Or how about Al Sharpton? Now that he’s off the board of EEP he’s probably looking for a new gig.

Again, after all, they’ve already given 98% of the schools A’s or B’s (with your blessing, as I recall).

Would fixing “stupid work rules” (aka immediately firing all rubber room and ATR teachers) result in 110% A’s? Hard to see it, when those teachers are not actually IN the classrooms.

So take those factors: poor attendance (come to school 50-60%), students cutting classes (can’t do the work and expect teachers to give them credit recovery work/packages), no parental involvement or apathetic parents, non-working numbers, and you have the making of a crappy high school. Yet, it’s not the staff’s fault at the school. Students can make their schools great or crappy! Teachers want to teach and they want their students to succeed and the schools want to celebrate accomplishsments. But, it’s not happening at the small or restructured high schools. Mind you this is happening at the school where I am at and it’s a small high school with plenty of issues. The staff is already stretched-out thin from trying to help students to reach their goals and get an education. Unfortunately, you reach some but they those fews that bring the school down and exasperate the teachers and bring shame to the parents. When you have students who don’t want to be in school and tell teachers, “Yo, shut the f**k up” because the teachers want them to do their work, then it is time to get a chancellor who truly understand the nature of schools and will create policies, rules, and alternative for those students who need a different learning environment (such as trade schools or CTE schools). As long as we have a chancellor who is clueless to what’s happening in the schools and does not understand the various dynamics and needs that teenagers bring to high schools, then we will end up with more **crappy** high schools.

What makes these schools crappy? Some of these schools throughout the years turned out some of the great doctors, lawyers and other professionals. When I was a kid, I went to Erasmus Hall High School and it turned out more Westinghouse winners than any non specialized high school in the country.

What makes a good schol is good students; at least students who want to be educated. And it’s not that in any of these what you called crappy schools truly had all terrible students. In almost all cases, there was a small minority of students that made it hard for teachers to teach and students to learn. It’s interesting that in almost all cases, the new schools that replaced what you called crappy schools did not have to take the trouble making students. There is not one iota of evidence that the new schools are doing better with the same students as the so called crappy schools they replaced. I think Erasmus Hall is on its third or four re-organization. Holiday season at Erasmus, to me, used to mean the holiday concert the better sudents were invited to in chapel. We’re not talking the 1920′s here either. Large comprehensive schools provide a greater variety of courses, better supervision of teachers and all in all a far better education than these small schools that have replaced them. It is stuff like this that an incompetent, unqualified lawyer masquerading as an educator doesn’t get, has never gotten and will continue not to get. What a disgrace.

I don’t deny the last bit, but “a great education”? Brandeis? Taft? GW High School? Really? What ed school did YOU go to?

We are more than six years into the Klein regime, and, yes, there are still too many “crappy’ schools, who bears the blame? These are schools with faltering data for years, why hasn’t the Klein regime intervened? And, the closing and creation of small hs is still an experiment. We now know that “Credit Recovery,” is a fraud, if we were to deduct the corrupted credit recovery credits would graduation rates increase?

We are still fumbling to find “answers” to low achieving schools, and, unfortunately parents and teachers are way out of the loop.

The silo structure of the city social service system and the failure of it to interact w1 schools and families is a disgrace.

We need fewer sticks and more carrots, you get a lot more with honey and vinegar.

But it would be very simple for use to make sure the next Chancellor is an educator. All we need is an announcement from SED that they will no longer issue any waivers for the requirement to havethe proper State Certification for the post. And that is not handicapping the mayor as some silly post said. The mayor will simply be forced to select somebody who knows something about education instead of a career Civl Rights lawyer. That should be self evident to anybody who works in the schools.

I would have been inclined to cut you some slack on the handcuffing of the Mayor… eight years ago. But not now.

Klein’s record — on which Bloomberg campaigned the most vociferously — is capped by a fraudulently self-congratulatory grading ponzi scheme. He is the Madoff of student performance. And we’re overdue for an outside audit.
And a resignation.

The debate about who is “Certified” or who “was a teacher” is silly.  Should one have to have served as an infantry member for them to be a good general?  Should an CEO be required to have worked on the shop floor?  Should a President be required to have been a Congressman?  Is there any data anywhere that says that superintendents or Chancellors are better for kids because of their teaching experience or certification?   How about Randi and Michael…they “taught” for something like 3 years each, were never principals, and yet now run the largest unions in the nation.  

Pedro Noguera, professor at NYU

Barbara Byrd Bennett, former BOEer, Sup in Cleveland, advisor in Detroit …Steve Barr, leader of Green Dot in LA and, of course, if the former Governor of Alaska is looking 4 a high profile job …