What's the real story behind Black's fall from grace?
The three NYC dailies have conflicting accounts, sometimes within their very same pages, about why Black was fired by Bloomberg, after three short months. Bloomberg usually sticks by his deputies, no matter what their level of incompetence. Despite all the emphasis on "accountability" at the school level, there is generally little accountability at the top at City Hall.
The Daily News claims that the mayor didn’t like her inability to cut the budget:
Two sources said the mayor became increasingly disenchanted with her inability to do the grueling and technical work of cutting the education budget.
Meanwhile, the NY Post says it was because she made decisions to expand programs too slowly:
What will Black's departure mean for our schools, and my most unfavorite memory of Dennis Walcott
I have mixed reactions to Cathie Black’s resignation. Though friends and colleagues from around the country emailed and called to say that I must be celebrating, I had to respond.... not exactly. Most parents realized immediately that she was not qualified for the job, although it took the mayor three months of sinking approval ratings for him to appreciate that fact. When he saw the latest polls, with Black approval ratings at 17% and his handling of schools not much higher at 27%, despite millions of dollars spent of ads trying to convince New Yorkers otherwise, he must have figured out it was time to cut bait.
Clearly, Dennis Walcott has far more experience in public education that she did. But watching Walcott in action for the last nine years, I have no evidence that he is ready to take our schools in a new direction. He can hit the ground running; but will it be in the right direction?
Parents are fed up with this administration’s version of education “reform”: rising class sizes, school closings,
