Randi for Chancellor?
by Frederick M. Hess • Dec 6, 2013 at 9:35 am
Cross-posted from Education Week
Cross-posted from Education Week
Bill de Blasio, New York's new mayor, is seeking a schools chancellor. Truth is, I'm pretty impressed by some of the names that have been popping up in the search. Wednesday's NYT speculated that DC supe Kaya Henderson and Montgomery County chief Josh Starr are leading contenders. Chicago supe Barbara Byrd-Bennett is also reportedly in the mix. They're all immensely talented, and any of these would be a stellar choice. They come at the challenges of school improvement in different ways and with distinctive guiding philosophies, but I find all three impressive as hell.
That said, today, I want to chat briefly about one of the more out-there names that's been surfaced for chancellor. Brewing behind the scenes is a small, quiet campaign to convince de Blasio to appoint Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, previously the chief of New York's United Federation of Teachers and longtime sparring partner of former chancellor Joel Klein. I think the Weingarten-for-chancellor idea is an intriguing one.
First, it'd be fascinating to see Weingarten sitting across the table from UFT honcho Michael Mulgrew. After all, union leaders have long insisted that they're all in on doing what it takes to deliver excellent schools. They've argued that the problem with "reformers" is mostly in the mechanistic, test-fueled, heavy-handed way they've gone about their business. Okay. I've got a lot of sympathy for that complaint. So, given the chance to do better, I'd love to see what Weingarten and Mulgrew cooked up with regards to accountability, hiring, teacher evaluation, school calendar, charter schooling, low-performing schools, differentiated roles and compensation, and the rest. If they impressed, that'd be terrific. If not, that'd be instructive.
Second, so much of the discussion about schooling today tends to get wrapped up in things that educators
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