Dear Commons Community,

John King Jr. announced earlier today that he is resigning at the end of this year as New York State’s Commissioner of Education. The New York Times  reported that he would step down to take the second-highest-ranking job at the United States Education Department, as senior adviser to Secretary Arne Duncan.

During his tenure, King pushed a neoliberal agenda calling for more testing, charter schools, more testing, tougher teaching evaluations, more testing, the Common Core, and more testing. He followed Arne Duncan’s script carefully and never veered from it. Teachers and parents have rebelled against most of his initiatives. I believe his greatest failure was the rushed implementation of the Common Core. Curriculum materials were not revise or developed, teachers were not trained, and parents were not properly informed, all of which resulted in mass failures by school children on state tests. Teachers and parents called for his resignation last year in response to the Common Core implementation and also because of his support for establishing a statewide student database managed by a private company.

In sum, Commissioner King took the heat for the Race to the Top funding deal that Governor Mario Cuomo and Chancellor Merryl Tisch agreed to with Arne Duncan and the U.S. Department of Education.  Essentially the quid pro quo was $800 million in federal funding in exchange for New York implementing the Common Core curriculum, establishing teacher evaluation systems based on standardized test scores, and contributing to a national student database.

New York’s school children deserved better.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former New York City Mayor Rudi Giuliani on a visit to Fox News programs blamed teachers unions in part for the violence in black neighborhoods. During interviews with Geraldo Rivera and Sean Hannity, Giuliani, a member of the teacher-bashing crowd of right-wing zealots, commented:

“Asked by Rivera about de Blasio’s response to the situation, Giuliani said that liberals have been ignoring the underlying causes of police brutality against black communities. While groups around the country have been protesting the decisions by two separate grand juries not to indict the police officers who killed Brown and Garner, Giuliani suggested that these activists may be misdirecting their energies.

“The energy that [Al] Sharpton and everyone else is spending protesting against police would save a lot more black lives if it would start talking about improving black education, if it would talk about improving the family situation in black neighborhoods, if it would talk about dealing with police officers with respect,” Giuliani said.

The former mayor then went on to suggest that teachers unions may be partially to blame.

“Maybe all these left-wing politicians who want to blame police, maybe there’s some blame here that has to go to the teachers union, for refusing to have schools where teachers are paid for performance, for fighting charter schools, for fighting vouchers so that we can drastically and dramatically improve education,” he said.

In response, Randi Weingarten, President of the AFT, tweeted: Did #rudygiuliani really blame school teachers -not economics nor racism nor excessive force 4 #garner‘s death. Has he lost it?

Giuliani was a bully while in office and remains so today even though politically he is largely irrelevant except on Fox News.

Tony