Bill de Blasio has filled the critical post of schools chancellor — second in importance only to police commissioner — by convincing a veteran educator to come out of retirement and lead the nation’s largest public education system.
Carmen Fariña is largely in sync with the dramatically different approach to schooling espoused by de Blasio during his campaign. He and she will now be judged by their success in raising student achievement and maintaining safe schools. He pledged, for example, to “ensure all students are reading at grade level by third grade.”
Ironically given such a specific and data-driven goal, de Blasio and Fariña reject the Bloomberg administration’s emphasis on holding teachers and principals accountable for measurable results.
The mayor has also called for a moratorium on closing failing schools, a strategy that produced hundreds of smaller high schools whose successes exceeded expectations.
Fariña says she knows a better way, one that will bring widespread parental harmony while turning parents into achievement boosters.
“True change happens not through mandates and top-down decision-making but through communication, collaboration and celebrating the successes along the way,” said Fariña. “Raising the success rate of our students is the only goal. I anticipate the entire city will aid us on this effort.”
Committed and upbeat, Fariña will easily rally New Yorkers to her side — for as long as the kids do well.
The city’s four-year high school graduation rate is now 66%, up nearly 20 points since 2005.
On the gold-standard test, the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the city has been closing the gap with the nation as a whole.
On the many changing standardized reading and math tests — and their shifting scoring systems — the average performance of New York City’s children has been steadily climbing toward the state average.
The gap in performance between the city’s black and Latino students and its white students had shrunk over the years before shooting back up on the tougher Common Core tests taken last school year.
With so far to go to prepare more graduates for college and career readiness, slowing those trendlines would be unacceptable. Reversal would be a betrayal of civic duty and doom de Blasio’s declaration that, “We cannot continue to be a city where educational opportunity is predetermined by ZIP code.”
Fariña, 71, went from teacher to principal to district chief to deputy under then-Chancellor Joel Klein. She retired after two years at Tweed, in part due to disagreements with Mayor Bloomberg’s belief in test-driven accountability.
De Blasio said his search took as as long as it did because “this is literally one of the most important decisions I’ll ever make as mayor,” and he needed to find the right fit.
Reports suggest he may have ruled out many big-city superintendents — or they ruled him out — because he hewed to a strict moratorium on school closures and school colocations. Those tools are widely used around the country by successful school reformers, and they work.
De Blasio’s approach to reform meant a woman like Kaya Henderson — under whom Washington, D.C.’s gains on the leading federal test have outpaced the nation’s — was not, in the end, a serious contender.
In Fariña‘s debut press conference, she spoke repeatedly of the importance of listening to “stakeholders,” including parents, rather than issuing edicts from on high. She talked about “respect,” and of helping teachers and principals get back to feeling “joy” in their job.
For the sake of the children, we wish her the best and hope for it, too, no matter how she might get there.
