CARRANZA RESIGNATION WOULD NOT SOLVE SCHOOL SYSTEM'S MAIN PROBLEMS

I read the letter that the Queens Chronicle editors imagine Richard Carranza writing in which he tenders his resignation (see below).

Note to the Chronicle: Changing chancellors will not matter very much. The primary problem is a mayoral dictatorship over our NYC schools. As long as one unitary executive has complete power over our education system in this city, the schools will continue to be a no accountability zone. The main job of the school system will not be to educate kids but to make numbers look good for the mayor, even if it means fraud.

Bill de Blasio is a lame duck mayor. What does he care if the graduation rate the schools are producing is bogus and everyone knows it? The low stakes National Assessment of Education Progress scores are essentially flat. Young people are not suddenly getting smarter. They are just being pushed through to make the last two mayors look good. De Blasio will just keep repeating that NYC has the highest graduation rate ever and saying that we are investigating and dealing with a small number of cheaters.

In reality, the data driven obsession that started with Michael Bloomberg has just continued under de Blasio and his two chancellors who have kept the Bloomberg-Joel Klein bureaucratic, anti-teacher culture intact. The UFT has mostly been silent (forget the part of the editorial where they say the UFT is not happy). The Union is mainly quiet in my opinion because de Blasio answers Michael Mulgrew's phone calls and yes this mayor has been better on charter schools so Mulgrew talks about NYC as a model system. That is a big mistake but Mulgrew has even less accountability than the chancellor. Just read the comments here and you can see what a nightmare teaching has become for many teachers in NYC. Carranza is a symptom. The disease will continue to spread until there are some real checks and balances in the schools. The UFT used to be a powerful check. It no longer is. (The UFT won't be more effective if it is weakened by mass defections unless the dissidents start a new union so please spare me the comments on not paying dues.) 

It's up to us to scream and yell and do whatever we have to in order to make the UFT again a check by calling out what is going on instead of leaving it to Sue Edelman or Salim Algar at the NY Post or the Safety Agents' Union or the Council of Supervisors and Administrators.

The Chronicle editorial:

Rather than continuing to sow racial divisions, to walk out on aggrieved parents, to wink and nod at grade-fixing, to alienate elected officials and to allow little girls to get pummeled in the middle school cafeteria, New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza should resign. He’s welcome to do so by copying and pasting the following onto his letterhead and having it delivered.
Dear Mayor de Blasio (Bill),

It is with heavy heart that I write, but I have no choice.

As you know, when confronted by parents in Bayside, Queens, whose children had been assaulted by other students — one of them sexually, along with months of harassment — I turned tail and ran. I had to. Sure, this was at a meeting of the District 26 Community Education Council and there were cops in the room, but it was scary. I don’t know what these outerborough parents are capable of, and I’m the chancellor — I can’t let them touch a perfect hair on my head.

You saw the video of that girl getting a beatdown at MS 158. Man, she got pounded. That one teacher made a half-hearted attempt to grab her, but then he let her go and she just kept on going. That’s when she jumped onto and off the table to carry on the assault like some pro wrestler. It would have been nice if the teachers actually stopped her before she got back on the table to do that victory dance, but can you blame them? They’d get sued, and we’d just have to settle. Plus, we’re all about restorative justice, not stopping kids from doing what they please through physical measures.

So now we’ve got the teachers union saying the lack of discipline is lowering morale and making it harder to manage classes. The CEC put out an announcement that mocked me between the lines. Seven elected officials, from City Hall to Capitol Hill, issued a letter demanding answers.

I’ve got none, your honor. I’m an ideologue and I’m afraid.

Everything else is a mess, too. In nearby District 28, we’re trying to get Jamaica parents to let their kids be bused to Forest Hills and vice versa because we have to force desegregation. These people just keep moving into neighborhoods with other people who look like them! And when we come in and tell them there’s a better way, just put your 12-year-old on that city bus for a couple hours a day, they get all upset. We have to make a show of getting “community input,” but man, imposing change from above is stressful.

You saw how we failed to do that with the Specialized High School Admissions Test. Of course fewer Asian kids will get into the SHSAT schools if we make it so more black and Hispanic students do; we all know that. But those darn parents fought us and they won! Now if we want a more balanced enrollment, like it was years ago, we’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way, and improve the elementary and middle schools black and Hispanic kids attend. That’s hard!

And you know I have it on impeccable sources that when a Queens Chronicle editor asked Rep. Grace Meng if she thought I was dealing with the SHSAT from a position of good faith, there were about five seconds of silence before she said I had a lot of ground to make up for but she’s willing to work with me. The air was heavy in those moments!

We both know kids aren’t learning better than when I arrived. Graduation rates are up, but that’s because standards are down. If that wasn’t the reason, the kids would be doing better on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, and they’re not. Think Maspeth High School is the only one where the staff helps kids cheat? Think again.

I couldn’t take the heat in Bayside, my friend, and I gotta head out. This whole town should be called Hell’s Kitchen!

Richard A. Carranza

Chancellor, New York City Department of Education