The Teacher Blame Game Continues.

There is no question that Mayor Michael Bloomberg and his Chancellor, Joel Klein, tried to remake the New York City Public School; system into an education reform laboratory.  The result was a failure of historic proportions as various iterations and policies were foisted on the schools, only to be discarded as yesterday's garbage.  Large comprehensive high schools were closed and small ones were opened, top heavy on administrators and once the extra funding and student exclusions disappeared, the unscreened small schools ended up with lower academic achievement than the schools they replaced.   However, far too many of the Bloomberg/Klein era policies survive to this day.

For example under the progressive Mayor, Bill de Blasio and his Chancellor, Carmen Farina, many of the Bloomberg/Klein policies are still in place.  They are as follows:

•  Large class sizes
•  Graduation rate
•  Fair student funding
•  ATRs
•  Danielson rubric
•  Bloated DOE bureaucracy. 
•  Data mining
•  Uncertified teachers
•  Double standard in disciplining staff and administrators.
•  Principal autonomy. 

Just like in the Bloomberg years, real student academic achievement weren't realized and the income/racial achievement gap stayed as wide as ever.  Who gets blamed for the lack of academic progress?  The failed education reform policies by bureaucrats, and politicians?  How about the poor parent involvement?   It can't be the lack of resources and funding for the schools?  Or was it the high teacher turnover and the policies that devalue veteran teachers?  No?  according to the news media its the teachers themselves!

Now we will have the highly unqualified Betsy DeVos, who will do her best to divert money from the public schools to charter, private, and even virtual schools.  If you think we teachers were unfairly treated before by the likes of Arnie Duncan and John King?  When the new Secretary of Education finds that none of her policies will work who will she and her allies blame?  The teachers and their unions of course.