Bloomberg and Schools: From Chaos to......?

What, on Earth, is he talking about? At least in his first two terms he was coherent. (Consistently wrong about virtually everything; but *coherent*.) Now...... not so much.

I believe he's got another 2 and 1/2 yrs to go.

Spontaneity Again Causes Mayor Trouble
By FERNANDA SANTOS


Responding to a lawsuit seeking to prevent New York City from closing 22 poorly performing schools, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg made a comment on Friday about parents of children in those schools that immediately prompted outrage.

“Unfortunately there are some parents who just come from — they never had a formal education, and they don’t understand the value of education,” Mr. Bloomberg said during his weekly appearance on WOR-AM (710). “Many of our kids come from families — the old Norman Rockwell family is gone.”

The schools in question are filled with poor, minority and immigrant students, including many who are homeless.

Bill de Blasio, the city’s public advocate, called the mayor’s comments “profoundly disrespectful” and urged him to apologize.

Kenneth D. Cohen, an executive of the N.A.A.C.P., a plaintiff in the suit, which was filed Wednesday, lamented what he called Mr. Bloomberg’s broad-brush description of parents “who look like the majority of parents in city schools.” Zakiyah Ansari, a parent organizer with the Alliance for Quality Education, an umbrella organization that is also part of the suit, said she was insulted.

“How dare he say we don’t know what we’re talking about!” said Ms. Ansari, whose organization represents more than 200 parent, teacher and student groups. “How dare he assume that because we’re poor or black or Latino or homeless or all of the above, that we’re uneducated, that we don’t know what’s best for our kids!”

The comment was just the most recent through which the mayor, a multibillionaire, seemed to unwittingly demonstrate his distance from many of his constituents. During his re-election campaign in 2009, Mr. Bloomberg remarked that President Obama “doesn’t get paid that much” (at $400,000 a year, his salary is more than seven times the median household income in New York). While much of Brooklyn and Queens remained buried in snow from the blizzard late last December, he insisted that “the city is going fine,” noting, “Broadway shows were full last night.” And in February, many were aghast when he joked that he was used to seeing “people that are totally inebriated hanging out the window” of the American Irish Historical Society.

Regarding Friday’s radio show, Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for the mayor, said Mr. Bloomberg was trying to point out that there were “vastly different requirements” for education in today’s economy, where a college diploma is all but essential for success, than there were in previous generations.

During the show, Mr. Bloomberg recounted a conversation he had with a mother who told him that her child went to a great school. “How do you know?” the mayor said he asked her. The mother’s reply: “The teacher told me.”

“I said, ‘But you just told me the child’s not learning how to read,’ ” Mr. Bloomberg recalled. “Well, the objective of a school is not to be great, it’s to produce great results.”

Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott said the mayor’s comments had nothing to do with “race or immigrant status,” adding, “It’s really connected, quite frankly, to what I’ve been talking about all along, that parents and families know what’s happening in their child’s school and that they’re engaged.”

Javier C. Hernandez contributed reporting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/21/nyregion/bloomberg-causes-new-stir-with-remark-on-school-parents.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha29

Not that it has anything to do with the parent's education or race (some of the most concerned parents are those who didn't finish school and are minorities, they know how much a good education is needed to overcome the bigotry in this country) but if parents don't care, it is almost impossible for a child to succeed. I am teaching over 20 years, and I see it over and over. (and I have always taught in rural white districts.)