WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mayor Bloomberg on his appointment of Cathie Black

“It’s a chance to change the world.” (N.Y. Post)

Former N.Y. Supt. Rudy Crew

We’re in danger of making the New York City public schools a plaything for the rich and famous. Perhaps the thinking is that directing schools is something you do when you’re finished doing your real job; an avocation that starts with a love of learning and warm remembrances of being in school yourself.(NYT)

Hedge-funder Tilson lays it out bare naked

Charter schools, explained Whitney Tilson, the founder of T2 Partners and one of their most ardent supporters, are the perfect philanthropy for results-oriented business executives. For one thing, they can change lives permanently, not just help people get by from day to day. For another, he said, “hedge funds are always looking for ways to turn a small amount of capital into a large amount of capital.”

A wealthy hedge fund manager can spend more than $1 million financing a charter school start-up. But once it is up and running, it qualifies for state funding, just like a public school. Except that in most cases, charter schools save the taxpayers money because they are much more cost-conscious than the typical big city public school. “It is extremely leveraged philanthropy,” Mr. Tilson said.(NYT) h/t Fred Klonsky

Privatizing the garbage

Rahm Emanuel officially launched his Chicago mayoral campaign Saturday, with a pledge to open the city's garbage collection to bidding from private companies. He has already committed himself to privately funding Chicago's version of Race To the Top.

“Should we continue to collect Chicago’s garbage the same way we have for decades when it can be done cheaper and more efficiently, as other cities have shown?" (Chicago News Cooperative)

Miami's 'zone' -- no gains for high schools

Catherine Gewertz, posting on Edweek's new High School Connecttion Blog, reports that Miami/Dade's School Improvement Zone, set up under former Supt. Rudy Crew, was a bust that produced little in the way of measurable high school improvement, according to the district's own evaluation.

According to the study, the School Improvement Zone produced "at best an inconsistent impact that was limited to the elementary grades" and "was not found to have had a consistent positive impact at the secondary grades." The district study compared the 39 Zone schools with 39 demographically similar schools, and found the Zone schools turned in worse scores on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test in most subject areas than did the other schools.

The Zone was a cluster of 8 low-performing high schools and feeder schools with its own administrative team. Reforms focused on extra math and reading instruction, and longer school days and years. It's now up to the school board and the post-Crew leadership team to figure out a new high school reform strategy.

Miami/Dade has some of the largest high schools in the nation as well as one of the lowest high school completion rates.

Finally!

AFT's reform initiative

Tired of conceding the mantle of school reform to top-down “market-based education reformers” the AFT is launching a teacher-led reform initiative of its own. The union's new Innovation Fund will likely support projects like:

…community schools, which take a holistic approach to students’ academic, personal and social development; union-partnered charter schools, such as the UFT’s charter schools in New York and other charter schools across the country where teachers have chosen to join the AFT; differentiated pay, such as the plans in Douglas County, Colo., New York City and elsewhere, where union involvement established fair measures and incentivized cooperation; and school-based teacher contracts, in which teachers have flexibility to meet their students’ needs, and professionalism is enhanced through fair pay, respectful treatment and workplace voice.

One of the initiatives propelling the union’s reform plan is the newly-opened Green Dot Charter School in N.Y., by, in Edwize's words, a “labor-friendly charter school operator and educational reform organization.”

On the other hand...

Andy Rotherham, is at odds with Berkeley prof, Bruce Fuller who, on his NYT blog, correctly tied McCain’s pro-voucher ed policies to those of George Bush.

Republicrat Rotherham, who turned his Eduwonk blog over to the Republican campaign a few weeks ago, now envisions a bright future for education in a McCain victory.

For all the bellyaching you hear today, an Education Department focused on using federal authority in education may look pretty good in hindsight a few years into a McCain Administration…

Rudy Crew toast OF IN Miami

He keynoted our Small Schools Conference two years ago and was leading a move to restructure all of Miami-Dade’s high schools. But Supt. Crew was constantly under fire from ultra-racist factions in Little Havana and repeatedly called the N-word by one state senator.

From Edweek:

“I didn’t pay homage to what they call ‘the community,’ meaning the Cuban community,” he said. “I was too busy trying to pay attention to the children of the larger community. ...In my book, it’s the Haitian community, the African-American community, the Jamaican community, and it is in fact the Hispanic community, but not just Cubans; there are Nicaraguans, Puerto Ricans, and lots of other people here. “There is a racial tension that exists here in Miami that they defined me as being against the Cuban community.”

Does this mean Miami-Dade doesn't get the Broad Prize?