Meet Shael Polakow-Suransky: DOE’s new second-in-command

matching black

November 27, 2010

Meet Shael Polakow-Suransky: DOE’s new second-in-command

by Maura Walz, at 12:36 am

State Education Commissioner David Steiner is expected to grant Hearst Magazines executive Cathleen Black the waiver she needs to become schools chancellor on Monday, on one condition: that she appoint current Deputy Chancellor Shael Polakow-Suransky as her Chief Academic Officer.

Polakow-Suransky, who has worked in the city schools for 16 years, will be responsible for the administration of the city’s education policies and serve as Black’s chief advisor, according to a letter Mayor Michael Bloomberg sent Steiner today.

Here are four things to know about the city’s new educator-in-chief, who will serve as second-in-command to Black’s manager-in-chief:

1. His theory of change revolves around improving “instruction,” which is a different way of thinking than that o many people at Tweed.

Many officials in Joel Klein’s administration, including Klein himself, emphasize structural changes to improve the New York City schools. They favor policies such as closing down struggling schools, offering pay bonuses to educators whose students improve their performance on tests, and giving more power to principals to determine their own curricula and tests.

Polakow-Suransky approaches improving education policy from the opposite direction. He looks through the lens of instruction — that is, the relationships between teachers and students — rather than starting with incentives or organizational structures.

“What [Polakow-Suransky] is particularly strong at is at taking [classroom] experience and translating it into useful information for decision-making at a policy level,” said Garth Harries, who oversaw Polakow-Suransky in the city’s New Schools Office and then worked as a colleague as Suransky advanced in the department.

When Harries — a lawyer by training who was charged with determining how New York City uses its school building space — began making policy, he turned to Polakow-Suransky to figure out how dividing large school buildings into multiple small schools would affect the classroom.

“[Suransky] was someone I could sit down with and have a very deep conversation about the instructional needs that students and teachers have and how that translated into space needs,” said Harries, who now works in the New Haven public school system. ”It ended up being used on the operational side of the house, but it was designed with instructional needs in mind.”

Another case in point is the “data inquiry team,” an innovation school officials credit Polakow-Suransky with creating. Inquiry teams ask groups of teachers to meet and use evidence of student learning – everything from test scores to student work — to determine how they should improve their instruction. Polakow-Suransky spoke at length about the idea and its importance to him in a sit-down interview with two GothamSchools reporters last month.

The main purpose of the interview was to talk about his plans to improve the city’s online data warehouse system, ARIS. But in the free-flowing conversation, Polakow-Suransky repeatedly emphasized that all of his policy work aims at improving the way teachers teach their students — which he called “instruction.”

He also emphasized his insistence on making policies such as data inquiry teams voluntary for teachers, rather than mandatory. He argued that change is more likely to occur if teachers choose to make it, rather than being forced. In a 2009 interview with GothamSchools, Polakow-Suransky said:

My job is not to intervene at an individual school level and suggest a change, but to provide rich, data-based portraits and qualitative portraits using the quality review so that the folks that are supporting schools can help the school go to its next step.

2. His own education was at progressive public schools and at Brown.

Polakow-Suransky is a graduate of Community High School in Ann Arbor, Mich., a small progressive school founded in 1972. The small public magnet school is designed as an “open campus” where students design their own courses of study, and sometimes design their own courses.

From there, Polakow-Suransky moved to Brown University, where he finished with a degree in education and urban studies.

Polakow-Suransky also possesses all of the credentials that state law requires to lead a school district without the waiver that his soon-to-be boss will receive. He earned a master’s degree in educational leadership from the Bank Street School of Education, and he received a New York State District Administrator Certificate in 2006. He is also a 2008 graduate of the Broad Superintendent’s Academy, a leadership program designed to train a new breed of management-minded education officials.

3. He taught math and history for six years before founding one of the first small Bronx high schools.

Polakow-Suransky’s career in the New York City public schools began in 1994, as a history and mathematics teacher at Crossroads Middle School in Manhattan. After teaching there for three years, he moved to Bread and Roses Integrated Arts High School, where he continued to teach math for another three years.

He then spent one school year as the assistant principal at Bread and Roses, and then left to found the Bronx International High School in 2001. The school, which was designed specifically to serve students learning English, was one of the first small schools to be opened in the city. The movement to open small high schools has since become one of the hallmarks of the Bloomberg administration.

“He was really on the cutting edge of the small school movement in the city and really helped shape what happened in the Bronx and then throughout the whole city,” said Robert Hughes, the head of New Visions for Public Schools, the organization dedicated to launching and supporting small schools in the city.

“He’s a little like a really skilled surfer who rode the wave of small schools as it moved through the Bronx and then the city,” Hughes said.

After leaving the Bronx International High School in 2004, Polakow-Suransky has held a variety of positions within the Department of Education, first in the Office of New Schools, which oversaw the opening of more than 200 new small schools during his time there.

He then oversaw academic support services for the city’s networks of schools. And when the city’s accountability czar James Liebman left the DOE in 2009, Polakow-Suransky took his position. He was named Deputy Chancellor of Performance and Accountability earlier this year.

4. He is obsessed with making better tests and is working on the national effort to build them.

In addition to his duties overseeing the city’s school accountability policies, Polakow-Suransky has been tasked with helping schools introduce the Common Core standards into their classrooms. Under Polakow-Suransky, city schools began that effort even before New York State officially adopted the standards.

Polakow-Suransky is also part of the leadership team of the group of 26 states that won a federal grant this year to build new assessments based around the Common Core standards. Those tests, which New York State has committed to using by 2014, will overhaul both what kinds of state exams students sit for and when they sit for them, Polakow-Suransky has said.

As part of that work, Polakow-Suransky has worked closely with state officials, particularly Deputy Education Commissioner John King. The strong impression Polakow-Suransky left on state officials was part of the reason he got the nod today to ascend to the city’s number two position in the school system, said a person familiar with the negotiations.

At a recent panel on how federal education policy is affecting local school districts, Polakow-Suransky described his interest in standardized tests as being rooted in everyday teaching:

[U]ltimately the reason for assessment is to motivate what happens in the classroom. If it doesn’t actually lead to good practice in the classroom then it’s undermining practice in the classroom. And so this is an opportunity. This is a moment where there’s an opportunity to shift the direction of practice in the classroom and to push on the level of rigor and to actually figure out what is it that kids and teachers need in order to engage in that type of practice.

Invictus

After reading all of this, I wonder WHY he should be called “Second in Command.” Obnoxious nonsense, there is no need of BLACK becoming the poster child for the Media.
Ghost of Mustafa

How does he feel about smaller class size?
Tired of the Game

I never knew Inquiry Teams were voluntary. At my school, they are forced down our throats with gusto.
Ghost of Mustafa

Even though he’s awful, it’s too bad they didn’t promote John White to the number two position. I would have had fun referring to them as “Black & White”.

R.I.P. Mustafa, murdered by GothamSchools
A Teacher

It’s so funny that in Bloomberg’s letter he talks about how great Suransky is because of his experience, yet by the mayor’s own logic Suransky can never be the chancellor because he hasn’t been a coporate executive. My advice to Suransky would be to quit the DOE and start a magazine company, then he can come back and be the chancellor!
maggie

Sounds good to me. If what is written is true then at least this guy doesn’t seem to follow the crowd at Tweed and actually uses his own brain. I guess Black is going to take this as a final challenge in her life before she croaks. Boy does she look bad.
Invictus

R.I.P. Mustafa, welcome to the living to Ghost of such. I wonder what sort of truth the living Mustafa must have said about this whole fiasco.
I noticed that…

Education background of Shael:

SHAEL R POLAKOW-SURANSKY
Certificates
Description Effective Begin Date Effective End Date Status
Social Studies 7-12 CQ 09/01/1995 08/31/2000 Expired
School Administrator/Supervisor Provisional Certificate 09/01/2000 08/31/2005 Expired
Social Studies 7-12 Provisional Certificate 09/01/1997 08/31/2002 Expired
School District Administrator Permanent Certificate 02/01/2006 Issued

He has all the credentials and years of teaching, not alot but enough. He should be given the position of chancellor and get rid of Black. She’s there to do cuts or like Bloomberg said “she was hired because of Jobs, Jobs, Jobs” or the cutting of “Jobs, Jobs, Jobs”.
http://theinsurgentteacher.blogspot.com Maria Rosa

Yes, he at least has a background in education ,but not the experience to work as the head man next to the septuagernarian Cathie Black used to giving the orders. In fact one of Black’s first administrative decisions she set up a reporting system where only one person directely communicates with her. How nice she can relax in her office thinking about how to next live her 360 degree life while others sweat the work only stay on the job to accummulate enough time so New Yorkers pay for her life-time health care benefits certainly to be included into her benefits package and contract. At Mrs. Black’s age few head of schools work. She’s out to prove something after demoted from her own job at Hearst earlier this year replaced with a younger man as president from a rival company. Even Hearst executive surprised she left thought she would be around longer.And what about her nearly 20 year tenure on the Coca Cola Company? Some say she’s tainted serving so long in a corporation with extensive charges of human rights abuses around the globe including an agressive campaign in the United States to maintain exlclusive vendor contracts in the nation’s schools many times using harassment tactics. Funny, she still has to take her child abuse and violence prevention workshop the state requires. If her dissentors had attacked the record of the Coca Cola Company during the tenure, I doubt she would be chancellor today or pass the state child abuse requirements, something Coca Cola has engaged in around the globe purchasing sugar indirectly from companies doing business with plantations in Latin America using child labor children as young as 8 year old. See Stop Killer Coke Campaign at: http://killercoke.org/reports.php
edwina

Let’s review:
Klein hit roadblocks in executing his mission from Bloomberg, that is to privatize the schools and, in doing so, reduce/eliminate the influence of the unions and parents. Being a lawyer, Klein should not have crashed on the rocks of skipping the rubber-stamp PEP procedures for closing schools as he did in the case of Jamaica High School,et.al.
Bloomberg picks another Klein, albeit female and even more corporate and, as required by unwritten Bloomberg law :a carpetbagger and more disconnected from public education. Steiner, who attends the same cocktail parties, offers Bloomberg a fig leaf, i.e. “an educator” to accomplish this changing of the guard and Bloomberg picks another carpetbagger, Suransky.
Suransky, who blithely manipulated the Progress Reports to enable more closings, is supposed to fill the role of fig leaf. Anyone who has dealt with this Office knows what time it is. It is now full speed ahead toward privatization (with heavy taxpayer subsidies in the form of per pupil funding and free rent for facilities).

There will not be a quiz.
Paul Rubin

As long as the Emperor is running the show at City Hall, we should expect public education to be ground into mush. It will be his successor whenever that occurs who will have the job of reviving it so a 3rd and 4th generation of kids aren’t ruined and thankfully I don’t anticipate being part of it anymore.

In the meantime, this gentleman sounds like a reasonable guy who has some good ideas (done properly the Inquiry Team/Collaborative Team model has the potential to help instruction… it just needs a little more flexibility to run properly in a variety of school environments) or improving standardized tests so the test as curriculum movement is stopped. He at least spent time in schools as a teacher. He’s got the qualifications on paper.

It’s sad that the Emperor has this backwards. He should be chancellor and she should be his top level business advisor. In the world of private business, she belongs at the top with product knowledge advisors having her back. In the world of schools, that model must be reversed. The business of schools isn’t to make a profit. It’s to educate children. The costs have to be secondary to the outcomes just as when we raise our children, we don’t put financial efficiency first. We give them what they need often beyond our ability to afford it.
A former teacher

I would like to steer the conversation to another issue. After listening to Joel Klein’s interview on NPR on Wednesday 11/24/2010 where he professed he is 64 years old and it is time for him to move on to another venture [otherwise known as career] with the News Corp and Cathie Black who is 66 years old and needs to find a new outlet to use her “management expertise,” I would like to know why are we bothering with these people at all. Should not these people be RETIRED? As far as I can see and I see pretty widely, there aren’t any sixty year old teachers in the schools. There are some [you can count on your fingers} sixty year old administrators in the school system. There is a thirty year difference between the Shael and Black,which is reflective of what the average school administrative age is these days 35-40. Actually, these is reflective of the growing trend that older people are being thrown out of the workforce and have about 15-20 years to go before Social Security. Even though Cathie and Joel are well-preserved[take that the way you want], they definitely believe [from their policies] that older people are ineffectual. They should be made to suffer the same fate they have bestowed on the older workers under their administrations.
Paul Rubin

I don’t completely agree that they feel older teachers are ineffectual. What Klein likes about younger teachers aside from the lower salaries of course, is that a new teacher is far more pliable, far more able to be influenced to his world view, far more concerned about having a job. A veteran teacher has none of those advantages. Some use their experience wisely. Some rest on it. Some worked many years and never acquired any sadly. But where I take issue is that when it became politically feasible to do another buyout and rid the system of another few thousand veteran teachers in their 50′s and 60′s, they chose not to and instead withheld an expected 4% raise. Can’t wait to see what their next move is. Perhaps we’re looking at a 0-0-0 situation.

And by the way, there are plenty of 60 year old teachers in the system. Remember that under Tier 4, you can’t retire til 62 unless you have 30 years in the system (then it’s still 55) so only teachers who went into the profession out of college can retire in their 50′s. I even have 70 year old teaching colleagues.
Bronx Teacher

Interesting about the voluntary Inquiry Teams. It’s voluntary if you want to keep your job. The Inquiry Team is short for Inquisition Team … where a group of the principal’s favorites use their power to terrorize, threaten, and demoralize other teachers. Funny how the lead Inquisitor doesn’t even teach classes … she just goes from room to room, criticizing people’s classrooms, sends out moronic rubrics (everything from classroom to bulletin boards to what clothes we are to wear). Any non-conforming issues are reported immediately to the principal. So, yes, the Inquiry Teams are voluntary … if you want to keep your job. Funny …
Joe Schmo

Hate to say it but this 2nd in command position is simply a puppet figure to calm the folks of NYC. Bloomie is still calling all the shots and Black is going to be be holding the gun.
Invictus

holdin’ the gun to the heads of…?

BTW, look at what our own lovely UFT leadership is saying about Mrs Black. ugggh.
Peter

Shael was a principal in a network of extremely collaborative teachers, schools in which teachers played a vital role in all decisions, hopefully the fog of data has not blinded him to the teacher side. Data is simply a photograph of a student in a particular time and place, useful, but not the end-all. Inquiry Teams should be open and transparent. Schools must become learning organizations, cultures in which teachers work together to address student needs and share and disect each others successes and failures.

The School Progress Report is a political tool, not instructive to improving teaching/learning.

Can Shael translate the collaborative spirit of an international high school to a school system driven by political concerns?
Joe Schmo

Black will be holding a proverbial gun to the heads of 4,000 teachers that are being threatened with layoffs next year. Bloomie stated himself that Black was hired because of her vast expertise with “jobs, jobs, jobs”. Although teacher firings probably will not actually be implemented, look for the same threats to begin again. (We all remember the threats of firings last year) I have no doubt that we will see the same threats of teacher lay offs over the next 6 months.
Tired of the Game

I totally agree with Joe Schmo.

Last year, in order to stave off layoffs, we lost our giant raise. This go around will probably force us to contribute in an unprecedented way to our healthcare. Maybe the UFT will consider forking over some of the cash from their extravagantly high dues to the DoE. I can’t see how my $100+ per month in dues is helping in any constructive way. As a matter of fact, for the first time ever, I took the latest copy of the UFT paper from the mailbox and threw it directly into the recycling bin. Nothing Mulgrew says means anything to me. He’s not willing to loudly protest Black. He is willing to make concessions on our pay. Just give it all away Mulgrew. You pansy.
Invictus

I was just being festicious about that gun you were referring to, Joe, I have been feeling its cold steel in the back of my neck even under DeKlein…but actually, CB has some real life expertise, especially from her implicit/complicit role in the Coca Cola board.

The Supreme Leader is very truthful when she is referring to jobs, jobs and jobs… She has real experience making sure that those words are quite meaningful.
L. Taylor

This is sooo great! What an enjoyable long weekend with the X-mas vaca in sight. Do I care about Suransky or Black’s appointment? Not one bit as its all just temporary insanity. If it were permanent, it wouldn’t matter either. I’m just one file # out of 80,000+. People strive in chaotic times. The fire department is the only civil service gig that is better than teaching so stop complaining and just pass everyone will ya!
Paul Rubin

How the inquiry teams are handled in any given school is really up to the discretion of the principal, and to a lesser extent, to the expectations of the Empowerment Group that the school belongs to. Voluntary? I think not. But it’s certainly not a major big deal in our school. We all know that if the balance shifts and the inquiry team becomes like the gestapo you mention, they will become useless at best, especially with our largely veteran staff. Compared to most of the nonsense NYC teachers are subjected to, the Inquiry Teams are the least of the problem. Hell, if your school is following instructions, every staff member is supposed to be an active participant in a Collaborative Inquiry Team run through ARIS. Schools that only have one Inquiry Team would get a horrible grade on that other lovely Bloomberg/Klein invention, the Quality Review.
A Teacher

I love how this article puts “instruction” in quotes like it’s a weird new thing that Suransky cares about for some reason. It’s also sad that improving instruction is a “different way of thinking” for people in charge of the department of education.
Diana Senechal

Yes–also, caring about instruction can mean all sorts of things. Does Suransky believe teachers should follow a pedagogical model, such as Balanced Literacy? Or does he believe that they should plan lessons that suit the topic at hand? Does he believe in a set of “effective” teaching practices, or does he believe that those practices vary according to subject, grade, situation, and even teacher? Does he believe that national assessments should precede and drive curriculum, or does he believe that curricula should come first? Does he believe that online learning is the future, or does he view it with some skepticism? Does he believe that teachers’ names and scores should be released to the press, or does he view such action as damaging and distracting? Does he believe that data should “drive” instruction, or that teachers should use their best judgment when interpreting data? Of course there are in-between positions as well; the point is that two educators may believe in improving instruction but see this in very different ways.
Margaret DePaula

Very interesting article, I liked the first comment on it asking why, if he is all that, was he not picked for Cathie Black’s position. He does sound like he knows what he is doing and I agree that the inquiry team approach is very good. The article fails to say though that The Bread and Roses HS has an average ratio of 13 – 15 students per teacher and that only 4% are eligible for reduced rate lunch and the Bronx international HS has only about 400 students, and is supported by 6 different institutions such as the City Univ of NY, the Bronx Museum of Arts and the international network for public Schools. It also has had only 2 student suspensions!!! I imagine that he has never been punched, kicked, bitten, spat upon or cursed out by a student that returned to his class within the next day or so. There is no money to make all schools “SMALL SCHOOLS” with 13 – 15 students per class!!!! Even though our political candidates keep promising this each year at election time. Untill there is we need someone in charge who knows what it is like to be in a real classroom in the real world and can still make a difference in children’s lives and set them on a path to a better future!
shesaidsomething

What a fascinating development. I think the idea would be that Black would run education like a business (conservative panacea to educational ills). This may have it’s place but she has no business interjecting her ideas about instruction based on a business model, save the fiscal impact of smaller classrooms, more teachers, more space, etc. Black should have a role but not to be in command. Her job should be limited to Chief Financial Officer.
Invictus

Black needs to be black listed before she black lists all schools, teachers and id them for a “business turn around model” AKA: reorganization/downsizing masked under the cheap veneer of “student betterment/achievement.”

Business model+unadulterated pedagogy is as compatible as fire and gasoline and anyone entity that claims otherwise has their backpockets stuff with wads of ancient/dead former presidents, thanks be to those who are in the ‘forefront’ of the education of the future.

While the great majority of students in NYC public schools receive free lunch and some are even unable to hold a pen/pencil correctly and makes a harried doctor’s prescription look like standard cuneiforms. School of the future, instruction in the internet for students whose parents cannot even afford to pay for internet connection or have their contact/emergency numbers disconnected due to unpaid bills.
Fort Tryon Teacher

Hi Margaret, I agree that a chancellor would benefit from extended experience in a difficult school. I’m not very familiar with Bread and Roses, but I know that it’s currently designated as a “turnaround” school–a measure that the DOE is trying with “failing” schools that it would otherwise consider closing. According to its Comprehensive Education Plan, 60% of enrolled students live in poverty. Of course, a school can change a lot over the course of a few years. I have no idea what Bread and Roses was like 15 years ago, but it seems like a tough school today.
Mendoza

Invictus, You’re comments are so negitive and gloomy. For the life of me I cannot figure out why you or others on this page are in a state of panic. My goodness, you and several others posting on this feed need to relax. Black is not doing anything besides trying to pretend to somehow organize this large system. She cannot start creating new rules and close every school and dump teachers, etc as you write. The public already hates her. She won’t be doing much except shaking her head that this aint a private company she can mess with. Re-Lax and calm down and maybe take a sedative.
An Effective Teacher says…

-Love the last paragraph Invictus

“Instruction”? How about reducing class size as promised, as funds were allocated to that end, as what is considered by teachers and parents to be the most effective way to improve student learning.
Not Data Inquiry Teams which consume every moment of time that could actually be spent improving lesson plans,
not Master Teachers who are receiving 30% more salary and teach one less class per day but then don’t do anything – and I mean don’t do anything! They don’t even know what they’re supposed to be doing b/c they claim the DOE hasn’t giving them instructions. Way to waste an extra 30k per master teacher and then cause overcrowding in those schools by splitting up their 5th class (34 students) amongst the remaining classes. Thanks to that I had 54 students in one of my classes for the entire 1st marking period! My other classes during the 1st marking period were around 40-44.

It is truly sad that these inspired changes by the DOE has already resulted in a negative impact on students’ opportunity to learn. The more the DOE changes, the worse it is for our students.

Data Inquiry – our students are not statistics.
Charter Schools – our students are not $s.
$$$ spent on new administrator furniture – our students deserve $ to be spent on THEM.

Our students deserve lower class sizes and an opportunity to learn, not get lost in the back of the room – or not even have a chair to sit in. (We frequently have to play musical chairs from one classroom to another throughout the day).
An Effective Teacher says…

It is insane to blame “instruction” when there’s so many other things that an impediment to “instruction”.
Clark Kent

BoooHooooo. Wahh wahh wahhhhh. Sniff sniff. My classes are to big and I need more 4 day weekends!! Boo Hooo hoooooo.
interesting

@margaret, not sure where you got your info but I don’t think it’s true. Bread and Roses is definitely Title One (majority of students living in poverty). And then the International School is 100% kids that can’t pass the NYSESLAT and have been living in the country for less than 5 years. Some of those kids are SIFE–kids that hae never really had an education, coming from war-torn countries and such. Both have their share of problems.
A former teacher

To Mr. Paul Rubin- Where is this large group of 60 year old teachers in the DOE? It is certainly not in the middle schools/small high schools. The large high schools have very few of these teachers left and they are being dismantled, so these teachers will be put in the ATR pool. The older second career people you talk about are usually in for the ten year plan to get health insurance benefits– if they get that far. The administrators are not in this 60 year old age group. The only place I can see these teachers are in the elementary schools for they will be the last schools to be dismantled for they are closest to the parents– parents are less involved as their children grow older and thus are not as willing to protest changes. Read Norm’s Scott’s piece on ageism, jobs, and the DOE in EDNOTESONLINE. This is what is happening in NYC and that is why I believe that Black and Klein should be forced to retire. They can deny Black’s appointment based on her being too old for the job- other jobs have age requirements- foreign service for example. They should be given a dose of their own medicine.
jimteach

As a teacher, I’m really happy that he has some classroom experience and seeks to focus on instruction. Seems fair to me, if he’s allowed to work with some freedom and autonomy and doesn’t become a taking head.
http://ednotesonline.blogspot.com/ norm

Deny Black Waiver: Press Conference 2pm Today (Sunday) at Tweed Steps

Who: Deny Waiver Coalition
What: Parents speak out against the deal to grant a waiver for Cathleen Black
Where: Steps of Tweed Courthouse, 52 Chambers St.
When: November 28, 2010 at 2 PM

Contacts:
Chris Owens: 646-450-3552
Mona Davids: 917-340-8987
info@denywaiver.com
Sharpe

@FormerTeacher:
I’m in my early 60′s and at a failing high school that will be “given its model” before Christmas break. We are certain it will be either the transformation or turnaround model which are both phase outs so it doesn’t really matter. I was going to retire but it makes more sense to coast out the final 3 years of a phase out. This is unfortunately good for me but horrible for others. Plenty of co-workers of mine are in this catagory and we are all staying for the phase out unless a package is offered this Spring.
Just Some Teacher

http://profile.ak.fbcdn.net/hprofile-ak-snc4/hs343.snc4/41415_1308436728_3134_n.jpg

This picture shows our new 2nd in command on facebook.

Two things strike me funny about this

1-Bloomberg has come out strongly against teachers using Facebook

2-This is his PUBLIC PROFILE PIC that anyone (not people he has friended) can access, and it shows him partaking in a beverage that looks suspiciously alcoholic. Now there is nothing wrong with drinking responsibly, but what type of judgement does that show when he uses that as his public profile picture for all to see.
Just Some Teacher

that should be “judgment” not “judgement”-sorry for the typo
Paul Rubin

There are at least 1000 teachers in the system that are near or above 60 years old. They’re not in the system that long necessarily and they’d love to retire but Tier 4 prevents it. I’ve got 6 or 7 in my school alone but all are going to retire at the earliest opportunity not because they don’t want to teach anymore but because they’re depressed by what teaching has become in NYC.

I can’t wait anymore either but I have to last 6 more years.
Sharpe

Its like a prison sentence.
Pogue

Regarding Shael’s Facebook photo. That looks suspiciously like an Evan Stone/Sydney Morris Productions, Educators4Excellence, Klein-approved, hedge-funded, let’s-destroy-experienced-teachers’-careers, Happy Hour, drinking event.

Mazel-tov!
WATCHDOG

A SHAM OR A SHAME

The recent compromise that will grant a waiver to allow Cathie Black to become the Chancellor is questionable at best and lends itself to criticism by even those unfamiliar with the inner workings of the Department of Education and the Office of the Mayor. It is shameful that the Commissioner of Education of the State of New York would even consider allowing this compromise in light of the fact that the conclusion of the panel was not to grant a waiver due to their obvious concerns. The organization of the Office of the Chancellor has always included Deputy Chancellors, highly qualified educators who advise the Chancellor on a daily basis. Bloomberg himself commented that there already exits a cabinet of top officials who possess the educational experience that Cathie Black lacks. So to now create a new position, Senior Deputy Chancellor/Chief Academic Officer, is seen as nothing more than a manipulation to foster a more positive public opinion. A sham or a shame …What do you think?
Akademos

Both.
Ellen

Someone tell me why this is a fait accompli? Steiner hasn’t said a word yet.
Peter

Ellen

NY Times reports Steiner will make the announcement on Monday
Ellen

Yeah, I know that he will make an announcement. I am not sure what he’ll say.
Peter

Ellen

Steiner to Black:

Welcome Cathie, and send my regards to Mike.
Fordham

Black to Suransky:

Hey Shael, ready to have some fun pal? Go to your office and wait for my call shmuck.
What?

More important than any of this, why did they ban Mustafa? He was a solid poster. Did he say something about one of the charter schools that advertise jobs here?

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November 27, 2010

Meet Shael Polakow-Suransky: DOE’s new second-in-command

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