Cathie Black: How can this be what we need? Part 3 – excluding parents and teachers
[Lynne Winderbaum, retired ESL teacher from JFK, longtime Chapter Leader, and through most of the Bloomberg years, our Bronx UFT HS District Representative, responds to the announcement that Joel Klein is leaving and that Mayor Bloomberg is trying to appoint Cathie Black to replace him. This is the conclusion, part 32 of 3. Click for Part 1. Click for Part 2.]
Klein and Black also share a belief that students will be helped by an increase in charter schools. In a system that is struggling with budget cuts, these alternatives to traditional public schools have not earned that level of trust. Fewer than 20% of them do as well as the traditional public schools and some of those spend twice the amount per student that traditional schools do. Therefore, without that level of funding, even the few successful ones cannot have their programs replicated for the vast majority of public school students.
To improve the schools Black would be advised to turn the page on Klein’s penchant for denigrating the 80,000 teachers who work hard for New York’s children. We are the people who are actually in the classrooms face to face with the students.. Klein’s passive-aggressive comments communicated constant disrespect. He left the podium yesterday saying how important teachers are. This cannot erase the memory of his telling principals that
