This just in: Joel Klein, the NYC education chancellor, is leaving government to work for News Corp. Cathleen P. Black, the chairwoman of Heart Magazines (and former editor of USA Today) will run the NYC Department of Education.
Huh?
What is Bloomberg thinking? Why does he always choose people with no experience in education to run the city’s Department of Education?
When Joel Klein was tapped for the job by Bloomberg, he also had no background in education. He was chief executive of Bertelsmann and head of the antitrust division at the Department of Justice. He came on board in 2002 after Bloomberg got the state to give him control of the Board of Education.
Apparently Klein has been wanting to leave for some time. At the press conference he said that he signed on for two terms. Then he told the mayor he’d see him through the election. He plans to leave at the end of 2010.
Seems that Bloomberg thinks that schools should be run like businesses. Maybe that’s why he keeps selecting businesspeople to run it.
Over at Inside Schools, a NYC public schools website, the headline reads: Cathy Who? Folks are scratching their heads about Bloomberg’s selection of Black.
Clearly, she has an impressive resume: she began her career in the advertising department of Ms. magazine and went on to be the first female publisher of New York magazine and the president and chairman of Hearst magazines. She is on the boards of Coca Cola, IBM, and Harlem Village Academy, a charter school. But what in that resume prepares her to run the New York City schools?
“She is friendly, vivacious and smart,” someone who knows her told me. “She has a good feel for talent. She is a good people person and she is good at massaging egos.”
Did Bloomberg appoint her to repair the Department of Education’s frayed relations with parents, community groups, and the teachers’ union? That’s only speculation, but it seems like a possibility. Because she lacks education credentials, Black, 66, can only be approved with a waiver from the state education department. But it seems unlikely that the mayor would present her as his choice at a press conference if he had not spoken to the state first.
For decades the New York City school system was run by educational “professionals” and it was a cesspool of corruption and failure. The schools still have a very long way to go, but I don’t see a correlation between the system being run by an expert in education and excellence.
After 9 years of Bloomberg, you seem shocked that he thinks the city and its agencies should be run as businesses. New Yorkers need to wake up and pay attention to local politics more often.
Now is the time for parents to protest!