Opinion: Mayor Bloomberg Flunks on School Chancellor Pick

(Nov. 10) -- "Are you serious? What planet are we on?" one New York City principal screamed into my ear, reacting to the news that Mayor Michael Bloomberg had tapped Cathleen Black, a woman with no boots-on-the-ground teaching experience, to serve as the next chancellor of the city's public schools.

This principal and I worked together two summers ago when I taught a summer journalism and civics course to underserved students in her Manhattan public high school. I then moved the program to a Brooklyn site when her budget couldn't pay for enough hours of summer-school electricity.

She was stunned with the mayor's selection and the fact that she received zero warning from the city government. And she wasn't the only one: She had just gotten off a call with another fuming New York City principal.

"Really, really, Mayor Bloomberg?" she asked in what I could only describe as a crazed sort of bewilderment. She wondered why outgoing Chancellor Joel Klein would not insist that one of his veteran deputies take over the city's education operation.

In his announcement, Bloomberg called Black -- former publisher of USA Today and later the chairwoman of Hearst Magazine publishing -- "a superstar manager." Or, as principals and teachers think of that label: another bureaucrat more interested in economics than students' or teachers' real-life struggles. With Black, the mayor chose someone more experienced with administering the dough than shaping curricular and pedagogical design, things that actually matter to young people's future.

In both schools where I've led summer classes, I saw the consequences of education policy more concerned with fiscal order than with the tremendous needs of the city's students and teachers. I was a teacher in one of the hundreds of neglected classrooms without computers or Internet and on their last box of chalk or pencils.

In jest, I asked the principal why Mayor Bloomberg didn't simply choose the president of New York's most profitable hedge fund. Apparently, the mayor was more interested in finding a candidate with "management experience" -- whatever that actually means -- than one who has worked consistently with students.

I would be more sympathetic to Black's selection if she had actually worked on the ground as a city-beat reporter and could testify to the experiences of American students or grassroots education movements. For journalism is an essential vehicle to engage young people in their education and community.

But she hasn't. In fact, Black has migrated from one corporate post to another without actually being immersed in the classroom.

Mayor Bloomberg's appointment is not in touch with what's best for the city's students. In order to advance education reform, teachers and young people across the city demand inspiration from one of their own.

Alexander Heffner, a New York native and an undergraduate at Harvard, is director of ScoopSeminar.org, an education and journalism nonprofit.


Other Views on Mayor Bloomberg's Choice for School Chancellor:

The New York Daily News in an editorial
"By our lights, it's just fine that Black, a successful media executive, will bring private-sector perspective and high management skill to the task for bettering the minds of 1.1 million students. She comes from a culture that demands innovation and performance. And wouldn't that be a good thing to have in the city's 1,400 schools."

Joel Shatzky, English professor, on The Huffington Post
"Just as I would not be too comfortable if a sociology student were to examine my prostate or an English teacher represent me in a murder trial, I feel that there should be some minimal level of knowledge about a profession as complex as education before someone is put in charge of running an enterprise of over a million 'customers' and a quarter million employees."

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New York Post, in an editorial
"Certainly her status as an education outsider -- a non-traditionalist, she sits on the advisory council of the Harlem Village Academy, a charter school -- will serve her in good stead. Klein did the city -- and its kids -- an enormous service, reforming a system thought to be impervious to change. New Yorkers should be grateful. And wish Black the very best of luck."

Valerie Strauss in The Washington Post
"That's twice that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has deluded himself into thinking that success in business management is easily transferable to success in the public education system."

Jeremy Smerd on Crain's New York Business
"The decision was completely in-character for Mr. Bloomberg, for whom private-sector experience is sometimes the most important qualification for a job in city government."