Poet and Park Slope resident Michele Madigan Somerville didn’t sign a petition to deny Cathy Black a waiver. She writes: “It may be that her lack of credentials is Cathie Black’s best credential for leading the DOE schools out if the darkness.” Somerville is the mother of three adolescent children, who have all attended NYC public schools. Two do so at present. She is a former educator with 14 years of classroom experience. She writes: ” I have no problem with the fact that the new chancellor of schools, Cathie Black, is not an educator.” Click on Read More to read an excerpt from her post featured on the Huffington Post yesterday.

“Teaching is an art, not a science.

“DOE schools are filled with teachers who don’t know how to teach or test students’ mastery of skills or subject matter. Standardized testing frenzy is a quick, neurotic fix in a system wherein credentials pass for authentic scholarship, faddish methodology serves as a poor substitute for teaching talent, and students know they’re shortchanged incidentals in a racket run by city workers.

“A new way of doing business is needed. Maybe Cathie Black is not the answer, but the last thing the students in New York City Department of Education schools need is some Tweed hack masquerading as an educator. (Tweed is the name of the old NY courthouse, wherein the DOE offices are presently housed.)

“If she really wants to make the schools work, Cathie Black will figure out how to reward the best teachers; purge “the system” of the thousands who idle in DOE offices and languish in rubber rooms; take a good look at the instant principal “academies” which convert the worst and dullest of teachers into school principals; restructure special education programs so that the DOE might actually educate children with special needs in a legal, pedagogically sound, cost-effective and ethical way; and take a brave and honest look at how institutional racism victimizes and demoralizes so many children enrolled in DOE NYC schools.

“During my first few weeks of studying Latin with Stein the medievalist 30 years ago, I learned that the word “education” derives from the latin root “ducere” — “to lead.” The idea is “ex,” meaning “out,” plus “lead.” “Education,” means to lead one out, it is generally assumed, into the light.

It may be that her lack of credentials is Cathie Black’s best credential for leading the DOE schools out if the darkness.”

Read Somerville’s full article at the Huffington Post.