October 16, 2006
Fenty Hearts Bloomberg('s School Reform Plan)
Presumptive Mayor-to-be Adrian Fenty is in New York City today, reports the Post, in order to pow wow with Mayor Michael Bloomberg about how he went all authoritarian on New York's public school system. Many aspects of what Bloomberg has done in an effort to turn things around for the city's failing schools are intriguing, if not without controversy:
What Bloomberg and Klein will describe to Fenty is a massive overhaul in which they rolled out more than 170 small high schools with fewer than 450 students apiece. They streamlined the central administration, transforming 32 school districts into 10 regions and slashing $200 million from the budget, largely by eliminating administrative positions. They created a principals' academy to train administrators, using $75 million in private donations, and established rigorous performance standards for educators.We mention the controversy because, and the Post article further outlines, many parents and teachers in New York are up in arms over Bloomberg's experiment with these "small high schools," which stand accused of leaving other, large schools behind in their collective dust. A group of parents even went so far as to write Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa a concerned letter when he came to meet with Bloomberg on the same topic. Will Fenty get the same warning?
Of course, Fenty won the Democratic mayoral primary by a huge margin, after running a campaign as a radical reformer. And there is perhaps no issue of more concern to District voters than the state of our crumbling school system. If D.C.'s parents, teachers and taxpayers wanted a more cautious approach to school reform, they would have voted for Linda Cropp. It stands to reason we should expect to see some Bloomberg-style strong arming of the city's public schools relatively quickly after Fenty wins the general election and takes office next year.
Obviously fake photo collage by DCist Jeff.
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fyi, a pow wow is a sacred ceremony among Native American tribes, not a meeting of two east coast politicians.
but, what else would i expect from a city that embraces a racist football team name.
do we really have to have the discussion about how words change meanings over time and across cultures again? let it go.
Borrowed from powwows.com:
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Pow Wow time is the Native American people's way of meeting together, to join in dancing, singing, visiting, renewing old friendships and make new ones.
This is a time to renew thought of the old ways and to preserve a rich heritage.
There are several different stories of how the Pow Wow was started. Some believe that the war dance societies of the Ponca and other Southern Plains tribes were the origin of the Pow Wow.
Another belief is that when the Native Americans were forced onto reservations the government also forced them to have dances for the public to come and see. Before each dance they were lead through the town in a parade,which is the beginning of the Grand Entry.
...
As various tribes gathered together, they would share their songs, often changing the songs so singers of different tribes could join. With these changes came the use of "vocables" to replace the words of the old songs. Thus, some songs today are sung in vocables with no words.
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In other words, "pow wow" could be a loose but fair metaphor for a meeting of the leaders of 2 regions swapping ideas. (and nothing in that definition suggests that it is a "sacred" ceremony.)
Main Entry: 1pow·wow
Pronunciation: 'pau-"wau
Function: noun
Etymology: Narragansett powwaw or Massachusett pauwau
1 : an American Indian medicine man
2 a : an American Indian ceremony (as for victory in war) b : an American Indian social gathering or fair usually including competitive dancing
3 a : a social get-together b : a meeting for discussion
whatever, that picture is brilliant...
DCPS admin has been begging for this sort of villagers-versus-Frankenstein smackdown since the 1960s. And when your pupils consistently rate in the bottom 5 percentile in math and verbal skills, there's NOWHERE to go but up. If this can get a dozen six-figure-a-year Deputy Assistant Vice Secretaries to the Assistant Vice Principal for Self Esteem to take early retirement, this will be a victory.
Maybe Bloomberg and Klein will also tell Fenty that they are locked in a battle of the wills against parents and children over whether cellphones are allowed. Seriously - it's a hot topic in NYC and cellphones have been banned from city schools since the 1980s!
Bloomberg has made a big point of trying to reform the education system, but so far his track record has been mixed. He ended social promotion, which is good, but the over reliance on test scores is bad. The graduation rate has barely improved.
And the picture is damn brilliant.
you know, i clicked on the comments link for this post hoping to find some enlightened - ok well at least flamey - commentary on school reform. Or how NYC is un-DC. Or on how Fenty rocks/sucks.
No. Instead, 4 posts on "pow wow" and one on the fake photo collage (ok - the photo was fun).
Not that I'm going to add any myself. Back to lurking.
I hope that Fenty plans on meeting at least once with Guiliani while he's up there. As a selfish childless DC resident, I'm far more concerned with crime. Actually, DC crime more resembles NYC in the '70s. Maybe he should meet with Abe Beam and Ed Koch as well. Beam's already dead, so he'd better hurry.
Well put, Monkeyerotica. It'd be nice if we didn't view the DC schools as yet another make-work program. There are far too many in DC schools that think it'd be a nice job if it weren't for those pesky kids and parents and all.
Well, yeah, that's the story of many DC agencies.