The new NYC school Chancellor

How confusing it is to be an educator nowadays? One is forced to test students rather than teaching knowledge, students are crowded into classrooms, principals are required to justify their leadership by a graded system and now this... Joel Klein has been the longest sitting NYC school chancellor until now. He was responsible, according to some, for the one of the biggest overhauls in the modern educational system of NYC and Cathleen Black has now been appointed the new chancellor by Mayor Bloomberg. Ms. Black has no background in education and is a head executive at Hearst publishing.

There are the obvious questions and the obvious answers, regardless of whether any of them are right. First I have to wonder if the assumption is that there are no effective managers who have been educators anywhere. I do agree with the Mayor that Black has had experience managing thousands of employees and running many publications which is by all accounts a difficult, demanding job. But is there no one who has similar experience with an early history in education? Who understands what a student needs to succeed? I think the Mayor's technique of treating the department of ed as a business may be a smart move, after all, the department of ed does have thousands of employees, deals with unions, and has a yearly deadline to turn out millions of students. The one problem with his technique is that the product they're turning out is students and real live children tend to throw a wretch in any plan. Children are an unpredictable, frustrating, wonderful bunch and to lead them successfully it really takes flexibility, second only to experience. It seems that in the past the idea has been to deny these two things with rigid testing and to deny higher salaries for more experienced teachers who actually may possess knowledge to help us and our kids. On the other hand, maybe Bloomberg is on to something, getting the human element running smoothly by concentrating on the managing of them. If his plan works maybe there will be more left for the rest of the system once the human element is organized. If not, it will be a sad, sad mistake with our students as the losers, teachers will go on to teach more students, but our kids only get the one chance. I really hope Bloomberg has enough confidence in the success of his plan that he is willing to gamble.