Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Mayoral Control: Bad for Teachers, Students, Parents and Communities

Here is the 2-sided ICE leaflet being handed out at the UFT special Delegate Assembly today to endorse the UFT task force report on mayoral control. ICE has another view.

Bloomberg screams hysterically about these mild limits placed on his power - like he can't control the reps the borough people choose - see one Martine Guerrier the former Brooklyn rep who was hired by Klein as parent CEO. It is all much ado about nothing.

In the UFT "reform" he still gets to appoint the chancellor and the UFT doesn't even endorse the CSA call for the chancellor to be an educator. The ICE plan calls for 5 years of teaching experience, among other reforms. Even the UFT says we don't want to go back to a central board of education, which by the way has never been elected like boards of education are all over the nation. Have you seem the results of a dictatorial mayor controlling things? Teachers and parents know the phony stats are total bullshit and most kids are more poorly educated today than they ever were under the old system.

Read the view of one parent/teacher below the leaflet.

Click on images to enlarge



From a parent and teacher critical of the UFT plan:

Read some of the articles of parents who went to Washington D.C. to testify AGAINST Mayoral Control - it SEEMED like a good idea at the time to "save" the failing public schools. Type in"Mayoral Control NYC DOE" in your browser to find articles relating to this.

Change for changes' sake is NOT always a good idea- we need solid ideas, and the political will to implement these ideas, if we really want to save public education and turn the public school system to what it should be- TRUE education for all that are capable. Schools should be turning out graduates that know how to read, write, think critically- this ISN't happening.

As a parent of a NYC student and a teacher, AND resident of the city, I'm appalled by how my daughter has been miseducated all of these years. How will she be able to realistically compete for any kind of meaningful job when she graduates? For years, she hasn't had textbooks, workbooks, NOTHING to work with, to read or study from. It's not the fault of the teachers, it's the decisions that have been made from the top and pushed down to the bottom rungs.

My story is repeated by the parents of other students, I'm sure. Who loses as a result of mayoral control? The students, the very people that schools are supposed to exist for....

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Can't wait to read what you're going to write about today's DA.

What a show. RW in great scamming form. Will check in with this blog tomorrow....

NYC Educator said...

"Change for change's sake" was pretty much the response I got when I asked a Tweedie why they weren't addressing things like overcrowding, class size, and building conditions. "We had to do something," the guy told me.

From my point of view, that was an entirely unsatisfactory response. Actually, they should have done something worthwhile, but that doesn't seem to have ever crossed their minds.

Anonymous said...

I'm the "anonymous" parent/teacher that wrote about all of the years of her life that my daughter spent in a Special Ed. school learning nothing, thanks to the policies of the Mayor, who believes in 'scripted' education, never mind the TRUE needs of the students.

Yes, it IS a good idea that all of us parents come together to speak AGAINST the failed policies of this administration, vis-a-vis public education in N.Y.C. Who's game? I am.....