Waive Goodbye -- No Waiver for Cathleen Black!
With over one million students and eighty thousand employees, the NYC public school system is, in itself, larger than most American cities and represents an enormous educational challenge. Common sense would suggest that leadership of such an enterprise, fraught as it is with issues of academic performance, budgetary constraints, class size concerns, aging school buildings, lack of space and funds for new construction, needs for special education and English language learning, diverse constituencies, and a host of others problems, needs a visionary leader with solid pedagogical and educational experience. However, if you are Michael Bloomberg, you apparently do not think so.
In a stunning move, Bloomberg has followed up the resignation of Chancellor Joel Klein by naming as his successor not an educator, not an academic, not an education policymaker, but the publisher of Cosmopolitan, Country Living, Esquire, Good Housekeeping, O, Redbook, Seventeen, and Town & Country magazines. Cathleen Black has been an executive at New York Magazine, USA Today, and the