Ever since The Education Gadfly critically reviewed NYC Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein: What Parents, Teachers, and Policymakers Need to Know, we've been bombarded with messages from aggrieved contributors and editors of that 172-page volume (which you can find??here) charging that we were unfair. (One of the editors will have a "letter to the editor" to that effect??in this week's Gadfly.)
They didn't set out to write a "balanced" analysis of the Bloomberg-Klein regime in New York, they insist; they set out to criticize it. And that they surely did, across a host of topics and issues. We at Fordham have a lot of friends and colleagues in New York of whom we're very fond and with whom we've worked very closely over the years,??and it's been no secret for many months--years, actually--that some of them find myriad faults with the mayor and schools chancellor while at our end of the Acela we find more to admire than to criticize in those two officials' handling of K-12 education in the nation's largest city. So be it. One may regret the friction but it's not necessarily healthy to agree about everything.??
Anyone looking for a reasonably comprehensive review of what critics DON'T like about mayoral control of the New York schools these past seven years, and for a marshalling of evidence that this hasn't worked well can surely find it in these pages. (Anyone looking for counter-claims and evidence of success can surely find it from the ample public affairs operations at City Hall and Tweed Court House.)
The book, however, might also be titled "requiem for a lost cause," because, as we read the current state of political play in Albany and Gotham, it seems all but certain that hizzoner is going to retain control of the schools--and is going to get re-elected. Be assured, though, that he and his chancellor??won't lack for watchers, monitors, auditors and articulate critics??in the years ahead--and that's??a healthy thing. Everyone--even billionaire mayors and hard-charging school executives--benefits from??having concerned??and wary people looking over their shoulders, much as they wish it weren't happening.
