Bloomfield also predicted that
Farina and her staff would implement a longer-term cultural change at
Tweed. “There will be a new system-wide respect for educational
experience,” he said, “there are a lot of people fresh out of college
who either as a matter of data expertise or particular program expertise
tell principals what’s needed. There will probably be an early but not
immediate conversation from a technocratic staff to a deeper educational
staff. People who have taught, and really taught.”
Friends and colleagues of Farina and de Blasio say they share a single educational philosophy,
with a focus on progressive education, a skepticism of standardized
testing and charter schools, and a focus on racially and economically
integrated public schools.
Update from
Capitol NY
Carmen Farina, a Department of Education veteran
and a longtime informal advisor to Bill de Blasio, will be named
chancellor Monday after months of speculation about who would manage the
city’s school system.
De Blasio will name Farina head of the
nation's largest public school system at M.S. 51, the Park Slope middle
school his children attended.
Friends and colleagues of Farina and de Blasio say they share a
single educational philosophy,
with a focus on progressive education, a skepticism of standardized
testing and charter schools, and a focus on racially and economically
integrated public schools.
Farina, who is 71 and retired from the D.O.E in 2006, will have her work cut for her.
Experts say she'll face the immediate challenge of
overseeing the negotiation of a contract with the United Federation of
Teachers, whose members have been without a contract since 2009. She and
de Blasio will have to decide who to appoint to the Panel for
Educational Policy.
Then there are the longer term questions: How
the de Blasio administration will treat the city's growing charter
school movement; how to raise graduation rates; the fate of increased
standardized testing in the city's schools; and how to continue to
implement the Common Core after waves of criticism over the new
standards along with the new teacher evaluation system.
Former
D.O.E. officials and city education experts say Farina will have to
balance a delicate set of priorities in her first hundred days as
schools chief.
Eric Nadelstern, a former deputy chancellor under
Joel Klein credited with helping to implement some of the Bloomberg
administration’s biggest educational reforms, says the first months of
Farina’s tenure should be marked by a clear commitment to raising the
graduation rate, which is still below 70 percent.
“I don’t think
the chancellor should come and nitpick their way through the system,
saying ‘I like this’ or ‘I don’t like that,’” said Nadelstern.
“I
think the first 100 days needs to be about putting together the most
talented team they can possibly find and then working with that team to
develop a long range plan on how to to go from a 66 percent graduation
rate to a 100 percent rate in five years,” he said.
Critics of the
DOE's controversial new teacher evaluation system will also lobby for
changes and updates to the system, which some advocates say relies too
heavily on the results of standardized tests.
Adjusting the
teacher evaluations would require altering the consequences of new,
Common Core-aligned exams and negotiating with the state education
department about changes to the system.
“Clearly the teacher
evaluation system will be on the table immediately,” said David
Bloomfield, a professor of educational leadership at CUNY, “that would
be my day one activity if it hasn’t started already.”
Bloomfield
added that he expects the de Blasio administration to make an
announcement on the D.O.E.’s current grading system for schools — which
de Blasio has
vowed
to do away with — shortly after the mayor-elect takes office.
“Getting rid of the grades is wholly within de Blasio’s power,”
Bloomfield said.
Pedro Noguera, a professor of education at NYU,
said the network system that replaced the traditional district model of
school organization could be reconsidered early in Farina’s tenure.
“Given that there’s some evidence that these networks haven’t worked
better in a lot of cases, they might consider going back to the district
model, they might consider a hybrid with some district level support
and leave the networks that are working well alone,” he said.
Noguera
also said Farina will need to double down on the continued Common Core
rollout. “The department will need to figure out how to make sure they
don’t take as big a hit this year as they did last year.”
De
Blasio is in luck on that matter: Farina is well-known for her focus on
professional development, which both advocates for and critics of the
Common Core agree is needed to improve outcomes on the Common
Core-aligned curricula and exams.
Bloomfield also predicted that
Farina and her staff would implement a longer-term cultural change at
Tweed. “There will be a new system-wide respect for educational
experience,” he said, “there are a lot of people fresh out of college
who either as a matter of data expertise or particular program expertise
tell principals what’s needed. There will probably be an early but not
immediate conversation from a technocratic staff to a deeper educational
staff. People who have taught, and really taught.”
And then there
are the immediate logistical issues. Farina will have to consult with
de Blasio about whether they will want to reverse some of the most
controversial charter school openings and co-locations pushed through by
Bloomberg’s P.E.P during the administration’s final months. Public
Advocate-elect Letitia James has
said she'll push for the reversal of some of the proposals.
Getting
students to school after winter break may also prove to be a serious
headache after one of the city’s largest busing companies, Atlantic
Express,
filed for bankruptcy in November, leaving 20 percent of the city's bus routes unaccounted for.
Farina
and de Blasio have known each other for years, and worked closely
together when Farina was superintendent of District 15 in Park Slope and
de Blasio, whose children attended P.S 372 in Park Slope, sat on the
D15 school board.
Dorothy Siegel, a fellow member of the D15 school board and a longtime friend of Farina’s, called de Blasio “a pupil” of Farina.
Farina’s
extensive history as an educator provides major clues both how she’ll
lead as chancellor and what her top priorities might be.
Her
former colleagues say she has been on the forefront for a battle for
racial, socioeconomic and academic inclusion in the city’s public
schools.
While she was the principal at P.S. 6 on the Upper East
Side, long considered one of the city’s best public elementary schools,
Farina disbanded the school’s gifted and talented program and made the
school entirely general education.
One of District 15’s most
popular schools, the Children’s School, where de Blasio sent his two
children, is the city’s only all-inclusion elementary school with a mix
of special needs and general education students in every class.
Farina
took a stand against what she perceived as an over-reliance on
standardized testing at P.S 6. In a teaching and learning guidebook for
instructors, Farina
wrote,
“My dilemma upon assuming the principalship was that the students
scored high on the standardized tests while little student-centered
learning was going on. Veteran teachers, for the most part, ran
traditional classrooms. How could I effect change in an environment
where many parents and teachers were content with the status quo?” One
answer was a significant staff turnover: she replaced 80 percent of the
staff in eight years.
While Farina recently avoided criticizing charters, she
actively fought
against one of Eva Moskowitz’s Success Academies moving into her
neighborhood in 2011. After Farina retired from the D.O.E. as a deputy
chancellor under Joel Klein, she teamed up with a local assemblywoman to
counter Moskowitz’s plan to open a Success Academy in Cobble Hill,
where Farina worked and currently lives, with a proposal to open a pre-K
center. Success eventually won the battle for the space.
As a
teacher and administrator, Farina was known for her focus on creating
literary-focused curricula, teaching students about Civil War history by
having them read historical novels from the time period, or visiting
the Brooklyn Museum to look at Civil War-era art. She often held
workshops for other teachers on how to construct their own curricula,
according Siegel.
Farina’s name has been floated for the position
for months, as she seemed the most obvious choice in a pack of
contenders who were either uninterested in the job or would have been
politically risky choices for de Blasio, who ran and won his campaign
partially on the promise of a new educational agenda for the city with
less emphasis on testing and a moratorium on charter school
co-locations.
December 29, 2013
De Blasio Is Said to Choose Schools Chancellor
Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio will appoint Carmen Fariña, a former top
official of the New York City Education Department, as the next schools
chancellor, a person with knowledge of the decision said on Sunday.
Ms. Fariña, 70, is a veteran of the school system, having served as a
teacher, principal and district superintendent, and retired as a deputy
chancellor in 2006. She met Mr. de Blasio in the late 1990s while he was
serving as a school district board member in Brooklyn and emerged as an
influential adviser on education during his bid for mayor. Ms. Fariña
shares Mr. de Blasio’s skepticism of standardized testing and his focus
on early education.
Aides to Mr. de Blasio did not respond immediately to a request for
comment late Sunday. Reached at her home on Sunday night, Ms. Fariña
declined to comment.
