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This is a joke, right?

Eric solely destroyed the large high schools which served its communities. He single handedly removed neighborhoods from their schools and forced children to select specific schools nowhere near their communities. Parents, students, and community leaders gave up fights for THEIR local schools because NO ONE was going here. Brilliant plan for destruction! Now you have high 342 high schools, some of which include 6 in one building. Imagine 1 auditorium and 1 gymnasium with 6 separate principals and schools. Auditorium events are being booked 2 years ahead of time at my CAMPUS MODEL SCHOOL.
Thanks Eric ….. For destroying the competiveness between rivals and the historical battles between schools which was healthy and exciting for communities. We now have NONE! The only two systems nearby that De-zone schools are NYC and Yonkers. Everyone knows you don’t buy a house in Yonkers if you’re starting a family because of the school system. Eric is the mastermind of demolishing the foundation built in all 5 boroughs! He also is responsible for the ridiculous quality review which grades a school. You know its BOGUS because last year the entire South Bronx school area received A’s and just one year later, they all dropped to C’s. How’s that possible? They realized its improperly graded and false. He’s also responsible for NETWORKS. Why doesn’t Gotham do a piece on “What a Network is and does?” Nobody knows the answer to that because they don’t do anything except have retreats once a year where 23 year olds explain how to teach.
The truth will NVER come out because people don’t want to hear it! People know what’s really happening! Schools are having hearings on closure while schools replacing them already know they’re coming in. You have the answers BEFORE the hearings! Where are the write-ups on this here on GOTHAM? People don’t want to talk about it because its EMBARASSING!!

Its amazing to see how this guy will be praised as he departs. He must have been treated like royalty by this reporter who never asked more risky questions on what he did to this system. I guess it was an honor for the reporter to be in his presence.
Next to go, please dear Lord, please let it be Laura Rodriguez. One by one they should depart and hire people who want to really make a difference for these children who are getting shafted!

“I had a pension consultation recently and there were financial advantages to making the decision sooner than later.”

And he is retiring at 60.  He must know something.

Uh, sorry? I did work with Nadelstern. His mantra of “make things go away” despite the rules and his constant changing for change’s sake at the behest of his noneducator boss Klein have gone a long way toward destroying a system that needed improvement but did not need destruction. But organized improvement doesn’t garner headlines now, does it? Nor does it accomplish Bloomberg’s overall goal of deunionization.
Nadelstern was originally Klein’s attack dog, then morphed into the all-powerful as Klein became distracted and a distraction. Good riddance.
The problem is that Suransky and others left behind him share Nadelstern’s arrogance, lack of compassion for kids and adults, and lockstep mentality that privatization will cure all ills.
Enjoy the pensions, Joel and Eric. Don’t be expected to be invited to many reunions.

I think Mr. Nadelstern should break the smaller schools up even more to create a new 342 more high schools. This would make it close to 700 high schools in NYC. That would be really funny and a great way to go out. We could have names like The Inter Galactic and Microplasmic School for the Talented and Gifted High School and The New Generation Multicultural and Melting Pot High School. We could have 10 schools in 1 building and all kinds of fun.

I didn’t know Eric Nadelstern personally but I worked in the International Partnership Schools for many years.  At the time Eric was principal of Queens International.  Our schools would all meet together on professional development days.  I remember Eric as a brilliant speaker and quite inspirational.  At the time, the IPS were exempt from taking Regents; we used portfolio assessment to graduate our students. Once on a PD day, to open a mini-conference, Eric gave an impassioned talk on why students should not have to take standardized tests such as the Regents.  He convinced me as a new teacher, and many of my colleagues, of how learning was diluted when curriculum was driven by standardized testing.  He and other leaders of the IPS often talked about how it was better to allow students to go into depth regarding a certain subject than to concentrate on breadth of subject matter.  He emphasized the importance of developing students as deep critical thinkers and allowing them to demonstrate in many ways, not just by writing, how they would apply what they learn.  He talked about how the portfolio process was a much more rigorous demonstration of learning than the Regents.  You can imagine how shocked I’ve been to hear him support this current test-driven fad in education.  In fact I think one of the worst outcomes of the Klein/Bloomberg years has been a turn away from progressive education and toward more traditional paradigms of teaching and learning.  I just can’t believe Eric Nadelstern had such a great part in it all.

A writer above asks what it was like to work for Eric. I was a teacher at IHS when Eric was the principal. It was (and still is) a wonderful place for students and teachers alike. Teachers had a big voice in decision making and felt respected. Eric did the best job he could protecting us from the the big, bad bureaucracy, asked fair questions based on important data and was always thinking ahead. Some of the comments above are simply inaccurate. For instance, it was Jim Liebman, former head of accountability, who introduced the Quality Review, not Eric.

I think this idea of sending kids to the far reaches of the city only made sense when the student was ready to learn academically and socially. It’s what we USED to have at Murry Bergtraum. With Bloom/Klein (and, presumably Nadelstern?) all that was destroyed for us with their boutique schools getting first pick on the better student-refugees of closing schools like Park West HS, Seward Part HS and MLK HS and then dumping the rest of the kids with no plan on us. 

With Bergtraum becoming a dumping ground our school was setup for failure. Sun Yat-sen in Chinatown used to be our primary feeder middle school. No more; they won’t send their kids to us but to smaller schools elsewhere. It seems that schools with large troubled populations (like ours) would do better if their families were within arm’s reach (yes, a zone school). Instead, we have students who don’t want to be at Bergtraum (even though they may have thought so when their parents put Bergtraum as one of their top 3 choices) after arriving and finding out it was living up to its reputation. Why send kids all the way in from the Bronx, Washington Heights, East New York and Bed-Stuy who don’t want to be at Bergtraum? Can’t they create quality schools in the neighborhood, accessible to those families? Our business program at Bergtraum (the reason for its original draw) has long since been gutted by budget cuts and if virtually non-existent. 

Bergtraum needs to phased in to a neighborhood school, serving Smith Houses, South St. Seaport area and Chinatown. It would have all the characteristics of a viable school: local and diverse (academically, socially and racially). I know the community board would like to see it closed. But, is this the best solution? If they reopen with a complex of schools serving nomadic, socially and academically challenged students, they will be in the same predicament. Let Bergtraum become an asset to the community again by serving local families. As Nadelstern leaves, let him take his failed (perhaps, well-intentioned) policies with him. 
John Elfrank-Dana
UFT Chapter Leader
Murry Bergtraum HS

But you see John, we can substitute the name of any of the large comprehensive high schools they closed in Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn and now Queens. There is not one iota of evidence that on the whole (the key phrase) thjese small “theme” schools are providing a better education than was done by the large comprehensive schools. The large schools were able to provide many acitivities for kids…clubs, major art classes (ceramics for example), music programs (both playing in a band or a choral club), classes such as journalism (how many of these new schools have journalism classes), true AP classes for students who were truly ready to take them (not the lip service of offering AP classes say in calculus without kids taking the Math B Regents (now Algebra II and Trig) and seeing the kids all get 1′s and then blaming the AP teacher. In the large high schools, you had subject area specialists…you had a math AP who could go in and observe a math class (look I know some feel the AP’s are full of it, but when I started out I appreciated the fact I had a math AP who understood teaching math was different than teaching English and helped me both with subject matter and pedagogy) and provide real assistance. They didn’t look on their job to “get” a teacher; they looked on their job to improve instruction.

Of course we all know what happens when they close a school. The new schools take the cream of the students in the old school and the rest of the kids are dumped on nearby schools to begin the process of decay in the other schools. There is not the slightest evidence, when all is said and done, that the destruction of the neighborhood comprehensive high schools has done one thing to improve education for thousands of secondary school kids and for this, we have to thank people like Nadelstern and their bird brained ideas regarding the large comprehensive high schools which for nearly a century served the kids of this city.

Before Klein/Bloomberg some parts of the system worked well.  The schools were far from perfect but some parts of the system worked.  Now NOTHING WORKS.  In an attempt to help the neediest kids, the whole system has been destabilized and nothing works for any of the kids.  It’s one big mess.  Nadelstern played a huge part in this destruction.

The point is, and I’m not sure this is by and of itself necessarily confined to education, he saw an opportunity for personal advancement and was willing to adopt the party line to help achieve that. In that respect, as I said earlier, he is no different than so many I met during my time in the DOE. People who I knew had a certain view on things, suddenly would end up with a job say in the Superintendent’s office and began spouting the party lines. Now I don’t know Nadelstern and I will take the word of several that by and of itself, he was an outstanding educator and mentor for teachers and other admnistrators. But I do know that infamous quote from last year where he stated that 1/3 to 2/3 of the teachers in the city were incompetent. That was inexcusable and has to tarnish what otherwise might have been an outstanding career. And in the end, as with so many of the people I alluded to, it did him no good. They discarded him like a rag doll when his usefulness to them was at an end and it should be a lesson to so many who try to kiss you know what to “advance” that most of the time it never works out.

ASTRAKA,

Diane Ravitch, who started out in the camp of the ed deformers, has had the courage to re-assess her actions and previous points of view, for which she deserves great credit; it is a rare thing for a public figure to do. And she has paid a price for that, being attacked by her professional and moral inferiors.

As for Mr. Nadelstern, we can all hope does the same thing, and speaks to the immense social destruction that he enabled. He would also have a personal motivation for doing so, after being skipped over for the Chancellor’s job in favor of someone whose lack of qualifications (on any level) is truly appalling. 

Then again, silly him for thinking that the Mayor would even remotely consider an educator for the job.

Nadelstein was the last of the old school staff who drank the Bloomberg/Klein cool aid.  He has to ultimately ( and honestly)  deal with the distruction he imposed on the large comprehensive high schools, and to the detriment of 1000′s of students.  There is no integrity left.

The mini schools certainly create jobs.  My middle schooler attends a middle school with an enrollment of 300 and which is located on one floor of another school.  The administration consists of the principal, AP, dean, asst. dean, program developer, business manager, and community resource coordinator.  The staff includes one guidance counselor and two community assistants.  Is this normal?  All these salaries and no algebra text books this year.  

Of course these mini schools not only create jobs but more work for the school based employees such as the nurse and psychologist.  

But he hurt far more students than he helped.  The operation was a success doctor, but the patient died.

Dr. Gallo

While a retirement incentive will reduce layoffs and remove expensive teachers their retirement checks are not funded. It is highly improbable that an actuary would approve, in the current environment of escalating pension costs for the city, an incentive that in the long run would be expensive for the city.