The DOE Bureaucratic Machine Is Broken And Only A Complete Overhaul Will Fix It.

Educators have known for years that the DOE is dysfunctional and broken and is need of a complete overhaul.  There was a momentary hope that the new De Blasio administration would appoint a Chancellor who would sweep out the Bloomberg era policy makers.  However, the new Mayor appointed Carmen Farina who has been a major disappointment, to say the least.  She has retained the Bloomberg 300 and even promoted Bloomberg era holdovers such as Kathleen Grimm, known as the "Grim Reaper". for her part in closing many of the large comprehensive high schools in the city.

To many of the schools, little has changed, with frozen budgets, the continuation oi the useless and

money sucking "Children First Networks", and the top down management from the bloated bureaucracy, full of high salaried managers and high priced consultants.  The disappointing Chancellor has not reduced the obscene number of people in the accountability and legal departments that exploded during the Bloomberg years   Moreover, her failure to eliminate the perverse "fair student funding": formula that has resulted in principals having to hire the "cheapest and not the best teachers" for their school and to allow for the continuation of the ATR pool have added to her disappointing tenure as Chancellor.  Finally, in an effort to squeeze every dollar out of an already tight school budget, she has failed to reduce class sizes or hire the proper amount of school staff, be it teachers, guidance counselors, and librarians at the expense of their students' academic achievement.

Unfortunately, Chancellor Carmen Farina's tenure has resulted in little change from the Bloomberg years and the DOE remains bloated, dysfunctional, and lacks transparency.  Furthermore, the excessive paperwork required by the DOE for their mindless data mining projects continues and the hostile classroom environment still exists to this day. Until the DOE's bloated bureaucracy is  completely overhauled, don't expect any real change in the classroom and student academic achievement.

update:  The DOE has finally taken its first steps in eliminating the useless technology called ARIS.  A $95 million dollar failure in which only 16% of teachers and 3% of the parents actually bothered to use the system.  This was Joel Klein's baby and the DOE kept it despite its obvious  failure.  An added bonus is that Joel Klein's company Amplify, will also lose their contract to service ARIS that has cost over $10 million dollars since 2012.  The Daily News article is Here.