Arne Duncan still arguing for mayoral control -- when the trend is in the opposite direction
In the Sunday Daily News , former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan argued for the extension of Mayoral control. The official legislative session is supposed to end Wednesday and Mayoral control expires at the end of the month. Yet considering Arne's unpopular and controversial policies this probably is not the most effective endorsement. He wrote:
"Mayors who are in control of their schools are directly accountable for the success of those schools. Education becomes a key to the Mayors' success. To put it another way, parents are hard to fool and parents vote."
Really? This certainly is a change of tone from Duncan’s earlier condescending remarks that parents only opposed the Common Core standards after finding out that “their child isn’t as brilliant as they thought they were, and their school isn’t quite as good as they thought they were.”
If NYC parents are so hard to fool, one wonders why can't they have the right to elect a school board as voters do in most of the country?
Mayor de Blasio and Chancellor Farina have offered their own unconvincing arguments. The Mayor has said an era of “corruption and chaos” would return if mayoral control is not renewed:
“Unfortunately a lot of chaos went with that. A lot of corruption went with that. A lot of patronage ... a lot of people went to jail, we’ve got to make sure we never go back to those days.”
Chancellor Farina’s hand-wringing is even more extreme:
Managers, appointed by the local school boards, inflated the price of contracts to generate lucrative kickbacks that took money directly away from NYC Public School Parents: Arne Duncan still arguing for mayoral control -- when the trend is in the opposite direction:
