UPDATE:David B has chipped in.
Maybe there should be a poster in every school.
Click to enlarge.
I posted this must read follow-up to our last De-Kleining America post at Norms Notes.
By the way, many of Leonie's comments on Joel Klein can also be applied to Michelle Rhee and all the other corporate non-educator public ed destroyers.
UPDATE:
David Bloomfield, Brooklyn College education professor (and lawyer) and NYC public school parent sent his thoughts to The Nation- I posted it in the comments section.
David Bloomfield sent this to The Nation:
ReplyDeleteThough, on a personal level, I regret writing ill of Joel Klein, the public issue of his potential nomination as Education Secretary demands opposition. As an elected parent member and former President of the Citywide Council on High Schools, I have been a close observer of Chancellor Klein's leadership of the New York City Public Schools. During his tenure, he has closeted himself with a small, insular group of non-educators for advice -- more driven by public relations than sound instructional practice. He routinely manipulates data to promote the appearance of student progress where little exists and -- Congress be warned -- routinely evades legal mandates. Any close look at our schools will show that he has failed to promote an effective instructional agenda that prepares the majority of New York's 1 million public school students for participatory citizenship and post-secondary opportunities. One of his most prominent innovations, the promotion of small high schools, is currently the subject a federal investigation into discriminatory admissions policies against special needs and immigrant students. His accountability measures, still unproven, have substantially narrowed the curriculum and driven hundreds of excellent principals and other educators from their positions. Finally, he has marginalized parent organizations such as mine, never reaching out when policies are developed and ignoring our criticism when implementation inevitably goes awry. Chancellor Klein would be the wrong choice for an administration looking to really change American education; his is a strategy of illusion and exclusion.
David C. Bloomfield
Citywide Council on High Schools