of Education in settling the 2002 UFT contract. I can't think of much positive he did.

Third Worst: DennisWalcott-A lightweight lackey of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Really adept at closing schools and now runs away when someone from Jamaica High School asked him why he closed a perfectly viable school.

Runner-up Worst Chancellor: Carmen Farina-The only one of the five who was an educator and should have known better but she proved to be just another teacher bashing hack for city hall now under Bill de Blasio.

And the winner of the ICEBLOG Worst Chancellor of all time: Of course it's Joel Klein. Klein favored charter schools over the public schools he was in charge of. He had no idea how to run what was a partially functional public school system he inherited. By leaving alone schools that were getting good scores, he basically brought us academic apartheid as the middle class schools were free to do as they like but schools in poorer areas either were closed or most were forced to inflate grades and statistics to survive.

Klein was the architect along with Randi Weingarten of the disastrous 2005 contract that led to school closing mania. Klein is also responsible for the anti-seniority fair student funding system. He truly left a legacy of grade inflation, closing schools and generally hating teachers that still is the culture at what is now the Department of Education.

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'd like to see them bring Rudy Crew back. He's President of Medgar Evers College and I read he was being considered for President of CUNY but maybe he can be persuaded.

Mary

Ms. Tsouris said...

The next chancellor should change fair student funding and stop all the anti seniority nonsense that the union seems shrug its shoulders at. Farina is more incompetent than Klein, she was an educator and should have known better than to continue policies that ultimately hurt children by destabilizing schools and instituting poorly thought out programs

RBE said...

Carmen Farina said she wanted to bring "joy" back to the classroom.

Has there been any time that schools have been more stressful environments than they are now?

We are under constant Danielson driveby threats. Lesson plan and special education mandates have teachers spending hours a night getting ready for those possible Danielson drivebys. When the drivebys occur, teachers are getting slammed for not hitting the unreasonable and/or impossible benchmarks on the Danielson rubric. The pressure teachers are under has been passed on to the students. Everything is about "rigor" and lo and behold any teacher who isn't teaching a "rigorous" lesson when the driveby comes. And yet, students are suffering emotionally under all this stress, resulting in increased depression, bullying and self-harm incidents. The guidance counselors, understaffed as always, can't deal with the increased emotional and psychological problems students are experiencing because all of their time is spent on the ever-increasing academic mandates and tracking measures they have to engage in to make sure those are met. More and more pressure is being put on teachers to not only teach "rigorous" lessons, but also address the social and emotional needs of students - and yet, with the ever-increasing mandates, the time spent on lesson planning, the exhaustion teachers are experiencing from all the added pressure and stress, there is simply no ability to do this.

Carmen Farina is to blame for much the horror that is the NYC school system. De Blasio deserves more blame, however, because he hired her and supported her through her reign of terror/error. Like you, James, I have little hope that de Blasio will pick somebody who makes the system better. Instead we will get some Broadie who will continue to reign with a Blame Teachers First mentality.

In the end, at least Farina is gone. I do have one parting thought about Farina: I hope she experiences the same "joy" in her retirement that she brought to NYC schools during her chancellorship.

She deserves no less than that.

Anonymous said...

DING DONG, THE WITCH IS DEAD, THE WITCH IS DEAD, THE WITCH IS DEAD. THE WITCH IS DEAD INDEED!

Anonymous said...

How much you wanna bet deblasio hires a back male?

James Eterno said...

Rudy Crew fits that bill. The last decent Chancellor.

Anonymous said...

MEET THE NEW BOSS, SAME OS THE OLD BOSS.

Highly Effective King Clovis said...

When she leaves it will finally be "a beautiful day." Her words. She'll have plenty of time to go to Macy's now.

I have zero confidence her replacement will be better. Maybe even worse.

Ms. Tsouris said...

I forgot to make one statement-mayoral control is a complete and utter failure. DeBlasio only hires the most incompetent agency heads possible. His DOT commissioner is another example of his inability to select someone who actually knows how to do the job they're appointed to.

Anonymous said...

Let’s hope Eva isn’t the new chancellor.

caprice240k said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
caprice240k said...

I liked Harold Levy, he made telephone calls with the attendance teachers during a truancy outreach program. I remember during a contract protest rally outside 110 Livingston St, he looked out the window and waived at the crowd as if he was supporting us.

Anonymous said...

It is a beautiful day.
Make New York City public schools great again.

Anonymous said...

Is Idi Amin still around?

Anonymous said...

Ageism, bogus charges against veteran teachers, a useless Union, hiring on the cheap, bogus investigations, grade inflation. A system in chaos.

Anonymous said...

Mulgrew is preparing his nose for the next chancellor’s anus they are currently deploying fire trucks to remove it from Carmen’s.

Anonymous said...

Department of Education Schools Chancellor Carmen Fariña announced on Dec. 21, 2017 that she would retire after a four-year term heading up New York City public schools.

In response, UFT President Michael Mulgrew issued the following statement:

Carmen has a lot to be proud of during her tenure. Her decades of experience in the system gave her a deep understanding of how our schools work. She managed the historic introduction of universal pre-K and oversaw significant gains in student achievement from test scores to high school graduation rates. We wish her well.

Anonymous said...

Farina was a twat. She bragged about shit canning 80% of the veteran teachers at her school when she was a principal. She friggin' told newbie teachers to stay away from the teachers lounge because that is where the "old" and "disgruntled" teachers hang out. In other words, she was no friend of ours. I hope she withers far away from NYC come June.

Anonymous said...

Please don’t say that around Mike, you may cause a massive heart attack.

Anonymous said...

BREAKING NEWS:
Mulgrew’s nose has just been removed from Carmen’s anus. The Fire Department called in FEMA with their heavy equipment and the interagency deployment was a success.

Anonymous said...

Lies and nonsense.

caprice240k said...

There was a different atmosphere during the Levy administration, things were more collegiate be between teachers and the BOE.

James Eterno said...

Levy said when negotiating the 2002 contract that management would make gains. It is where the rot started. Small steps compared to 2005 but the precedent was set.